“What brought you to Brazil?” was the second most asked question I heard during my ten-day visit to Rio De Janeiro this month. I’d explain that the visit was mainly to kick off Y&Y Travels (and escape the SEVEN MONTH winter England had bestowed on us). However my answer – my true answer, anyway – was that I wasn’t quite sure. I just knew I felt drawn to the country, and more specifically, Rio, for a quite some time. I wasn’t sure where exactly the interest had stemmed from – I had no first-hand exposure to the culture, I’d never hit the samba spots with Elephant & Castle’s Brazilian contingent; in fact, I’d never even seen City of God (which is hardly a tourist-friendly representation of Rio, but still). The point is, I had no real, informed opinion of what I’d see, smell, hear, taste or feel in Rio De Janeiro, and this made this ten-day sensory overload even greater.

“Everyone has been talking about me?” Jacob Banks asks with a shy, yet playful smile. He knows he is good, but his confidence comes with the humility of a newbie to the music scene and the earnestness of a genuinely nice guy.  Sitting down with the 21-year old Birmingham native in the aftermath of his EP launch and a successful BBC Radio 1Xtra Live Lounge performance, we find out about his first introduction to music, using cartoons as muses and the making of The Monologue EP while shining the spotlight on the emerging soul star.

On a chilly Thursday in February, Yin & Yang celebrated our (then) upcoming launch of Version 3.0 with a night at Boxpark, in Shoreditch – east London. More than just a launch party, we took the night as an opportunity for Yin & Yang to be seen, and heard, in the ‘physical world’.