Everything You Need To Know About Musical Artist Labrinth!

If you’ve been watching Euphoria, then you’ve heard Labrinth’s music! Love his style? Read on to learn more!

Labrinth (born as Timothy Lee McKenzie) has been creating music well before his big break with the Euphoria soundtrack. The now-33-year-old London-born singer, songwriter, rapper, and music producer works across multiple genres such as R&B, hip hop, electronic, and soul. Let’s take a deep dive into his music career!

The British singer Labrinth grew up in the 90’s with a family of musicians, and his parents exposed him to American gospel music. Labrinth and his 8 siblings formed a band called Mac 9, likely a nod to their family name. When he was 15, Labrinth’s music producer brother introduced him to creating music in a studio. Thus, Labrinth’s own musical career began.

 

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Labrinth began producing music with the track “Dead End by Master Shortie” (2009), and was then offered a publishing deal from EMI Music Publishing. He also was a guest artist, producer, and co-writer on Tinie Tempah’s single “Pass Out,” which was awarded Best British Single at the 2011 Brit Awards.

Labrinth and Tinie Tempah collaborated again on the single “Frisky” which debuted at #2 in the UK. He continued writing music for other artists such as on Professor Green’s “Oh My God,” Ola Svensson’s “Let It Hit You,” and Loick Essien’s “Love Drunk.”

Throughout 2010 Labrinth continued hitting success on the charts, and was recognized by Simon Cowell who signed him onto his record label Syco. Labrinth became the first signing artist in 6 years for Syco that had not appeared on one of Simon’s reality talent shows before.

 

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Labrinth released his debut single “Let the Sun Shine” in September 2010, and it reached #3 on the UK charts. In addition to starting to create his own music that year, Labrinth worked on music with British rapper Devlin, the remake of “Express Yourself,” “Yasmin,” “Ms. Dynamite,” and produced the single”Teardrop” for the 2011 Children in Need charity.

He released his second single “Earthquake” in 2011 which featured his most common collaborator Tinie Tempah, and it quickly reached #2 on the UK chart.

After releasing a third single, “Last Time,” Labrinth finally released his debut album Electronic Earth in April 2012.

In 2012 Labrinth began performing at numerous events, including the Cheltenham racecourse celebrating the olympic torch, university shows at University of Leed, Nottingham Trent University, and University of Surrey, the Norwegian record chart concert VG-lista, and GFest in Preston. Labrinth’s “Beneath Your Beautiful” from his debut album became his first song on Billboard Hot 100 at #34.

After this major break, Labrinth had the opportunity to work with Rihanna by co-writing and co-producing her song “Lost In Paradise.” He also collaborated with Ed Sheeran a few times including on “Save Myself,” and with Devlin again on “Watchtower.” In July 2013 Labrinth became Elvis Duran’s Artist of the Month, and was on the Today show to perform “Beneath Your Beautiful.”

He released another single in October 2014 Jealous which has been recognized by artists such as Adele (who listened to the song to cry on command during her “Hello” music video shoot) and Jessie Ware. The following year Labrinth co-produced and was featured on the Weeknd’s “Losers” for the album Beauty Behind the Madness, which was grammy nominated, becoming Labrinth’s first nomination. Labrinth also worked on The Weeknd’s “Stargirl Interlude,” and later dueted with Kygo on “Fragile.”

Other artists that Labrinth worked with between 2016 and 2018 include Mike Posner on the album At Night, Alone, and Noah Cyrus, with whom he had multiple collaborations over the next 2 years. In 2016 Madonna chose Labrinth to perform at the annual Billboard Women in Music event where she was honored as Woman of the Year.

In May 2018 Labrinth, Sia, and Diplo created the musical group LSD, which spells out their initials. Their third single “Thunderclouds” came with a music video and was the promotional song for the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. LSD received a grammy award for Best Remixed Recording for Audio (CID Remix Official Dance Remix). The same year Labrinth co-produced and was featured on Nicki Minaj’s “Majesty” with Eminem.

Shortly after Labrinth released his single “Miracle,” he was announced as the lead composer for Euphoria. Many of Labrinth’s original songs are used throughout the show such as “Mount Everest” and “All For Us” which Zendaya sings on. He received 2 Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his Euphoria music.

Following his work for Euphoria, Labrinth co-wrote and produced the single “Spirit” that Beyonce sings on for The Lion King soundtrack. He then worked with Kanye West on “God Is,” and later that year released his own second studio album Imagination & the Misfit Kid.

Labrinth made his first appearance on television as a cast member in Episode 4 of Season 2 for Euphoria. From Labrinth’s recent Instagram post, it looks as though he and Zendaya are collaborating yet again. Whether it’s for Euphoria or not, we’ll just have to wait to find out!

 

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Now that you know all about Labrinth’s career thus far, feel free to check out more of his amazing original music and musical credits!

About the Author

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Lauren Weber

Lauren Weber is a Penn State University student majoring in Telecommunications and minoring in Spanish. An aspiring television producer, she enjoys focusing her time on writing, video editing, and producing excellent media content.