How LEMFRECK turned an exit plan into a encore

The Welsh rapper, who makes music as LEMFRECK, had just returned from SXSW in Austin — a high-profile milestone in any emerging artist’s calendar — and yet, all it left him with was fatigue. “I was done,” he says, calmly. “I said to the boys, ‘Thank you for coming on this journey, but I think this is it.’”

It wasn’t a dramatic decision. Just logical. “With the progression and the way the industry was moving… I couldn’t see the pin moving. I’m in debt, I’ve got rent to pay. I couldn’t justify it anymore.” Even after solid shows and warm receptions, Freckleton came home to the same question gnawing at him: is this still worth it?

For five months, he made nothing. Not a beat. Not a bar. “It wasn’t even in a ‘woe is me’ way,” he says. “I just genuinely didn’t see how I could do this anymore.”

But in August — after months of silence — something shifted. A song he’d written for someone else was still sitting on his hard drive. ‘Come out side en`. A simple spark, but it was enough. “I was like, I’m here. I might as well try.” Then, in a burst, came ‘Could Sin’, ‘Slip Away’, and ‘Stay Calm’, all more organically than ever. We’ve Been Here was born from a moment he thought would be his last.

Coincidentally, right as Freckleton felt that creative spark reignite in his mind, that wind in his sails wasn’t just a product of his own ambition. Buzz for his 2023 album Blood, Sweat & Fears started to boom and just months after thinking he’d taken his final bow, here he was winning the Welsh Music Prize along with a £10,000 cash prize, as well as playing a driving voice behind the BBC documentary, Black Music Wales.

If Blood, Sweat & Fears, was an outward-looking document — a blend of grief, collective trauma, and Black Welsh history — then We’ve Been Here flips the mirror. “It’s probably the first time I’ve done something really intrinsic,” Freckleton says. “It’s about my faults. My experiences. My mistakes.”

And not just any mistakes — the kind that come back around. “When you’re 19, you tell yourself: Of course I’m messing up, I’m 19. But now? I don’t get to use that excuse anymore. And still — I’m doing the same things.”

There’s a weariness in how he says it, but also a sly kind of clarity. The EP’s title, We’ve Been Here, works both ways: a nod to his deep cultural roots in UK underground music, and a personal recognition of patterns he can’t quite break. “I was making so many stupid mistakes as a human. And it just hit me—I’ve been here before.”

Nowhere does that hit harder than on ‘155 in Paris’, a track he almost cut from the EP entirely. “I didn’t want it on there. I fought it. That line—‘It’s you’—it scared the shit out of me. That’s not usually me. Usually I’m like, ‘fuck this, I’m good without it.’ This was different.”

He pauses. “It was 1:55am in Paris, and I realised I cared. That this relationship mattered. That was the moment. And it was terrifying to admit.”

It’s not the kind of thing he’s written before—and he knows it. “Every time I’ve written about love before, it’s been through bitterness. Or ego. This was just honesty. That’s why it was so uncomfortable. ‘155 in Paris’ was the first time I admitted: that was the one. That was the person. And I couldn’t hide behind anything.”

Listen closely to We’ve Been Here and you’ll hear ghosts—a sonic archive of where Freckleton's from.

They’re not haunting in the horror sense, but they linger—in the hiss of a jungle break on ‘Slip Away, in the grime-dusted drums of ‘Fine’, in the swung rhythms that feel closer to pirate radio than playlist pop. “This record is doused in UK underground sound,” Freckleton says proudly. “Not necessarily just rap, but R&B, garage, jungle — all those moments where we’ve had something ours, and it just got overlooked because it wasn’t American.”

It wasn’t a branding choice. It was muscle memory. “I knew when I was producing it, I wanted it to feel undeniably British. I wanted someone to listen and go, there’s no way that guy’s not from the UK.”

The most obvious example is ‘Slip Away’. What began as a tender alt-R&B sketch slowly morphed into something more physical. “There was no break in there originally,” he says, referring to the driving durm break that frantically introduces the song. “But every time the melody came back in my head, I kept hearing jungle drums underneath. Like, really grimy, grimy breaks.”

He ended up digging into his dad’s old jungle records—a library of forgotten energy—looking for the right rhythm. “My dad’s collection is nuts. I found the perfect break in there. Honestly, I don’t even know the name, my file hygiene is trash,” he laughs. “But I slapped it on, and the track just clicked. It was never meant to be a full song. Just an interlude. But the guy I sent the EP to was like, ‘this is it’.”

These aren’t just aesthetic choices. They’re cultural ones. “There’s a version of this where I polish it up for export—for playlist slots, for label meetings. But what’s the point if you lose the source?”

The source is always close by: Black British culture, his own dad’s record boxes, the texture of being from a place that rarely gets documented. “The industry didn’t have room for this sound back then. But we’ve been here. That’s the other side of the title—we’ve always been here, making this shit. It just got ignored.”

We’ve Been Here isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about lineage. He’s not trying to revive a sound—he’s trying to prove it never died.

Three years ago, Freckleton stood on stage at his country's main showcase festival FOCUS Wales with one song to his name and barely ten people in the audience. “I was shitting it,” he says, grinning. “I couldn’t remember my lyrics. I was like, this is gonna be so bad.”

It wasn’t: “I got on stage, and it was just like—oh, this is it. This is the thing I want to do.” That set became a turning point. “It’s still the most liked post on my Instagram. Someone filmed it, posted it, and people were like, ‘yo, Lem’s good live.’ That changed how people saw me. But more than that, it changed how I saw myself.”

Now, in 2025, he’s returning to that same festival—but not just as a performer. This time, he’s also sharing his wisdom as an important Black British voice in conversation with the PRS Foundation.

“It’s wild,” he says. “Back then, I had one song. Now I’ve got an EP, two albums, the Welsh Music Prize, and I’m going back to speak. That feels… mad. Full circle in a real way.”

And it’s not just symbolic. As LEMFRECK, Freckleton has become one of the most visible voices in the growing Black Welsh creative community and his return carries weight. “Welsh music is underfunded. Under-structured. It’s often locked into rock, folk, or Welsh-language stuff. Anything else is treated like a novelty.”

But it’s not just his roots that stir something in him. Freckleton is passionate about racial inequality and the black experience when it comes to being vulnerable. “As a young Black male, where you don't really get those opportunities to voice your self-criticisms in any way, it can feel significant. Like, we're the group of society that does not do therapy, right? The numbers are insane. The selfish part of me doesn’t even think about what the people listening to it might think. Honestly. It's only when people start saying lyrics back to me without me asking for them where I cringe. Or I want to die.”

That’s why platforms like FOCUS Wales matter. “Some Welsh artists would never get a chance to play a festival if it weren’t for FOCUS,” he says. “It’s like SXSW for us—you go, test your set, and see what hits. It’s vital.”

But Freckleton's presence this year also signals something else: recognition. “It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve looked at my summer and gone, yo, I’m busy. Great Escape, Primavera, headline shows in Cardiff and London — I’m in it now.”

And yet, he hasn’t forgotten the low point that almost stopped it all. “It’s not like the Welsh Music Prize fixed everything. But now I’ve got wins and losses. Before, it was just losses. And I can live with that. I can keep the love going if it’s mixed.”

He’s learned the value of perseverance. “Everyone wants an exit plan. I was close. But then I remembered — I’m gonna make music till I die. What’s the point in quitting if I’m still gonna do it anyway?”