Kamaal Williams

Born Henry Gilbert Williams and hailing from south London between Peckham and Dulwich, Kamaal Williams has been developing since the late 2000s a music that sits at the intersection of jazz‑funk, broken beat, house, hip‑hop and R&B, with a marked taste for repetitive grooves and improvisation. Initially active as a producer under the name Henry Wu on the London scene, he released several records leaning toward house and broken beat before gaining visibility as part of the duo Yussef Kamaal, formed with drummer Yussef Dayes. Their album Black Focus, released in 2016 on Brownswood Recordings, accompanied the rise of a new generation of London jazz attentive to both the club and live performance. After the duo split, Kamaal Williams continued under his own name with The Return in 2018, then Wu Hen in 2020 and Stings in 2023, all issued on his label Black Focus Records. There he refines an approach centred on keyboards, supple basslines, house‑inherited pulses and a very free sense of form, often extended on stage into long open sequences. Alongside this trajectory, he also continues to use the alias Henry Wu for projects more directly tied to club culture and DJing.