Sampha "Process"

English singer Sampha released his first studio album, "Process", on February 3, 2017 through Young Turks. The album was co-produced by Sampha and Scottish music producer Rodaidh McDonald, and it received critical acclaim and won the Mercury Prize for 2017. Unlike Sampha's usual bedroom recording style, "Process" was recorded in professional studios across his hometown of London and partially recorded at Ocean Sound Recordings on the Norwegian island of Giske. The album's lead single, "Blood on Me", was released on August 26, 2016, and its track listing, artwork, and release date were revealed on November 3, 2016, alongside the announcement of a 2017 tour. The album's third single, "(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano", was released on January 12, 2017, and Sampha performed the song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the following day. A video for the single, directed by Jamie-James Medina, was released on January 31, 2017.

The debut album by Sampha, "Process", received widespread critical acclaim. It earned an average score of 86 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 28 reviews, and a rating of 8.1 out of 10 on AnyDecentMusic? based on critical consensus. Reviewers praised Sampha's unique approach to arrangement and noted that the album was not influenced by current trends in R&B. Alexis Petridis from The Guardian called it a weighty, powerful album with an identity entirely of its own, while NME's Jonny Ensall described it as a "finely crafted and devastating take on the loss of his mother to cancer". Entertainment Weekly's Eric Renner Brown praised Sampha's sonically adventurous vision and Pitchfork's Marcus J. Moore called it a remarkable, meditative work. The A.V. Club's Clayton Purdom called it an exercise in finding beauty in the tragedy of a parent's death and compared it favorably to FKA Twigs' LP1. The Skinny's Alexander Smail gave the album a perfect score and called it an exercise in catharsis that laid Sampha's soul bare through gorgeous vignettes of his life.