AJ Tracey and Jorja Smith have reunited for a collaborative single. You can watch the video to ‘Crush’ below. 

Directed by LateMilk – who has previously made clips for AC Milan and Puma, Drillionaire, Interscope Records, and another of Tracey’s singles, ‘Wifey Riddim 4’ — the track was produced by Raheem Balogun, AJ Platinum and Nathaniel London.

‘Crush’ is the latest in a long history of Smith-Tracey collaborations. The pair have been close friends for many years, and famously covered Sweet Female Attitude’s landmark UK garage track ‘Flowers’ on the BBC Live Lounge. Tracey’s hit ‘Ladbroke Grove’, produced by Conducta,  sampled Smith’s ‘Wandering Romance’. The pair went on to perform ‘Ladbroke Grove’ together live on a number of occasions.

In a statement about the new single, Tracey said: “This song sounds like the feeling I used to get in secondary school when I fancied a girl, rushing home to call them on my old Nokia, sharing MP3s we think each other would like, and talking all night on MSN. It’s a UK ting!”

This new track follows Tracey’s announcement on Capital FM’s XTRA Breakfast show last year that he was planning a new album. No further details on the project have been released since, but the record will be his first since 2021’s ‘Flu Game’. Between then and now he has launched a fund to help young Black people attending the University of Oxford, performing concerts floating on the River Thames, and worked with acts like Gorillaz and Headie One. 

“The theme is just being British – my British experience – what it means to be British,” Tracey told Capital FM at the time. “Me growing up, I listened to funk, so this rhythm is like a little funky reference; grime obviously, dancehall, like, whatever my influences are as a Black British person, is going to be what the album sounds like.”