Meet Raleigh Ritchie - Game Of Thrones Star Jacob Anderson's Musical Persona

Jacob Anderson is a man of many gifts and many guises. The Brit is famed for his acting role in HBO's fantasy saga Game Of Thrones as Grey Worm – the dignified commander of the Unsullied. But he also has a parallel music career, recording psychedelic R&B, indie and pop as the singer/rapper Raleigh Ritchie. In early 2016, Anderson unveiled a sublimely droll album, You're A Man Now, Boy, encompassing his enduring anthem Stronger Than Ever. Now he's preparing a follow-up. "I feel really close and I feel really excited about where we're going with it," Anderson tells OG Flavas.

In the meantime, Anderson has aired a wistfully melodious single, Time In A Tree – helmed by UK DJ/producer GRADES (NAO). The 28-year-old has previously touched on mental health in interviews and Time… is about self-care (Anderson likewise directed the video). "I think the song is just about needing some space to collect my thoughts and to chill out a little bit. I've had a really busy year. When I wrote that song, I was just a little bit overwhelmed. I think that day I'd woken up just feeling a bit funny. It was feeling a little bit like it was all kind of getting on top a bit. I was thinking a lot about when I was a kid and climbing trees and all that kind of stuff and how simple that is as a concept – like you're elevated off the ground; you're kind of away from the adult world's problems. It's like climbing up to space!"

Anderson is pensive – and personable. Hailing from Bristol, he was exposed to a spectrum of music – Dad into reggae, punk and New Wave. Still, Anderson gravitated to neo-soulsters like Erykah Badu, D'Angelo and Dwele. A shy kid, he initially composed, rather than performed, music. Not academically-inclined, Anderson was encouraged at school to try drama – and demonstrated flair. Dropping out of a film-making course at 17, he relocated to London. The serendipitous actor successfully auditioned for theatre, film and TV productions – notably appearing in Broadchurch. Anderson was ostensibly proposing to quit acting when he landed the part of Grey Worm. In 2013, Anderson – his music handle, Raleigh Ritchie, a mash-up of character names from Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums – signed to Columbia Records. He opened for Kendrick Lamar in the UK. Anderson issued a trilogy of EPs before You're A Man Now, Boy. It served as a millennial coming-of-age album – ironic because his own coming-of-age was accelerated.

On his debut, Anderson collaborated with UK and US producers alike. Awesomely, he cut material with the feted Sounwave of Top Dawg Entertainment. Anderson remembers feeling at ease with the Compton native from the get-go, their sensibilities in-sync. He digs how Sounwave's beats prompt listeners to move instinctively. "He's a really cool, down-to-earth dude that you can just have a normal conversation with. I think maybe he infuses those conversations into what he does. He's a really open person to work with. He's really open to what you bring and then kind of uses that to the advantage of the song."

Impressively, Anderson sounds inherently British – he might be the illwave Lewis Taylor. For You're A Man Now, Boy, he actually laid down a garage banger, Keep It Simple, with Stormzy (in turn, Anderson cameo-ed on the grime MC's acclaimed Gang Signs & Prayer). Traditionally, British R&B vocalists and rappers have struggled to compete with their influential US counterparts, garnering sporadic support from the domestic industry. Anderson posits that, collectively, "It's almost a lack of self-esteem." "When I first started making music, I didn't sing in my own accent," he admits. "But I was writing these really personal songs and it felt a bit weird… I was like, 'If I'm gonna talk about my own life, then I should do it with my own voice.'"

However, the UK's urban artists did break out majorly in the early '90s. And, coincidentally, this movement originated in Anderson's Bristol hometown. With trip hop, Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead introduced a radical interiority to hip hop – a genre usually centred on community and environs, not the psyche. Their music was also hyper-hybridised – referencing jazz, rock, R&B, soul, hip hop, dub and electronica. The boom of 'the Bristol Sound' presaged British drum 'n' bass, dubstep, garage and grime – and, indirectly, an Amy Winehouse. Today, that trip hop aesthetic is again discernible in the international output of The Weeknd, Travis Scott and various cloud rappers. Yet only Anderson has Massive Attack's epic sweep. Curiously, he's not considered any affinity. 

"My dad is the same age as those guys, so he grew up going out with those people," he reveals. "I don't know a great deal about that sort of 'Bristol sound' movement. I just know, if you live in Bristol, it's very much a part of the legacy of that city." Nonetheless, Anderson appreciates the notion that his music is similarly amorphous – or "genreless". "I don't know what genre my music is sometimes," he laughs. "I have people ask me all the time. They're like, 'What kind of music do you make?' And I'm like, 'Oh, I don't know. It's 'Raleigh Ritchie music…' So, yeah, I think that's probably the thing that I've subconsciously taken from that, I guess, sub-genre or Bristol style or whatever you wanna call it – that hybridisation. It's not tribal. It doesn't comfortably fit in the R&B genre or any particular sort of tribe. It's just like, if I've done my job right, it's its own thing."

Anderson last shared the songs Lonely Summer and The River (with longtime cohort Chris Loco) in 2017. Since wrapping GOT's final season (yes, he's staying hush on endgame theories!), Anderson has thrown himself into his second album. "I've kind of set myself a rough deadline to finish it – otherwise I'll never finish it," he quips. "I maybe could have released two albums in the last three years since the first album came out. But I just want it to be as perfect as it can possibly be on the day that I decide it's done. I'm definitely a perfectionist. I think I could just sit with it forever. But I just wanna make sure that it is representative of where my head has been at in the time since the last thing I put out."

In the slashie era, a creative engaging in music, acting and directing is far from uncommon – with Anderson joined by Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino. Ultimately, he's a "storyteller". But the mystery is how Anderson balances two demanding vocations. (He has Overlord, JJ Abrams' WW II horror movie, screening in November.) "I like to focus on each thing individually, so that I can give it my full attention," Anderson begins. "It's so difficult sometimes. I've pretty much been out of commission for the last year. I've been shooting the final season of a TV show. It took a lot of time and it required my attention and focus. I wrote a bit in the hotel and stuff. I kept it going as I didn't wanna completely just abandon my album for a year. But it's difficult. I was in Belfast, so I couldn't just drop into a session in London on a Tuesday if I'm working on the Monday. I never stopped thinking about it. The album was never too far out of my mind."

Inevitably, Anderson multi-tasks mentally. "I'm definitely guilty of, when I'm doing one thing, I'm already thinking about what I need to do for the next thing – and the next thing," he confesses. "For instance, now I'm in full album mode but then, at the same time, I'm like, 'I wanna make a film hopefully next year – I wanna direct a film.' I'm writing something at the moment and I'm thinking about that in the back of my mind… I like to have two or three things going on in my head at one time. It keeps me going; it keeps me calm." Anderson adds, "I'm a true believer that you make time to do things that you love; you make time for the things you wanna do. You find it from somewhere."

Compartmentalising his artistic identities is another matter. Commenting on the SoundCloud upload of The River, a fan wrote, "Greyworm knows how to create bangers." Indeed, Grey Worm is a viewer fave in the GOT universe, being allied with Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons (Emilia Clarke). The consummation of Grey Worm's slow-burning romance with Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) in season seven was praised for both its representation of black love and its sensitivity – given his eunuch status. At last week's Emmys, Anderson accompanied his castmates to accept the prestigious award for 'Outstanding Drama Series'. But he's wary of branding himself as Westeros' pop star. "It's very conscious that I keep them separate. I'm not ashamed of the show, obviously! I'm also not ashamed of music. It's just that my rule is like, I will never wanna use the show to sell records. If people come for the show and then stay for the music, that's absolutely fine with me. I don't mind how people find it. But I think that, to some extent, because in my songs I talk about such personal things – and specific things – you lose that sense of like, 'Am I that character?' It helps as well that it's a fantasy show. Nobody could confuse the character and me necessarily – I mean, people do all the time in the street, but that's different!"

Come November, Anderson will tour – covering the UK, then North America. Surprisingly, he's yet to visit Australia – not even guesting at a pop culture convention. But he's chuffed to have had his music playlisted on triple j. "There's songs that I've released here [in the UK] that nobody really paid any attention to, but then in Australia they're being played on the radio!" A self-proclaimed "nerd", Anderson has familiarised himself with triple j, commending Like A Version. And he's putting a gracious call-out to promoters. "I've wanted to come to Australia since I started," Anderson enthuses. "I always feel really supported… I just need to be invited. I'm waiting for the phone call or for the handwritten letter saying, 'Come and play at our festival!'"