Elliott Skinner steps out of a decade of collaborations with debut EP ‘How Far We’ve Come’

For ten years, Elliott Skinner was the one in the room — the collaborator whose instincts helped shape records by Jon Batiste, Leon Bridges, Chance the Rapper, and others who commanded stages while he stood just off to the side. The Texas-raised singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist spent a decade in New York City learning, as he puts it, what community, practice, and art mean to him. That decade was not delay. It was, by his own reckoning, the time required to arrive at How Far We’ve Come.

Released via Ninja Tune, the six-track debut EP is built on folk and soul and rooted in what Skinner calls the Black Radical Music Tradition — the lineage of sonic experimentation and communal expression he traces from porch singing to pew singing to his own upbringing. Twenty years passed between the first song he wrote and this record. “All of that time and experience was needed for me to understand the artist I have become and am becoming,” he says in the announcement. “This is an introduction to the world that I’ve been building.” The project follows his 2025 Ninja Tune singles “RECALLING” and “I Linger On” and marks the first body of work released under his own name.

Elliott Skinner singer songwriter multi-instrumentalist Ninja Tune — Photo: Stefan Kohli

The record opens quietly and grows outward. Lead single “DON’T BE A RUNNER” — named a “Song You Need to Know” by Rolling Stone — carries that tension at its centre: Skinner’s voice steady against a spare arrangement, making a case for staying present in the face of doubt. “Carols of My Mind,” the EP’s focus track, features Victoria Canal and Radamiz, pushing the work into more layered territory. “THAT KID,” written in a hotel room on tour with Jensen McRae, is the emotional pivot — a duet circling the distance between who you were as a child and who you are now, and what is worth carrying forward. Both tracks feature visuals directed by Simon Morrison, with choreography by artist and scholar Dr. Jehbreal Muhammad Jackson.

Skinner frames the work in explicitly lineage-conscious terms: “There is no other way to describe my music other than Black,” he says. “Following in the footsteps of my ancestors and inspirations — the sonic experimentation, the self-realisation, the expression as a necessary tool for survival.” A short film by Morrison is expected in the weeks ahead.

The EP arrives in the middle of a North American tour supporting anaiis, with dates running through the end of September. On the 25th, Skinner headlines TakeTwo: Songs in the Key of Life in New York — a concert marking the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder’s landmark album. In late October, he performs as a guest at a special show by The Cinematic Orchestra at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.

How Far We’ve Come is available now via Ninja Tune on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, Amazon Music, and SoundCloud.

Tags: Elliott Skinner, folk and soul music, How Far We've Come, Jensen McRae, Ninja Tune, Victoria Canal