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Here Because Of Hope is Ezra Collective's most ambitious and personal album to date. Conceived as a complete work in three spiritual and geographical movements, it traces the journey of communities of colour across continents and generations: from the music of Africa, through the rhythms of the Caribbean, and ultimately back to the streets of London.

Formed in London's youth clubs, the band consists of Mercury Prize and BRIT Award winners Femi Koleoso, TJ Koleoso, Joe Armon-Jones, James Mollison and Ife Ogunjobi. For more than a decade, they have been creating jazz that is joyful, urgent and impossible to resist.

With Here Because Of Hope, Ezra Collective expands that vision further than ever before, asking a simple yet profound question: why does so much Black music, born out of pain and oppression, sound so full of joy? Their answer is hope – the belief, carried across generations and oceans, that a better future is always possible.

Featuring collaborations with Pa Salieu, Lila Iké and Leona Lewis, and inspired by the rich musical heritage of the global African diaspora – including the United States, where the same African and Caribbean roots gave rise to jazz – Here Because Of Hope is an album filled with warmth, ambition and humanity. It captures Britain's leading jazz band at the very peak of their creative powers.

The lead single, Only Love, offers the perfect introduction to the world of Here Because Of Hope. It opens with a solitary trumpet melody that feels like a signal sent across generations, continents and musical traditions, before unfolding into a groove that is unmistakably Ezra Collective: a seamless blend of jazz and hip-hop that is both immediate and irresistible.

The track features British-Gambian rapper Pa Salieu, whose verse powerfully captures the album's central message. Moving through themes of poverty, imprisonment and loss with the uncompromising honesty of someone speaking from lived experience, he arrives at the one conclusion that gives meaning to it all.

It is the essence of what Here Because Of Hope is truly about: the idea that hope is not naïve, but something discovered on the other side of everything you have endured.