Louis VI recorded the sounds of the Amazon and sampled them on his new record

A RAPPER who gave a keynote speech at COP26 has released an album aiming to show “what it means to be connected to the planet.”

Released this spring, Earthling is the second studio album by Queen’s Crescent rapper Louis Butler.

The work is an eclectic mix of genres and styles examining the wonders of the natural world, the tragedy of the climate crisis and racial justice.

And to finish the album Mr Butler travelled around the world making “field recordings” of the natural world.

Featured on Earthling are the sounds of Amazon rainforest, the noises of the Mexican jungle – and the crows of Hampstead Heath.

Performing under the stage name Louis VI, Mr Butler said of the album: “It’s supposed to be a journey through the different ecosystems of the planet. I just love being in nature. I love learning about it, getting geeky with it, knowing how things work, to the point where I studied zoology at uni.”

The rapper, who gave a Keynote speech at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, said: “The data and the science of climate change is out there and has been out there for half a century, but data, as important as it is, isn’t going to make people change their actions.

“What makes people change their mind is feelings. Something that music and art has a real gift of doing is translating the data and putting it into something that’s a feeling.”

He added: “The idea of the album is to create a tool to create enough feeling that people – specifically people from inner cities and the diaspora – who feel like they’ve lost connection to nature, to reconnect them to that feeling.”

He said of the Extinction Rebellion protest group: “As much as they’ve tried to battle it, and as much good as I think they’re doing, there is a lot to it that doesn’t feel open to certain people from certain walks of life, particularly the diaspora. So there’s got to be other routes in.

“We can be this bridge between the global north and the global south, to have a real fair and measured and equity-filled way of moving forward into a greener future.”

Mr Butler, 32, is also a musician and producer who used a fake ID to bunk onto his first producing course at the age of 14. His music has changed a lot since then.

“I think it’s only human to see other people and think: ‘no one else is doing that’, it’s a bit scary to do [something different],” he said. “But more and more you find a voice,” he said, adding during Covid he decided to be his “fullest geekiest most eccentric self” and “sing and be weird and let everything out.”

Louis Butler, who performs under the name Louis VI

The result is an album that swings between rage and wonder. “It’s really important not to preach, and a lot of people are being preached [at], and a lot of people shut off if they’re being made to feel guilty or feel like they’re being shouted at,” he said.

“So it’s like comedy: make them laugh, and then you tell them something real. Then hopefully people go away from that and feel that they want to do something about it.”