Gabriel Jacoby is this week’s star of The Cover – check out the story and his exclusive playlist for NME below.
The American R&B artist was profiled by Oumar Saleh and photographed by Karis Beaumont in London in July exclusively for The Cover, which is accompanied by his playlist ‘Funky Buddha’. It features tracks by Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield, Outkast, Erykah Badu and many more. Stream it on Apple Music here and on Spotify below:
The playlist ends with ‘Another Life’ by the late, great D’Angelo, whom Jacoby was compared to by Michelle Obama in a recent appearance on Keke Palmer’s podcast. In his Cover story, Jacoby spoke on the comparisons he’s been getting: “I was never the type of artist to want to mimic anything… I want you to be able to experience something new.”
The South Carolina-born, Florida-raised Jacoby dropped his debut EP ‘Gutta Child’ in 2025, which propelled him to a place on the NME 100 of 2026, our list of essential emerging artists to watch. The EP is a heady mix of R&B, funk, soul, backwoods blues and, in the song ‘Bootleg’, Tampa krank, the hyperlocal dance genre Jacoby grew up on.
Coming up next for Jacoby are festival slots at Austin City Limits and Tyler, The Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw. He is also working on new music, which he teased to NME: “I’m gonna make something even more undeniable, to where you just can’t look away… It’s not gonna be metaphorical anymore.”
Read more about Gabriel Jacoby in his Cover story here, and see who else has appeared on The Cover here.
Every year, NME produces 50 Cover stories, showcasing the future of music via in-depth profiles and exclusive photoshoots of the best emerging artists around the world. Check out our coffee table book NME The Cover 2024-2025, which features the likes of Underscores, YHWH Nailgun, Tiny Habits, Mustafa, Lambrini Girls, Saya Gray, Oklou and more.