Songwriter

Jamie xx

James Thomas Smith

London, United Kingdom·b. 1988-10-28

Jamie xx — James Smith — is the London producer best known as a member of The xx and for his solo work in UK bass and post-dubstep. His 2011 reworking of Gil Scott-Heron's "I'll Take Care of You" — itself a cover of Bobby Bland's 1959 original — became the licensed sample and credited compositional core of Drake's "Take Care" (2011), the title track of the album that defined the Toronto sound for a decade. Drake and Noah "40" Shebib licensed the Jamie xx edit wholesale and added Rihanna's lead vocal on top, slowing the tempo and rebalancing the low end; the writing credit Jamie xx earns is recognition that the harmonic and rhythmic bed of the song is his arrangement rather than a new composition built underneath. He is not a Drake collaborator in the recurring sense — his Drake credit list is essentially this single record — but the "Take Care" placement is one of the most consequential single-record co-writes in the catalog. Outside Drake his solo album In Colour (2015) and his work with The xx have made him one of the most influential UK producers of his generation, and the cross-Atlantic licensing arrangement on "Take Care" remains the clearest example of how a UK producer's edit can become a defining American rap-R&B record.