The five members of Ezra Collective got together as teenagers in 2012 as part of Tomorrow's Warriors, a London-based youth music project. Initially, they were more into grime than jazz, until – inspired by drummer Toni Allen – they realized they were free to do whatever they wanted and started playing their own version of jazz. The five musicians (drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso, his younger brother TJ on bass guitar, Joe Armon-Jones on keyboards, Ife Ogunjobi on trumpet and James Mollison on saxophone) are now a tight ensemble. In 2019, they released their debut album You Can't Steal My Joy but the world tour that should have followed fell through largely due to the pandemic. So they put all their spare time into a second album: Where I'm Meant To Be. This album also features contributions from Sampa The Great and Kojey Radical, among others.
