At Home in London With NTS Founder Femi Adeyemi 

Femi Adeyemi is one of the most important figures working in the U.K. music industry today. The London-based collector and DJ-turned-blogger founded the digital radio platform NTS in 2011, an evolution of the mixtapes he was collating and creating for the internet’s nascent music communities. Aimed at those whose interests he felt were underrepresented by the more mainstream stations, NTS began broadcasting live from a hut in Dalston’s Gillett Square almost 15 years ago; now, with more than 500 hosts and DJs, he’s steadily grown it to the global, 24-hour, seven-days-a-week institution it is in 2025. Over those years, during which music and consumption have been dramatically transformed, an authentic, artistic, almost analogue spirit has remained ever-present: sounds, shows and special releases have aired from artists and writers spanning Theo Parrish, Floating Points, Shabaka Hutchins, Paul Gilroy, Jorja Smith, My Bloody Valentine, Erykah Badu, Matt Groening, and many others. 

NTS stands for Nuts to Soup, the name first given to the blog (or “poorly curated junkyard to my mind”) that Adeyemi authored as a precursor to the station in the 2000s — a way of making sense of his thoughts, feelings and many musical influences. It is an inversion of the American idiom meaning everything, from beginning to end.

In the late summer of this year, on an unseasonably damp afternoon, Adeyemi invited Something Curated into his home in north London: a carefully designed and eclectic multi-level space which showcases someone animated not just by music and art, but by architecture, Japanese culture, and food too. Through the Sonos, Almon Memela’s The Things We Do in Soweto played behind our conversation about the things that make the man: Almost five straight minutes of groovy South African instrumentals from the 1975 album Funky Africa before an hour talking tea, coffee, Final Fantasy, communist literature, The Simpsons, CDs, family, exes, and American Apparel. After, we moved through the space to better understand some of the possessions he holds dear, many of them from those who have shaped who he is and what he loves. 

Adeyemi’s long-time friend and collaborator, the MC and artist Judah Afriyie, most often refers to him not by his given name but as “the mayor” — a fraternal and winkingly deferential nod to his status both as the founder of one of London’s most influential musical platforms, but also as the spiritual head of one of the city’s most vital community institutions. Afriyie, he tells us, was the first person to invite him to play at Plastic People, the seminal (now-closed) nightclub on Shoreditch’s Curtain Road, in the mid-2000s. “He gave me the confidence to do the shit I do now. He’s one of my favourite people on the planet.” 

But while Adeyemi is generous when speaking about those who he believes have enabled his growth, it’s hard to ignore the force of personality and profound humanity beneath the humility, the plural interests of an incessant inquirer who still presents as shy, almost disbelieving of own cultural standing. Adeyemi’s greatest gift may be his ability to share and connect: with the world and its liminal spaces, its sounds, and its people. His people.

“I’m actually just trying to speak. To whisper and shout and calmly state; to deliver towering monologues while pulling faces; to exorcise the words that creep up the back of my neck, under my skin, and get stifled, swallowed, endocytosed, and stored, like so many toxins, in my fat cells,” Adeyemi wrote in his penultimate blog entry from 2017. 

“One day when I melt away they will all tumble out in twelve point font.” 

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Alesis speakers  

Femi Adeyemi: They don’t make these anymore, so I cherish them. 

This set came from a short-lived club we put together at Marina’s Cafe in Lower Clapton about 15 years ago, just before I started NTS. I did the sound; Dean Edmonds did furniture; Ollie Olanipekun was involved. We built this full rig, but had no license and it got shut down by the police after just two weeks. We were stupid, it was a big waste of money, but it was a blessing in disguise: I didn’t know opening a club meant having to be there all the time. We just left all the stuff there because we didn’t have storage. But I kept these speakers. 

Haitian art

FA: This devil made from an old tyre is one of the first gifts my ex-girlfriend gave me. I love it. A lot of Haitian art is mythical and spiritual. 

I gave a free brief to the Hackney-based picture framer and artist Jonny Stevenson. I like the way he works because the framing is the art: he’s so detailed and meticulous. 

Technics turntable 

FA: I’ve had this for 20 years. It was my first one, so it’s battered. But it still works because I get it serviced every now and again. I’ve had many turntables over the years, but this is the one I’ve kept. 

Lewis Teague Wright buoy 

FA: Lewis is a dear friend. He makes stuff but hates it and gives it away. He painted half of this buoy, which he gave to me. He does jewellery now. 

Nina Cristante work

FA: Nina is a musician in the band Bar Italia, but she used to be a personal trainer. So all her art is linked to her work as a PT. She gave this to me as a gift for my 40th birthday. 

My father’s copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

FA: I found this copy of Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ after he passed away when I was going through his belongings in Nigeria. Until that point, I didn’t know he had communist leanings, and didn’t think he was this person at all. I always keep it next to my bed. 

It’s interesting to read the quotations and I can see how they inspire people: everyone has feelings about Mao.

It links me to my dad who passed away in London when I was 27. He had a house in Nigeria with a library full of books on Marxism, including Value, Wage and Profit, as well as things like Politics of Assassination; New Revolutionaries: A Handbook of the International Radical Left; and The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle.

He was definitely a capitalist so I was surprised to find these books. 

Another I keep by my bed is Arthur Taylor’s Notes and Tones, a series of conversations between jazz musicians, which my friend Naima put me on to; it’s one of my favourite books.

Bass guitar

FA: I was a huge fan of the music of inc. in the early 2010s. They were really before their time. Some time later, Daniel Aged, one of the duo, was selling his equipment and I wanted this guitar as memorabilia. I don’t play the bass.

Penguin statue

FA: I love this penguin. I picked it up from Tokyu Hands on my first trip to Japan 13 or 14 years ago. I actually bought it for my ex-girlfriend (because I loved it.) She hated it and didn’t want it. I kept it close – it’s everywhere I go. 

From the Something Curated archive: Femi Adeyemi: The Force Behind NTS Radio

Adam Coghlan is an editor at Something Curated. All photography by Michaël Protin.