Zem Audu Unveils Long-Awaited Solo Debut EP ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ with Title Track

Rob Moderelli on August 22, 2025

Zem Audu, photo by Indie Studios

Zem Audu, the Grammy-winning saxophonist and producer heard on some of the most massively acclaimed albums of recent years, has announced You Can’t Catch Me, his long-awaited solo debut EP. Set to release on Oct. 28, Audu’s forthcoming offering will arrive as his first project of his own since 2017’s Spirits and his first all-but-entirely independently created record to date. To preview his triumphant return, he’s shared the EP’s title track, which provides an infectious reflection of his creative and personal cultivation since the outset of his solo career.

You Can’t Catch Me is the product of eight years on the run. Since his celebrated first studio album, Audu has earned a reputation as a tremendously versatile and virtuosic saxophonist, lending his talents and distinctive sound to tours with the likes of The Skatalites, Steel Pulse, Lauryn Hill and Bleaches while finding time to contribute to titanic albums including Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Kendrick Lamar’s GNX, Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department and Midnights and Bleachers’ Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night and 2024 self-titled album, among many more.

“There’s never no motion,” Audu says of his tireless touring and recording lifestyle before a one-night whistle stop in Toronto. “There’s only the feeling of no motion when I can really zone in, and that’s one of the things I like to do, just zone in on something inside that’s more still.”

It’s that same presence and inward focus that distills the vast spectrum of Audu’s experiences into his own genre-disrupting sound. His diverse credits are harmonized by his unique pursuit of music’s underlying universal truth, a powerful effect of rhythm and vibration beyond words that has come into focus as he’s become familiar with so many distinct but interconnected styles. He describes a hidden world of sonic communication that he was first attuned to from the culture in his birthplace in Nigeria, orienting him towards the spiritual experience of listening.

“Different cultures in different times have used music in ways that are more scientific and spiritually focused and aligned,” Audu reflects. “I feel that there’s a sense of that still around in all of us, and I always try to tap into that. So it’s not just, ‘What am I playing? How does it feel? What am I trying to express in the music?’ But it’s also like, ‘What is music trying to express? And then how do we all interact with that?”

“Every artist builds their own world, and every world that I’ve found myself in, it’s like the Music–with a capital M–is the same. It’s that transmission from one person to another, and when I feel it come through, I can actually see and feel it vibrate out to people,” he continues. “People just respond to it. It’s like that thing with getting goosebumps when someone sings. It doesn’t always matter what lyric they’re singing. Sometimes the lyric is what takes you there, but oftentimes it’s the sound and the vibration itself, boom, and people just feel it.”

For Audu, “music goes beyond being a musician.” Beyond training and technique, his approach proceeds from a strong foundation of intention; with You Can’t Catch Me, the Brooklyn-based artist aspired to embrace a free and exploratory understanding of music from his youth, in place of a meticulous focus on establishing his sonic identity. On the EP’s lead single, Audu manifests his vision by fearlessly recombining the many influences of his musical journey, from a backbone of Afrobeat from his roots in Nigeria to the fiery post-bop of his early instruction in the U.K. and the Caribbean rhythms he learned on the road with reggae’s foremost torchbearers. It’s a heady, bold, frenetic and floor-filling groove that exudes reverence to the traditions that preceded him and promises great things to come.

“When I use an instrument, because of the context and the knowledge of the instrument and the history of its use that I place it in, it becomes a snapshot into another world.” Audu explains. “Like when I’m layering synthesizers, just because of the type of synthesizers that I’m used to using, it becomes a snapshot into that world. There’s a whole history and a weight behind it. When I add jazz vocabulary, certain aspects of it, they’re coming from a whole lineage of great artists who’ve crafted this language. […] Then there’s a beat and a groove from reggae and ska, and this tiny island of Jamaica that created all of this really powerful music. So the history of it is as important as the understanding of the songs. When I put elements of that in my music, it’s a snapshot of that whole world, that whole culture, that whole history through my viewpoint.”

You Can’t Catch Me is available to pre-order now. Watch the music video for the title track below, and learn more about Audu at zemaudu.com.

Read on for the EP’s full tracklist.