Ed Sheeran pays tribute to decade-long friend Jamal Edwards by bringing back his career-launching platform

Ed Sheeran is arguably one of the most successful and popular artists of this generation, clinching multiple awards including Grammy’s and Brits and selling over 150 million albums worldwide.

The Bad Habits singer has released five studio albums in addition to numerous collaborative tracks, but his most recent release ‘F64’ may hold the most special meaning, as the singer pays tribute to the man who started his glittering career.

British entrepreneur Jamal Edwards was friends with Ed for over a decade before he passed away nearly a year ago, and has been credited with launching Ed’s platform through his Youtube channel SBTV.

Jamal created his Youtube channel (full-name Self-Belief TV) in 2006 as a way to discover emerging artists, and was somewhat responsible for assisting the likes of Stormzy, Jessie J and Emeli Sande to find an international audience, in addition to Ed Sheeran.

Jamal was even rewarded at the age of 23 with an MBE for his services to music.

Jamal, who died in February 2022 from a cardiac arrest, shared a video of Ed singing one of his early tracks ‘You Need Me, But I Don’t Need You,’ in 2010, way before Ed’s signing to Atlantic Records in January 2011.

Despite both musical masterminds being quite private about their personal lives, they remained close throughout Ed’s rise to fame and international stardom sometimes sharing pictures together on social media both throwbacks and reunions, while the Grammy-award winning artist also went to see Jamal’s family regularly.

Following Jamal’s death, Ed reportedly stayed at the Edwards’ family home for a week, with the SBTV creator’s mother Loose Women panellist Brenda Edwards, citing that Ed was ‘like another son to me’.

Ed references Brenda in the F64 lyrics and speaks about his long-standing friendship with Jamal, but just as Jamal helped launch Ed’s career, Ed has now dedicated his latest tune to breathe life back into Jamal’s flagship freestyle rap platform called ‘Fresh 64’.

In conjunction with F64’s release, Ed shared a music video in Stamford Bridge football stadium, home to Jamal’s favourite team Chelsea, and deleted all of his other posts on social media to highlight the SBTV’s channel.

In light of this, Ed not only pays tribute to Jamal through his songs, but has now dedicated his career to re-launch 'Fresh 64' in his memory, a year on.