As The World Burns, Children of Zeus Are Still Standing
With the release of their third album, hip-hop-soul duo Children of Zeus chat with The Culture Crypt about the current music landscape, touring and the legacy they want to leave behind.
Children of Zeus in 2026. Image property of Sophia J Carey.
It's spring 2025 but in Manchester, the grey skies say otherwise. Scrolling through my For You Page, a targeted ad from NTS and Adidas gets my attention on an otherwise boring day. A couple hours later, I'm in a crowd of buzzing fans from the city at END., being subjected to the magic of veteran rap-neo-soul duo, Children of Zeus, for the first time.
"We hated doing that gig. Everyone was so close and awkward!" says the duo's forefront bar-spitter Konny Kon, apparently having had the complete opposite experience to me. Fitted out in his usual relaxed fit instead of the three stripes, he greets me more than a year later on an unusually sunny autumn day outside COZ's studio in Salford. It's their first day back in the office after the release of As The World Burns..., their latest album.
Five years since Balance, the latest project marks their return to their LP offerings and Tyler Daley, the singer yet equally capable emcee, explains why the break did not mean time away from music. "We've always been gigging still, making music on the side. Maybe not as intensely as album time but it's never been really a massive break between us. Konny's got his DJing, radio show, I've done vocals for other people and time just got away until we realised we need to drop something," he says.
In the ever-changing landscape of music consumption, dropping a whole album might seem like a brave choice but true fans know COZ have always been a long-play act, evidenced by 2018's Travel Light and 2021's Balance.
Taking a seat at a bench in a nearby park, the two share their doubts about the initial release, as Konny says, "Compared to the previous times when we were putting an album out, we felt people were gonna sit in and take it in but this one feels different," as Tyler interjects, "Everything's 30 seconds these days but you'll never get the best of us in 30 seconds. There's still people out there that want to hear an album so it helps weed them out."
Those who have made the effort have been treated to 50 minutes of uninterrupted timeless music as COZ's iconic amalgamation of street soul, R&B, rap and hip-hop reach new levels. Featuring vocals from rising artists like Colorado's Young Old Soul to Australia's Anieszka, local Mancunian legend KSR and continuing their growing list of big-name collaborations, Knucks drops a cheeky verse on the 11th track, "Before We Drown".
Despite their preference to work with people in person, they found an equally chill collaborator in the North West London rapper. Tyler says, "Even though it was remote, it was still quite an organic process. With Knucks, we've already got a bit of a relationship, we already expressed respect and appreciation for each other's music. He likes to record himself in his own environment. We're the same. He actually came up here to record at the studio too."
But beneath the album's laid-back production and warm street soul is a record that reflects a world which feels anything but laid-back. With the appropriately named title, the project is a haven for people to reconnect with things that make life feel worth living: love, friendship, intoxication, nostalgia and moments of escape. For the duo, it's an accurate showing of their current outlook.
Konny says, "There's definitely bits and bobs throughout the years, but I think overall, it's just where we are now, innit? Each album has been a good representation of who we are. We grow with the album and all the music grows with us, whichever way that goes. If someone discovered us through our new album, I'd be very happy."
The growing tension between the world outside and the small pleasures found within it runs throughout the record. "Water & Vibes", "Weed & Rum" and "Slow Jams On Rotation" offer moments of escapism, while tracks such as "Time Is Running Down" and "Love Fades" turn the focus inward, confronting ageing, relationships and the passing of time.
“If someone discovered us through our new album, I’d be very happy.”
Sonically, the duo weren't afraid to challenge their own ideas of what a Children of Zeus album should sound like, especially when it came to the uptempo "Water & Vibes". Konny, a regular selector at clubs, explains, "When I DJ, I realise we haven't got any shit that I can play but this track doesn't feel like anything else we've done. We don't have a lot of songs with that tempo and Anieszka's chorus makes it a little different. It definitely made us step out of our zone."
A throwaway comment from Tyler perfectly captures the underpinning comfortability the lads have built over decades of making music together, as he says, "It'd be hilarious if you never got booked again after spinning that!"
That refusal to be boxed in extends to their identities within the duo. Tyler has long been perceived primarily as the singer, while Konny occupies the emcee role, despite Tyler rapping throughout their records. "You can't control what people feel," Tyler says. "I just want people to appreciate the whole thing for what it is."
The music has always come before their personas as artists. When asked about what they'd take away from their album release process, there's just one thing: the visual side of being artists, especially online. With a rich music education courtesy of Manchester's pirate radios in the 90s, word of mouth, bootleg vinyls, CDs, and self-produced music videos were how you reached people. But in 2026, the fear of losing yourself to the algorithm is real, even for established artists.
Konny frustratingly says, "We definitely wouldn't have done it if we didn't have to, having to put short-form content out for people to hopefully not scroll past us. In an ideal world, we'd make music, and it would just get to people, and they wouldn't want to know anything else other than what we've got on the album. If I'd have thought ahead, I probably would have done what Meekz did and put a bally on. You could literally just concentrate on the art. "
This notion of being unknown has shown itself in the album's cover art. Linking up with UNKWNZJ—the Toronto-based artist who has been wowing people online with her bold, distorted yet colourful compositions—the artwork is an ongoing process of letting the music speak for itself, with the cover of Balance and subsequent singles also seeing the duo skip the spotlight in recent years.
According to Konny, they caught the artist just in time to commission their cover. "I'd been following UNKWNZJ for a while and even got her prints in my house. So for this one we just thought, why not? The second before I texted her, she put up a story saying she wasn't doing any more commissions. And I just thought, if you don't ask, you don't get, innit? So we gave her the album title, told her to do whatever she wanted, and the one that we've got, we knew that was the one," he says.
Instinct and intention have always been at the forefront for Children of Zeus, both in the studio and on stage. Since their first encounter at a music festival in France in 2004, Konny repping the legendary underground Manc crew Broke 'n' English and Tyler as part of Body Roq, the duo have graced the stages of some of the UK's most iconic venues, some of which they'll return to for their upcoming tour in November.
With a headline tour comes hours of planning—something both Tyler and Konny aren't enthused about, but it's the creative side that gets them excited, as the latter puts it, "A lot of it is just second nature. With the chemistry we have and our experience, we can handle any fuck-ups without anyone noticing. We're gonna spend a good amount of time just putting it together and making it very different to what we've done before. It's nice to have a lot of new music to perform as well, 'cause we've been doing some songs since 2011."
Even with the stress of stage designs, set curations and other logistics, years of performing have made being live the least stressful part. With a little chuckle, Tyler says, "I used to have debilitating anxiety leading up to every show. I pretty much always had it, up until we started really doing a lot of headline shows. Once I knew that I didn't have to convert people, those thoughts of, 'Am I gonna sound bad? Are people gonna hate it?' Those early fears went away." When it comes to pre-gig essentials, he keeps it as simple as it can get. "Spliff. Sometimes a bit of lemon and honey. Most times, it's just a glass of rum. Weed and rum, innit."
Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham and London will all get live renditions of the new album, and it's the capital the duo are most excited about. Since joining First World Records' roster, they've done countless gigs in the Big Smoke, supporting US hip-hop heavyweights like Slum Village and Black Star (Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli) to sharing the stage with Ezra Collective at Wembley, while selling out headline shows at Koko. "London's probably our number one city. It just goes off differently, man. Before Children of Zeus, we've had some bad receptions down there individually, and now, seeing that our biggest fan base is London, it's real. We get so much love," says Konny.
“Spliff. Sometimes a bit of lemon and honey. Most times, it’s just a glass of rum. ”
A dedicated fan base, a catalogue of genre-transforming projects and two names etched into Manchester's soul hall of fame. Most artists would get complacent at this stage, but for Children of Zeus, they're treating every project as the first and simultaneously the last. There's still great music to be made, places to perform at and people to reach.
Konny says, "We really want to play America, the type of music that we make is inspired by the American soul scene and we've built a good fan base there. However, there's still people out there that gatekeep our music and it's the opposite of what we want. People have gotten married to our music, buried people to it, given birth to it. Our music's been a big part of people's lives and sometimes we get frustrated with the lack of people talking about it or sharing it. As long as our music helps even one person, I'd be happier with that than having a billion listeners."
The dream doesn't just end at connecting with new fans, there's a bigger symbolic stage Children of Zeus want to reach in their musical journey together. Wrapping up our conversation under the Manchester sun, moving on from laughing about radio shows gone wrong to the hottest mixed grill in Cheetham Hill, Tyler expresses the mark he and Konny hope to make on UK soul.
On the way back to the studio, he says, "To be mentioned in a conversation alongside our heroes like Omar, Loose Ends, Soul II Soul, that would be the dream. Numbers-wise, we're miles away from it but legacy-wise, I don't feel like we're far from it. We've put everything into this and it'd be nice to sail off to the sunset with something like that in return."
Stream As The World Burns... below: