On his Spotify page Sam V describes himself with songwriter brevity as the ‘shyest RnB singer in the world’. Spotify also tells us that his songs enjoy over 100,000 listens a month, with a couple tracking towards 2M plays. Already a multi-year PMA trophy winner, Sam V is again a finalist in the 2025 Pacific Music Awards, in the Best Male Artist, Best Soul/RnB Artist and Best Producer categories, as well as performing on the night. He talked with Nur Peach ahead of the awards celebration in August.**

Sam Verlinden has come a long way since his beginnings posting singing videos on YouTube in 2006. With two solo EPs, acclaimed work with his Tāmaki Makaurau music collective Y$O (Young and $lept On), numerous co-writing credits and multiple Pacific Music Awards under his belt, the RnB artist known as Sam V has built himself a solid reputation in the Aoteraoa music scene. June saw the release of a new six-track EP, ‘Take A Chance On V,’ a collection of positive, breezy love songs, with which he pays homage to other exponents of the RnB genre and further solidifies his own reputation.

The song title 90’s Fine may be an obvious giveaway, but ‘Take A Chance On V’ does have a more traditional RnB sound than Sam V’s previous work – dating back well beyond his 2016 debut EP ‘V1’. Verlinden’s goal in 2025 was to pay homage to the genre’s past.

“I guess it’s like a love letter to the RnB of yesteryear. It’s a bit of a nostalgia trip, merged with modern, contemporary RnB. It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while.

“My stuff kind of leans that way, but I wanted just to be real intentional about it, you know? Just drawing on inspirations like Marques Houston, Mario, even Keith Sweat further back, Craig David, Brandy… we just wanted a real tasteful offering that captured the essence of ‘80s and ‘90s RnB, while still keeping my own kind of swag around there.”

Verlinden’s ‘we’ is his regular collaboration pairing of Samoan-Cook Island producer Astro (who earlier this year won a Grammy Award with his work on Chris Brown’s ‘11:11’ album), and constantly rising Auckland producer/artist EDY (aka Edyonthebeat / Edward Liu), another member of Y$O.

“I’ve been working with Astro for going on seven years now, and then Edy I’ve been working with for about 11 years. I’m lucky that my brethren are quite high achieving, talented dudes, and I guess our trajectories are somewhat aligned, so it’s just always exciting to lock in with them and make stuff. Most of it was done in a month period. We were just super locked in and motivated at the time.”

Being RnB, the songs are inevitably intimate. Verlinden mentions having just been through a breakup and finding a creative energy from that, but the lyrical content isn’t what you’d likely expect from such circumstances.

“We don’t even touch on no breakups,” he proclaims. “It’s completely a love project, like a serenading, hollering at shawty-type of body of work. If you’re coming off a breakup and you’re looking to be sad, I wouldn’t send you there. But if you’re looking to fill yourself a little bit, and have a good time, I’ll send you there! ‘Go and shake your shoulder, shake your ass man,” he laughs.

“I like to draw from real life situations and things that I go through, but I don’t like for them to be the crux of my creativity.

“At the end of the day, I want to make music that I listen to, and I feel like I don’t listen to a lot of sappy, sad, breakup-fueled music. Charismatic, smooth, sensual slickness makes up the crux of what I like listening to. So that’s what I make as well!”

The production involved some star-studded surprises, with none other than American singer/producer Charlie Puth joining the trio’s TikTok livestream and suggesting harmony ideas. In a clip posted by Verlinden, Puth can be heard saying, “This singing’s really much better than I do.”

“We were just finishing a demo of the song Guy 4 U, which I’d actually written in front of his [Edy’s] Year 13 class at Avondale, as a workshop on how to write a song. So I wrote it in half an hour or so and then we go into the studio to finish it, go on the live, and then the comments start blowing up, like, ‘Bro, Charlie Puth’s in here.’ I was like, ‘What? No way!’ And then, what do you know  he started contributing to the production of the song, and complimented Edy’s work and complimented my vocal, and said it was better than something he could do, which was crazy!

“Cool moments like that are real validating, and I’m glad we got to bottle that up, you know, lightning in a bottle! Capture that and chuck it in the project.”

The EP rollout featured a suitably slick, sensual music video for Rolling Your Eyes, directed by Tom Group, who Verlinden has worked with on a handful of previous videos. It features actor Alex King playing Verlinden’s love interest, while he tries to draw her.

“That dude’s quite a special creative,” Verlinden says of Group. “He’s great at fostering a safe environment for us to be creative, and for us to express ourselves and to enjoy something like that. And Alex was great too. The video doesn’t take itself too seriously. The inspiration is that scene in Titanic where Jack is drawing Rose. It’s just a little tasteful pull back to that. But you know, a little meme as well!”

Not long after the June release, Sam V embarked on his first offshore tour.
“My goal for this year was to do a show in Australia. We’ve done five now, so I was really happy with that! It’s a big step for any rising young artist to manage. I was very stressed, because I was also tour managing and organising the venues, and the sound and the band… So by the time I’d get on stage, I was already quite tired. But thankfully I have quite a beautiful Australian fan base who came out to support me, and it was really inspiring for me being able to connect with them before, during and after the shows. So I’m really grateful for them taking a chance on V, as per the name of the EP.”

He describes the Pacific Music Awards as a high point, a favourite calendar moment that he looks forward to every year, but especially when he gets to perform. The first was in 2022, and not long after we talk he will be performing at the 2025 Pacific Music Awards. He’s really excited for that platform, saying he feels blessed to be part of it, and to share it with some of his idols in the music industry.

“We’re trying to have the best set of the night,” Verlinden says with apparent confidence. “It’s less about goals, more about what is our intention, you know, what’s our direction? What are we, and what are we looking to do? To go out there and put our best foot forward, showcase what Pacific RnB sounds and feels like, and create memories for people.”

Regularly featuring among the finalists in recent years he is in the running for three awards, including Best Pacific Soul/RnB artist. If he wins the trophy in 2025, it will, incredibly, be the fourth consecutive time.

He’s a goal setter who likes to express his aims and intentions as an aid to achievement. Rightly proud of how his career has flourished over the past year, Verlinden considers ‘Take A Chance On V’ his best release to date.

“It’s my most complete uniform body of work so far. I think I’ve maybe written some more, for lack of a better term, lyrically deep material in the past, but I feel like this is just a really well fleshed out, put together modern take on OG RnB.”

**Updated. Sam V did indeed continue his remarkable winning streak, securing the Best Pacific Soul/RnB Artist trophy for the fourth year running, as well as sharing the MPG Aotearoa/SAE Creative Media Institute Best Producer award together with collaborators Astro and Edyonthebeat. Photo above.