Since college, grime artist Novelist wanted to make music at Abbey Road, the fabled London recording studio where everyone from the Beatles to Adele recorded their hits. “I remember once I told a teaching assistant in my music class, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna go to Abbey Road,’ and you can just tell when somebody’s not taking what you’re saying serious,” the 21-year-old says. “It made me laugh a bit.” Within the past year, though, he was in the famed studio, putting the finishing touches on his sonically complex debut LP, Novelist Guy, which came out this past spring. It’s since been shortlisted for the U.K.’s Mercury Prize.