[6] In 2019, Ezra Collective released their debut LP You Can't Steal My Joy, which featured British musicians Jorja Smith and Loyle Carner.

Critical reception was widely positive, with Kate Hutchinson from The Guardian writing that the "exceptional album could be the one to cross over to the big league".

[12] On 7 September 2023, the band won the 2023 Mercury Prize for their album Where I'm Meant To Be,[13][14] making them the first jazz act to win the award in its 31-year history.

"[16][17] Alexis Petridis lauded the winning album by saying that Where I'm Meant To Be "stirs together Afro-Cuban rhythms and post-bop with rap – both Sampa the Great and 2022 Mercury nominee Kojey Radical are among the guests – dub, funk and dance music and transforms Sun Ra's Love In Outer Space into slick jazz-inflected soul with a vocal by the singer Nao, another former Mercury nominee.

It's an album where the influence of spiritual jazz coexists with Afrobeat; it successfully captures the band's live energy, its kinetic power never dipping despite its 70-minute running time.