Questlove Supreme: Corinne Bailey Rae

This Questlove Supreme interview defies the typical order of things. Questlove and Team Supreme ask Corinne Bailey Rae about the inspiration, iconography, and real-life events that inspired her refreshing and recent Black Rainbows concept album. Then, the conversation heads backward through the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter's discography, dynamic musical journey, and Leeds upbringing. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Quetch Love Supreme.
I'm you know, it's court Love and with three of course,
this is the ever present Team Supreme. Uh, frantically, what's happening.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
What's happening, what's happening, what's happening?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, I was about to say, you gotta tell me
what's the after effect of the Little Brother documentary.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Uh, it's been a lot, man.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
I think the first week it came out, like when
we first put it out during the uh during Black Friday,
I had one my homie hit me and was like, Yo, man,
I haven't talked to my sister in three years, and
I'm gonna give her a call after watching this. So
it's been it's been stuff like that. Like it hasn't
even been a lot of music shit. It's been people

(00:54):
just been hitting me, just talking about personal shit, personal
shit like yo, ill my man's like yo, I'm about to.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Start my own business now being bullshit and this. You know,
it's been a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
So it's been opened up a lot of conversations that uh,
I think we're Yeah, it was it was kind of
overwhelming at first, just to kind of be getting all
that at one time, you know what I mean. But uh,
but people really enjoyed it, and they see the spirit
of what we made and you know, the love and
care what we made it, and so I'm just happy
that people enjoying it.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, I was going to say that we're kind of
at the the end of the stretch, like where we
must turn the record in somewhere, and it's sort of like,
kind of after watching the documentary, I was like, hey,
do we have to give this to.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
A major label?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Like come on, come on, come on, come on.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
He preaches this forever.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was going to say that we're seriously trying to.
I think we're considering, you know, taking the training wheels
off and see if we can do this for depth.
I mean, technically, yes, we owe def jam another record,
but it's also like it's been ten years and there's
a whole nother ministration there, so you know, it's not
like I think they're crying, like damn it.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah. When we were.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Last there working on How I Got Over, there was
an executive in the studio with us, and he was
talking shit about us, thinking that Tarik was like one
of the staff at Electric Ladies Studios.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I don't know what they look like. I don't know
the album.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Just fucking hearing ship Manek's like, Yo, I'm in this
studio with you.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
He was, Oh, I'm sorry. I thought, Oh damn, I
thought he worked here.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
So y'all institution, Man, I love to see it. That'll
be dope.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, so I'll say that you definitely planned to see
in that to see if we can do this on
our own bill.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
What's up man? All of our lives?

Speaker 5 (02:56):
Like, I'm great. I was just thinking about what I
learned from the Little Brother documentary is do whatever the
fuck you want and be.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Really good at it.

Speaker 5 (03:05):
Like that's the best piece of advice, Like don't succume
to anybody else's wants. Just do you and be true
to your art, like no Ship and I we all
make art here, but like to be that true to
it and like honest about it is really cool. And
that's what I learned, amongst other things about other certain people.
That's what I learned from the Little Brother documentary.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
I loved it.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
I would love to say that you're like your JMI
Jazz recording offices, Steve, but that's how that's how official
it looks right now. So I don't know what's going on,
Like you got your own merch now your own bags.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Like, oh you saw that.

Speaker 6 (03:41):
Yeah, we're doing well JMI Recordings dot com. Yeah, little
jazz label here and Yo, Steve, I want to.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
Tell you too, Bro, I bought I finally broke down
and bought a turntable and I listened to like all
like the records that you've given. Bro, they sound amazing, man,
like amazing, Like they sound great on vinyl.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
So now y'all are doing a great job, Bro. This
ship is the shit is dope. The records really great.

Speaker 6 (04:06):
Thank you so much. I'll send you. I'll fill you
in on what you don't have.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean cops, I mean the link.

Speaker 7 (04:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
It takes money.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
He makes, he makes house calls. He came to Hoboken
and delivered me records. That happens, Damn I have to ask.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Damn. Meanwhile, Steve, I live in the same building.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
I find myself stealing my own product anyway, So let's
get to it. I will say I love a good
transformation story, the artistic metamorphosis or what we call uh
departure albums. I've even taught about departure albums at NY

(04:44):
you were a few semesters for those not hip to
the term. You know, departure album is basically like the
one album you can and that doesn't sound like what
you represented when you first came in the door. I
mean there's there's some legiti metamorphosis, like artists like and
grow eventually. I guess the most famous departure album would
be right going on? Well, no, I was going to

(05:06):
say Sergeant Pepper's was the very first one, because the
Beatles wanted to kill the Beatles or the idea of
the mop tops and teeny boppers and never tour again,
and then that backfired and actually made them more famous
and then caused them to implode. But even that was
inspired by a departure record, which I guess you could
say pet Sounds by the Beach Boys as that, But

(05:28):
I mean there's millions of them.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
There's Thinker Life of Plants.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, Secret Life of Plants, right going on? Kid A
Grace land Light, Yeah, oh Rave Light?

Speaker 7 (05:39):
Uh huh?

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Actually was she trend hoping or was that really?

Speaker 3 (05:45):
You know? It was it was a departure from what
came before.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
I'll say that, right, right, she wasn't popped.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Okay, you're right, but I mean, well, awaken my love,
Ata waits and heartbreaks for hip hop, Paul's benef there
you go, yeah, bitch brewe dirty mind. So it's all there.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Did the roots of a departure album?

Speaker 1 (06:04):
What phrenology or something? It's hard to say.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
I mean, phrenology wasn't more an excuse to do something
different than I realized, Like how slow I was listening
to The Roots Come Alive and like shit was like slow,
but also doing the Roots Come Alive? Like I was
at my physical heaviest at like four hundred plus pounds,
and I had lost weight for Phrenology, and suddenly I

(06:29):
felt like I wanted to be more energetic. So and
then it became like, let's just do what we're not
supposed to do. So it's sort of a departure record.
But time will tell if I was just you know,
not willing to face the keep the things fall apart
thing alive? I don't know, but I will say that
our Guest Today has been a long time favorite of

(06:51):
mine since her two thousand and six debut, and shortly
there after I was fortunate enough to, I guess a
year later work on work with her on Al Green's
Laid Down album, and then a year after that we
worked on her sophomore album, To See, And you know,
I kind of thought I had her completely figure it out,

(07:13):
and nothing prepared me for her fourth record. I'll just
say that that much quick backstory. I guess our guest
and I reconnected in the summer of twenty twenty three.
She give me a copy of the record. She did
it so casually that two days went by before I
remember that, OHI the record, let me peep and see

(07:35):
what's up, And.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
You know, it was kind of gobsmack.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
And again, I'm trying to avoid typical questlove hyper bowl
when it comes to my excitement for something. But you know,
it's been a minute that I've listened to a complete
album on repeat over again by an artist not named Salt,
and I will to say that there's a lot to

(08:02):
unpack here. Normally I want to go through the whole,
you know, journey of an artist's life, but I'm so
obsessed with this record. I have so many questions. I
might have to do this interview backwards. But yeah, for me,
Black Rainbows is one of my favorite records of the year,
and I'm really really excited to have a conversation with
our guest today, Krinn Belly Ray One Quest Love Supreme.

Speaker 7 (08:23):
Welcome, Heydan, Thanks so much. Thanks for that introduction.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Wait let me see, Oh god, okay, twelve minutes. We're
not bad. Normally I don't even get to the guest
until twenty seven minutes. All right, and it's time to go.
Thank you very much, Karin, thank you. So right now
you are in You're in Connecticut right now?

Speaker 7 (08:45):
Correct, right now, I'm in New York, so I may
or may not be getting up to Connecticut today. It
depends as loads of snow on the road. So I
always try and make a show like I'm happy to
be there, and if only twenty people come, then we're
still going to have a good time. But we'll see
what the he says. I hate cancel shows. It's so disappointing,
you know. I hate to be a fan and have
a council show, and I've been to so many shows

(09:08):
where nobody else could make it. You know, then you
feel like you're the lucky one hundred people who brave
the storm or whatever. So yeah, hopefully we'll be up there.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
And when someone cancels on you, okay, let me get
out my feelings anyway. Yeah, I hate when artists cancel
on people. Well, first of all, I'm curious for this
particular tour, how many musicians are you with because this
album is so sprawling in terms of its I mean,

(09:37):
you literally cover every damn near every genre of music.
And you know, my obsession with it was how is
she going to pull this off live? What is the
makeup of the band that you're with on tour?

Speaker 7 (09:51):
The lineup, there's just six of us in the band.
So there is Melanie Charles who's singing and she's playing
flute and she's playing percushion, and I'm singing and playing guitar,
electric guitar and some percussion stuff. Aaron Barnette is playing
tenor saxophone. Kyle Bolden is playing electric guitar, who I

(10:12):
absolutely love. I've wanted to work with him for a
long time. He plays with Stevie Wonder and we're lucky
that Stevie's in the studio right now, so it's like
entice Kyle. So yeah, so's he's kind of like three people,
you know. He plays just one guitar. He showed me
his guitar the other day. It folds in half and
packs in a backpack, you know, like some guitars. Really

(10:33):
it has to be this and it has to be
this wood that's maple and cherry and seasoned. And he's
just like it folds and half, he puts it in
his backpack. He's playing one guitar through the whole show
the string you know, it falls forward and the strings everything.
It's a portable guitar that it's playing right now and
he can cover. He's playing like wailing electric guitar. He's

(10:54):
playing like really pretty Curtis Mayfield, and he just does
it all. It's just in the spring, you know. So
he's amazing. And then I'm playing with Stephen Brown. He's
my long time collaborator and he has a massive setup.
So he has a few keyboards. He's playing bass sometimes
with the with organ pedals that he has underneath the
underneath the keyboards, he's playing based with his feet a

(11:16):
lot of times, or sometimes he's playing synth bas sometimes
he's playing electric bass. Look on New York Transit Queen.
He gets up from the keyboards and he has a
whole row on top of we've taken spring tanks, and
we've taken headles, we've taken modular synths, so everything that
he's doing on stage sort of all of the sends
from stage are going into that rig so that he

(11:37):
can affect it in real time, so that he can,
you know, if we're singing and we wanted to get
like trippy and transcendent, he can put in his delays
and reverbs and backwards things and octavizers and then that's
going out to front of house. So yeah, we just
we just put it all on a plane yesterday. I
think are over oversize or whatever. You know, we have
to pay over it. She was like like, what, we

(12:00):
can't leave any of this shit behind. You know, it's
just like boxes and boxes and stuff. But it's worth
it because I like to be able to make this
six more expensive sound.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
You know, I'm also known for completely wild outtakes, and
of which I don't want to get canceled, so I'll
I'll say the majority of them behind, but I will
say the safest one of my wild outtakes was I
think maybe.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
This was ideally.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
The album I thought I was making with Electric Circus
where you know, where you want to show a wide
range of styles but not appear to be too you know,
over eager or enthusiastic with it, like it just sounds natural.

(12:52):
And then you know, by the third listen, I realized
that like you're literally covering you're covering so much territory.
Like you go from literally from this, uh, you know,
some shit goes completely hardcore to you know, then you
go after futurists and you do this nineties Riot Girls

(13:13):
throwback thing, and then like with the last song before
the Throne, like it's almost like like you transport it
back to an Alice Coltrane kind of outtake, and the
thing one is like I was hoping the song was
gonna be seventeen minutes like an Alice Coltrane song, and
then it cuts off and I'm like, what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (13:33):
But that was one of my favorite ones on the
album too. That's a hard ass. That's a hard that
it flows the album.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
That Yeah, it's goddamn and it's can you tell me
just from soup to nuts how you put it together?
Because in my mind it's so every song is so unique.
I think if making it in real time, I wouldn't
know how you had seen it as cohesive, but yet
together it feels cohesive.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Can can you just describe to us the process.

Speaker 7 (14:00):
I'm glad that it feels like one thing, and it
felt like one thing to me because it was all
driven by this obsession, and it was driven by this
subsession with this building. I had been on a friend's board.
It was like a it was a Pinterest board that
she had she called Jamala John's and she's kind of
a arc curator. I think in the early days of Pinterest,
it wasn't just like this is a cute hairstyle, but

(14:21):
some people were using it like a magazine, you know.
So there they were using they would put up a
picture and then they were just right tons and tons.
And she had this board called Artists and their Creatives
and their Workplaces. So she had Carra Walker arranging her silhouettes.
She had a Picasso painting with light, and she had
this photograph of this artist, this black artist, contemporary artist,

(14:44):
this man, and he was sort of staring out of
the frame with this peacefuls of bold expression and behind
him was this weird contemporary art that I didn't understand,
you know, A pile of bricks on the floor, this
shaggy goat instead of legs, it had the spindles and
it was going around on a circular track. And then
there was a big shop for a big sign for

(15:05):
a shop, Harold's Chicken Shop in Chicago, with like a
chef chasing after a chicken with a meat leaver. And
he was just looking out like he was represented by
white Cuban. He was looking at the frame like, yeah,
this is my art, you know. And I thought, who
is this? I don't know contemporary art. Who's this man specifically,
who's this black man who's not working in figurative art?

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Right?

Speaker 7 (15:26):
It's not paintings of people, it's not drawings of people,
it's not photographs. It's this stuff. And I found out
he was called theaster Gates. And then when I did
some research, I found out that part of his practice
is saving these buildings on the South side of Chicago.
You know, he lives in the South Side of Chicago.
He's watched many buildings just get torn down by the city,

(15:49):
you know, on the Stoney Island where this building is
used to have big theaters, you know, really important theaters
for black music, and just over the years have been
torn down one by one, so I mean Chicago's architectural masterpieces.
But then when you get to the south side, there's
these holes, dise these gaps, and it's a kind of

(16:10):
erasure of the history of the place and of the presence,
the black presence in the place. And so he saw
this bank. It's one hundred year old bank and had
been slated for demolition for a long time. It's going
to be pulled down by the city. The basement was underwater,
but it's this beautiful bank with these columns outside, and

(16:30):
it's like a big square sort of Greeco Roman building
on Stoney Island. And he decided he was going to
save it, and so he bought it for one dollar
from the government, and he saved four million dollars by
selling his own art to transform this bank. So it
doesn't have art in anymore, it doesn't have any money in.
He's saved it by filling it with art archives and

(16:53):
historical archives. So it has twenty six thousand books that
were given to the Johnson Publishing Company, to the Johnson
Publishing Company who made Ebony magazine, Jet magazine, the Egro Digest,
So from nineteen forty three, you know, if you wrote
a book in anything to do with black space, architecture, politics, dance, entertainment,

(17:14):
recipe books, yearbooks. If you wrote PhDs and you wanted
the Johnsons to review it and include it in their publication,
you would send it to the Johnson's. So twenty six
thousand of these books you know, some of them we
know and the familiar, some of them super rare books.
It's got those. It's got all of Frankie Knuckles records.

(17:34):
And when Frankie Nuckles passed away, his entire record collection
was given to the Stony Island Arts Bank, and it
also has upstairs on the second floor these problematic objects
from America's past, the mammy jars, the postcards depicting racial violence,
newspaper articles since the eighteen hundreds, advertising copy, signage, objects

(17:59):
for the home, photographs that were collected by this Black
and Chinese banker called Ed Williams, who would go to
these yard sales and flea markets and see these objects
and think, you know, who wants who's collecting these things?
Who wants to continue to have these things in the home.
So he would buy them to take them out of
circulation and put them in boxes in his house, and

(18:22):
once he had amassed forty thousand of these objects, his
kids were out, can we get it's kind of intense
to be around this stuff. Can we get this out?
So he gave that, he donated it to the Rebuilt Foundation.
So the Arts Bank is contemporary art on the walls,
it has exhibitions. Then it's these historic objects, the Frankie Knuckles,

(18:45):
it's all the slides from the University of Chicago, the
glass slides from when people give talk, so you know,
or all of history that had been photographed for the
University of Chicago. And then these twenty six thousand books.
So when I saw the work that THEASTA was doing,
I thought, I want to get in that bank. I
just want to be there. I just want to look around.
I want to And we managed to connect with him.

(19:07):
I was on tour, he came to the show. He
met up with me afterwards, and I was just like, Ah,
I'm so excited to meet you. Because you're a visual artist,
because you also have a band called the Black Months
of Mississippi, because you're a saramacist, which I love ceramics,
because he trained in Japan, and because he's collecting these
objects and because he's saving all these buildings in the
South side of Chicago. He has a social practice. I

(19:29):
just I was really excited to meet him, and I said,
I really wish you'd come to the bank, but I'm
leaving town at like eight am tomorrow morning. And he said,
I'm also leaving town tomorrow because I'm going to President
Obama's fiftieth birthday party. And I was like, Oh, okay,
this is this is this guy is. So we opened
the bank early for us and I went to it,
and once I opened those doors, I've just sort of

(19:51):
blown away by the building, the side of the building,
the library, the double height cube, the just the amount
of you know, every single drawer you opened it just
like songs from slavery times, newspapers, curling newspapers from eighteen forties,
print adverts from the thirties, tins of beauty products, you know,

(20:12):
just stuff and stuff and every corner and every just
the arrangement of it. And the ASTA said, oh, you
know you have to you have to do a show
in it, and straight away I sort of flashed on
the music that I had made to this point and
felt like this is a new vessel. Nothing that I
have made sort of fits in this space. It's a
different kind of response that's needed. But then when I left,

(20:38):
all I could think about was the things that I
had seen. You know, he had this sculpture in the corner,
and I said, oh, who did that? He said, it's
one of mine. And it looked like it had been
made from wood that had maybe had the paint stripped off.
There was a certain amount of violence to it. And
I said, oh, you know, what is it? And he said,
it's a sculpture I made. It's from the floorboards from

(20:58):
an abandoned police station in Chicago. And as soon as
he said that, I immediately was thinking about the floorboards.
What are the floorboards seen? You know, so often in
history the objects are the witnesses to what's happened. They're
the things that can't speak, but they're the things that

(21:19):
see everything. The floor in the police station, the telephone
in the police station, the car, the rearview mirror. They
are the things that really are holding the truth. And
so when I was on tour, you know, I mean,
my head was in the tour, but at the same time,
I'd be lying on my tour bos bed and I'd
be just writing poems about things that I've seen. You know,

(21:39):
I wrote this poem called you who have walked These
floors in fear. I was thinking about this floorboard. It
was after the death of Sandra Bland, So I was
thinking about, you know, who knows truth? In some cases
it's a person. In some cases that person is unwilling
to to to express what has really happened in the situation.

(22:03):
But all that not all the physical objects they know.
And I just thought, I want to get back to
that bank. I want to open murderers. I want to
touch more stuff. And every time I touched something, I
felt like it was it's old stuff, but it's fisiing
with a kind of contemporary, real life things happening in
the Molecule's story. So really with the writing of the record,

(22:24):
you know, I went back for a two week residency.
Was stayed in the South Side of Chicago. I mean,
I'm from the UK, but you guys know Chicago, Chicago
has its huge challenges, you know. Yeah, so so that
was an eye opener. You know, we didn't have a
car there, and we said, oh, we'll just you know,
we're staying so nearby, we'll just walk around. They're like,
oh no, you can't walk around. You can't walk around,

(22:46):
you know. So we walked to the place where we
hide the car, and on a bus shelter there was
an advert for for what you could do if you
wanted to needed to give up your child in the
first thirty days of it life, you know, it was
a list of things. It said, all you need to
do is wrap it in a clean towel. It has
to be in the first thirty days of its life.

(23:07):
You could take it to a fire station where you
could drop it at this particular school or that particular hospital.
You can give information or you can have no questions asked.
And it was particularly poignant that it was a bushshelter
because of course that's where so many children that couldn't
be looked after have been left by parents that couldn't
look after the children. So, you know, just sort of walking,

(23:30):
I thought, this is what this area, this is what
this area is. And I thought about the importance of
a building like this which talks about the history of
the area and just about the history of the people
and how the situation is as it is now and
it hasn't always been the way it is, and it

(23:51):
won't always be the way it is. But how art
is a place of it's a new space, it's a
physical space. It's a place where people have the opportunity
to imagine something different. So I was ever two weeks.
I wrote some songs there, I was, I was home,
I was back and forth. I mean, this record was
sort of seven years coming together, you know. So sometimes

(24:12):
I was making music in the place we set up
a studio and one of the buildings next the bank,
and all the songs on the record are inspired inspired
by particular objects in the bank or groups of objects
or events in the bank. And that to me wasn't
my sort of golden thread when I was making it.
And then to me, whatever the style was, it didn't matter.

(24:34):
It just whatever the music was, it just kind of
bounced off the objects. So it's all about the objects,
and that the tight remit was it has to be
in response to these objects. And it just became my obsession.
I felt like everywhere I looked there was a story
or a photo or something about Chicago, something about the
South Side.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
What comes to you first? Do the words come first
or does the music come first? Because there's some songs
in which he will follow me with his eyes, which
like specifically melodically, and your words are depending on whatever
chords being played. And it's not a circular song that
it's looping. It's just kind of gone linear into and

(25:20):
it wors into a whole nother song by the end
of it. So like what comes first for you? Like
are the words hitting you first and then you find
music to it? Or does the music come first?

Speaker 7 (25:30):
I think in that situation, and he will follow you
with his eyes. I had found this tin of a
beauty product. It was by this company called Valmar, and
it was set up in Chicago in nineteen twenty six.
And all the illustrations I found to be really beautiful,
really elegant, and they were done by this artist, this
black artist called Charles Dawson who came. He was a

(25:53):
very well known artist in his time, and they were
elegant and they were beautiful, and there was also all
this romance surrounding Valmore. You know the copy in the adverts.
So if you saw an advert for valve Or it
might see things like his eyes will follow you across
the room, or the perfume. The perfumes were called things

(26:13):
like follow me boy, or look me over everything had
this romance and this glamour. So I was kind of interested,
what's this beauty? You know, what's his company? And I
found out that it was sold door to door, you know,
so like Avon, they were knock on the door with
this big basket of stuff. And I found that there
was targeted mostly at black men and women of course
the era. Looking through the products, there's lots of perfumes,

(26:36):
there's lots of moisturizers and shampoos and stuff, but there's
a lot of hair straightening products, skin lightning products, you know,
white rose cold cream, and you know, worked straight away
the adverts to say things like, don't you want to
help yourself to love unhappiness? You know, all of this
is just away from you if you don't just take

(26:56):
if you take your skin a few shades.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Lighter, that's right, they ran at the end.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Okay, yeah, I was going to say, because upon first listening,
I was like, I was like, Wow, this might be
her best vocal performance because and then the second time
I was like, oh, maybe she's singing in a character.
And then I realized by the end, I mean, I
don't know if it's if it's more of an angry
rent or more just a defiant thing about it. But

(27:23):
I realized that that must be the start. I didn't
know the history behind the song, but I love the
way that you singing character in the beginning, And yeah.

Speaker 7 (27:32):
I wanted to get into that sort of fifty space,
and I was thinking about fifties medicated domestic femininity in America. Okay,
so you've got all the things you meant to need.
You've got your vacuum cleaner, and you've got your washing machine,
you've got your refrigerator. So as a woman, your life
is not difficult anymore. You know, you've got these appliances

(27:54):
and you shouldn't complain, and you're in the home, and
if things feel difficult, there's always a tople that you
can take from the doctors, just to take the edge
of things. And then but then, you know, imagining someone
coming to your door with these products, there's a kind
of femininity is already this narrow, and then for black
women it's it's even more narrow because the beauty is

(28:14):
white aligned at this point. You know, so you've got
to do all the women's stuff, and then you've got
to do the stuff to make your natural self augmented
to be accepted, and so in the first half of
the song, the person is definitely under the spell of
how more I did that. I wrote that song in
the in the bank, and I just played I played

(28:34):
it on guitar, you know, I sort of do my
best on my guitar, like I'm not a trained guitar rist.
But I wanted to make it sort of you know,
fifties and dream like, like those kind of chords that
would be in you know, those movies that start whether
the car's winding around the side of a mountain or whatever,
the open top car and it's like there's a glamour
and then halfway through. I wanted to have this kind

(28:56):
of sonic arresting, you know. So when I first wrote that,
that was just like me playing one string.

Speaker 8 (29:01):
Dumb, dumb, dumb, you know, my plum red lipstick, my
black hair, kinkin my black skin, gleaming.

Speaker 9 (29:11):
You know.

Speaker 7 (29:11):
I wanted it to be, as you say, sort of defiant.
You know, I don't it says at the end, I
don't want to leave myself behind, vanishing into a girl
I don't recognize and went after you know, because the
record took me a long time. So one time I
was listening to vocals, I feel like I could bring
more character into this, you know.

Speaker 9 (29:26):
I was thinking of like her as a kid, you know,
with her incredbled diction and poise and the movement of
the words and everything so dramatic and elegant and control
that I.

Speaker 7 (29:39):
Went to bring some men.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
And so in my excitement, I was making h.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
A quiet sleep playlist the David the album came out,
and so not even thinking about it, I just rushed
that on the list first.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
It went to sleep.

Speaker 7 (30:00):
Anyway up.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
It was like, what the hell of Mira? And I
was like huh.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
And I was like, oh, I forgot that sometimes coders
and because you know, in my mind when you're listening
to it, I'm thinking like, okay, might have a new
ID track, and that's the next song. I didn't realize
it was the same song until that person told me, like, dog,
you woke us up in the middle of the night, Like, yeah,
it was it wasn't.

Speaker 7 (30:24):
There, It wasn't what you thought. Yeah, it's the worst
record for DJs. But I just think my stuf's a
bit like that anyway, sort of like it's bumpy, like
you're just getting into one thing and then there's another thing.
And I don't know if that's my background. It's like
I was a classically trained violinist and then I was
in an indie band when I was fifteen. That was
the music that I loved, you know. I had grown
up with soul music, but India was like my thing

(30:46):
that I found, you know, Rucasol and L seven and
Belly and and I liked. I guess I liked, you know,
women in that music. I like seeing women play guitars.
And I don't know if they weren't shaving their armpits
or they weren't having to wear certain things. They're just
wearing T shirts and the jeans and they're just doing
the thing, and there was a lot of freedom in that.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Of course, I understand that a lot of your albums
are also confessional diaries because of lost love and what
you've gone through in mourning and all that stuff. But
would you say that this album is more closer to
your creative heart then say what your debut record was.

Speaker 7 (31:20):
Yes, I think this is really close to my creative heart.
And the irony is that I thought it was always
a side project, you know, when I made it, I
was like, it's not going to be my name's not
going to be on it. It's an independent record, it's
not going to be a major label.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Weren't you. No, Mariah's sort of do you know the
history of the Chick record?

Speaker 7 (31:44):
No, I mean, and not until you mentioned you mentioned
it the other day, but I still, I mean, I
haven't heard that record. You sent me some pictures and
I thought, wow, she looks different, but yeah, I think
she's amazing.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, Mariah did the same thing, like she was this
recording her real record, but just to have some fun,
you would, you know, play around, fuck around, doing dinner
breaks and all that stuff, and then they had enough
material to make a record. But it was always just
supposed to be like a joke amongst the band makes
and you know, and I still maintained that that's Mariah

(32:15):
Carry's best record because she doesn't care about the outward
gaze of critics and the record label and keep keeping
the machinery going, because you know, all the time artists
tell me, like, especially like in the first ten years
of my career, it was like, man, y'all gotta label

(32:36):
that supports y'all. Like and at first, I was like
a little insulted. He's like, yeah, man, because y'all could
just do any o shit in your label. Never drop y'all.
Like I was like, what was that supposed to be?
You know, like, you know, like y'all don't care about
hit singles and making money and because success, I'm like
what the fuck? I was like, No, I just don't

(32:58):
know what an effective hook.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Kids.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
I feel like I'm doing too much inside baseball. But
you gotta let me know what was your inspiration behind Earthlings?
Because I'm obsessed with the effic futurism and all that stuff,
and like I am too.

Speaker 7 (33:14):
You know. I feel my dad had Funk you know,
like p Funk Records when I was little, and Parliament Records,
and I'd look on the back and see these weird cartoons,
you know, if like the women in the booby tops
and the booty shirts and this, and there was all
these stuff about space, and I remember just thinking like
what is this? And definitely when I was a teenager,
I just sort of thought I sort of thought of

(33:36):
it as kind of a bit silly or escapist. And
it was only when I got into my well, probably
you know, ten fifteen years ago that the penny dropped,
you know, and the expansive thing of if someone wants
a pigeonhole as being from here, you have to be
within the system of what it means to be black
in America, and like Sunral, the only way to explain

(33:59):
its actually, I'm not from here, or you think I'm
from here? Do you think I'm like that? Now, I'm
not even from this planet, you know. And I loved
that when I went back to that music, the idea
that there's another space and alternative space that lives outside
of catalysm and white supremacy, and that this band is

(34:20):
from there and they're going to take you there and
all you have to do is get on board the mothership.
And so the philosophy of it, which I had missed
because I was too busy just sort of enjoying the
groove of the music, you know, that was right there.
And so I mean, there's a really good affort futuristic
film showing in the bank when I was there, and
you know, I was thinking saying all these things together

(34:43):
that the main thing was the inspiration behind that was
the these different searches for utopia that I read about
in the bank. You know, there was a conversation bouncing
back and forwards between the black thinkers from I guess that,
you know, eighteen tens onwards the classic two positions. You
could call it a Martin Luther King versus early Malcolm X,

(35:05):
you know, integrationist versus separatist position. You know, we find
ourselves to be here outside of Africa, in this country,
in these places which are intolerant of us. What do
we do? Do we find allies and make a new community.
Do we become part of everyone, we all each other's

(35:27):
brothers and sisters like a Martin Luther King position? Or
is there do we recognize the aggression and turn inwards
and turn away from the place where we find ourselves
to be. And whether it's a Marcus Garvey going back
to Africa, or whether it's a more of a spiritual

(35:48):
separatist community where you're still in America, but you have
your own commune and you have your own rules and laws,
or whether it's a community of that's exclusive in terms
of who you're socialized with.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
You know.

Speaker 7 (36:01):
So I would see these ideas going back and forth
in the bank all the way through history, people trying
to work it out. How do we live now outside
of Africa in this place which is not entirely welcoming.
And so I've thought a lot about these utopias that
have been attempted. You know that all black towns of
the West, and those of them that were successful, and

(36:21):
those of those that weren't successful or were like a
green wood that was eventually firebombed, you know, the first
incidence of fire bombing on American soil. So I thought
about those, like, what is it to yearn for utopia?
Try for perfection? It always will fail. And yet that's
the direction, that's what all communities are looking for. Peace, love, freedom.

(36:43):
And I was blown away by Missus Johnson using the
Ebony fashion fair, and the Black panthers would say to her,
why are you bringing it clothes? You know this is
a bourgeoise thing. You're bringing clothes from France to put
on the back of black models to parade around the
town halls and the city halls for local black maids
to see. Like what you're doing. Apart from the fact

(37:06):
they were raising millions of dollars for the historical black
universities and colleges, Missus Johnson was saying, it's important for
people to see themselves reflected on this cat walk. It's
important for women to see this elegance, see this dream,
see this art, see this creativity. It's like, what do
we want on the other side of the struggle? Struggles

(37:28):
meant to end at some point, and then you're meant
to be, you know, eating pineapple in the sun, digging
your garden to live and finding work, but also time
to enjoy yourself. You know, that's the world we're trying
to build. We're not constantly so much in a struggle
that we're imagining will never end. And so I guess
the song Earth Things is about a non human person

(37:49):
sort of looking in on us and seeing how easy
it would be to reset our world, which causes a
super naive position. But that was the position that I
took from looking at these attempts at utopious of the effort,
the attempt, the hope, the audacity of it is the
only place to start.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Or I'm curious to how the outside of America, like
the British press, has received this record, And you know,
I think it's really curious that you and interesting that
you chose Chicago as your base creative hub. You know,
I think, if anything, even Americans and myself I might

(38:31):
be guilty of this as well. Like there's so much
propaganda talk about Chicago, like right now, you know, the
hashtag what about Chicago is a kind of go to.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Right wing yeah term of.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
You know, they're so violent and uncultured over there that
most people I know are definitely afraid to even visit
Chicago just because of what they heard, you know, propaganda wise.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
But is there not any place in the UK.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
That has their own rich cultural stories that you could
have pulled from? Because I find it very interesting that
that you had to come, you know, five thousand miles
across the Pound, you know, to find this wealth of inspiration.

Speaker 7 (39:19):
I think it's a really good point. I think the
holders of archive is a really interesting thing in America
versus the UK. So I'd say American history and archive
seems to be I mean, you have obviously the Smithsonian,
which is a reasonably new museum that holds all this

(39:40):
black history and archive. But it seems like a lot
of black archive in this country is held by private
individuals or private foundations that have come from corporations. America
is still in its move of you know, you've got
the Mellon Foundation, you've got the Ford Foundation, organizations that
made lots of wealth through capitalism that are now sort

(40:01):
of giving back, and it shows their brains and it
sort of legitimizes them to a certain extent, and they
it shows that they are invested in people's history and
holding history. I think in the UK that period certainly
happened during the Industrial Revolution, where we had massively wealthy

(40:24):
industrialists in the eighteen thirties, eighteen forties, eighteen fifties, and
they then invested in people in our you know, they
made their own towns, they had fair comparatively fair places
and safe places for workers. But then the state took
over in looking after history and archive, which is probably
the right place for these things if the state is interested.

(40:47):
But at the moment the conservative government that we have now,
which is more of a right wing government, there just
hasn't been the investment in black stories and black archives.
So there are black archives that aren't open to the
public and that you would need maybe a research a
qualification or sort of invitation to go and look at.
But also so much of the work is not valued

(41:10):
or lost or it's lost. I mean, I think specifically
of the wind rush incident, that happened a few years
ago where people like my dad's generation. The black people
in England are either from Africa and have come in
the last ten twenty thirty forty years, or their Caribbeans,

(41:30):
and they were invited by the government after the Second
World War because so many men had died, so the
UK needed people on the trains, people on the buses,
they needed women in the hospitals as nurses, so an
invitation went out to the colonies, you know, they're still
owned by Britain, like Saint KITT's where my dad's from,
you know, please come and help the motherland. And these

(41:51):
people felt like England was their home. You know, my
dad knew more about the counties and rivers of England,
you know then he even knew about Saint Kitts. It
was taught. This information was taught in tandem. So the
Caribbeans came, and a lot of them came as children.
You know, they had that passport and you would think

(42:14):
the government's held records on who was in the country
and who wasn't. But a few years ago there was
this big scandal where Caribbeans were leaving their country that
they'd lived in for fifty years sixty years moved for
a family wedding, trying to get back in the country,
and the UK said, sorry, we don't have any record
of you.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Wow.

Speaker 7 (42:32):
And it turned out they'd just lost all these people's passports.
People had come to UK's children. So you've got people
who are trying to get cancer care and they say, oh,
you're not registered to live here. They say, I've lived
here for fifty years, I've been married here, have raised
my children, I've got grandchildren in the UK. They say, sorry,
you have to go back to Jamaica. So I think
the UK government is not good at holding even the

(42:53):
the citizenship and passports of these black people that they
just lost. There was just no other explanation. It was
just like sorry, we last year passports. But I don't
think there was even a wide public apology. So I
think in terms of the Black stories, I think they
live in literature. You know, I live in Leeds with
people Tree Press, that's the biggest publisher of Caribbean literature

(43:15):
outside the Caribbean, so I know these Caribbean stories. I
think what I felt in encountering the bank was just
this is me with my own lens and my own
prejudices as a woman from the UK, as someone who
has African heritage through my dad's Caribbean side, but also

(43:36):
you know, my mum is white as well, like all
these I was just arriving as myself viewing all this
historical stuff. So the record is definitely not me trying
to tell an American story. It's just me responding to
all this stuff like this is what the stuff did
to me. That's what the record is, rather than I'm
now some kind of you know, historian or journalist on

(43:56):
the American story.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Oh no, Look, just to hear an artist with a
point of view is fucking refreshing, refreshing because what we're
doing with now, well, yeah, what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Well I want to ask you.

Speaker 4 (44:21):
You've collaborated with uh been frequent, collaborated with very good friends,
my parents and Amber Strolder.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
What is it like collaborating with them? How do y'all
start seing ideas?

Speaker 1 (44:32):
What is it like?

Speaker 7 (44:33):
I got introduced to Paris and Amber through Esperanza Spaulding.
I was working on my third record, and you know,
speaking of record companies, my third record was the one
with all the pressure on. It was like first record,
big success, so grateful. My second album was a kind
of response to that. You know, everybody was saying, oh,
you've been an indie band, but you've made this pop

(44:55):
soul record, and I thought, right, I'm going to play
more guitar on this record. But also, you know, halfway
through that record, I lost my husband and so there
was this big break. And when I started again and
I made the record that, you know, the label would say,
You've made the record you needed to make, but it
wasn't full of you know, smash hit sunshine songs. And
so the third record I really felt from the label

(45:16):
was like, okay, right, let's get back in it. You're
just a sort of sleeping giant, you know, like you've
got this, you've had this big hits, these and this
is the record where you're going to sort of come back.
And so that was really really difficult for me. And
I was working one time in Los Angeles with a

(45:37):
very very well known producer and artist who of course
I won't know, and he was very busy. He was
working with several artists at the same time, which sometimes
people do, right, so it's like, oh, hi, thanks for
coming right, let's work on this song for forty minutes
and then like, yeah, if you got some ideas, you

(45:58):
call like Jerome my assistant, right, he's going to be
in the room with you. I'm going down the hall
because you know, five other people are in the studio
complex and I'm just like sprinkling my sort of genius
hip power everywhere. So I don't know, I just I
wish I had that ability to sort of perform under

(46:19):
that kind of setup, but I just don't. So it's
like the inspiration just kind of left me. And I
left the session and I can't remember how So responds
that will. We met up and I was like, She's like,
how's it going with superstar producer that everyone else has
had massive hits with? And I said, Oh, it's going terribly.
You know, it makes you feel like you're you're the
one that's kind of flunking, you know, they're they're the

(46:40):
superstar and the other one. And she just said, have
you met these guys? And she brought out the CD
of the EP Kings King and I was like, God,
I said, someone just played me this two days ago.
It's so amazing. She said, I loved them. I went
to school with them. You should work with them. She picks.
You should work with them tonight. I'm calling them right now.

(47:01):
You should go will go around tonight. And she picked
up the phone and she's like, hey, Paris, you know
with Kreine. I was like, I don't know if they
I don't know if they ever heard of me, And
they knew me. And we went over to the house
and I just instantly loved them because aside from being
the musical geniuses that they are, they just have this
like still well you know them, still calm, beautiful presence.

(47:24):
And we just sat and we just had a jam.
My s friends was playing bass, Paris was playing keyboards,
me and Ambo was singing, and I just thought, oh,
I've sort of found a harbor here. You know, this
is so different to being in the room with all
these dudes, you know, like I've been told they're a songwriter,
but they're just tapping out the beats, like where's your tune?
Like tell me when your tracks finished, I can put

(47:47):
my superstar beats to it. And I'd be like, haven't
We're just starting from scratch. I thought, you know, I
kind of naive going into those those settings. So it
was just a dream to it with them and worked
together with on my third record, and then yeah, for
this one, I would just drift in. So Red Red
Horse came about at their place. You know, Paris is

(48:09):
just like an amazing producer. You know what she hears
and the lines and the weaves and the denseness of
the production, you know, the amount of tracks and all
the things that's going on, one thing feeding another and
other lines, and so it's just kind of like a
dream space. And we just got this beat going and
Pass was playing forwards. I was playing bass since bass.

(48:32):
I had my I remember I had my little baby.
I'd just had a baby, and she was strapped onto
me and it was like playing. So it felt really
kind of like it was working. You know, it's like
here I am and my kids asleep and I'm doing
this song. And then yeah, the Red Horse came out
of that where. Because I'd read so much of the
Bank and so much was in my head, I find
it really easy to what came out was was the

(48:55):
tales of the things that I'd read about, or i'd
seen a photograph. I've seen this photograph of this young
black girl who was going west with a white family,
and I just couldn't work out what she was doing.
She's ten, eleven, twelve, and it turned out, I mean,
she was an enslaved girl, but she was going to
be the nanny for this baby. And I was sort
of thinking, you know, who's looking after this child, this

(49:18):
black child in the you know, going to this west
town in the west there's been newly established, and what's
going to happen to her when they don't need her anymore?
And you know, I couldn't find any more information in
this book, and so I just imagined for her a
stranger riding into town on a red horse. But it
all it sort of came out when I was there,

(49:40):
because they just make this amazing dream space. So yeah,
I mean, I love I love working with Parasonal.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
I was really happy to see our Glabrary.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
I want to know more about your your childhood and
your upbringing. Where were you born.

Speaker 7 (49:57):
I was born in Leeds and that's where I still live.
So Leeds is two hundred miles north of London and
it's two hundred miles south of Edinburgh. Like at the
bottom of our street where we live, there's an old
way post and it says, you know, London this way
two hundred miles you know, Edinburgh this.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Way right on the border.

Speaker 7 (50:14):
We're right between, yeah, the capital of Scotland and the
capital of England. So as much as I feel, you know,
I feel myself to you know, be English, but the
north is really different to the South. It's not as wealthy,
it's more it was industrial, but then the industry sort
of went away, so there's that kind of a feeling.
I mean, Leeds is a big university town, you know, Scots.

(50:38):
I think more than one hundred thousand students between the
different universities, so it's a big place where people come
to learn, lots of thinkers come, but then lots of
people leave at the end of it, right because like
they go to London, they go, they go somewhere else
where the jobs are. So it's a creative place, but
sometimes it's hard to get things going because there's not
necessarily people don't necessarily come and stay. They kind of

(51:00):
passed through.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Well, you have three siblings.

Speaker 7 (51:04):
Correct or they're three of us. Yeah, there's two sisters.
So my sister, my middle sister works in politics and
she worked in social justice, and then my younger sister
acts and then yeah, then there's me too.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
So he described the household, Like, how were your parents
artistically inclined or musically inclined or anything.

Speaker 7 (51:24):
I think my mom really liked singing. My mum used
to sing around the house all the time, so she
and she would sing at church. And then my dad
collected music, so that was his thing. He had just
sort of piles of records. He was really fastidious. There
was a really good record shop in these called Jumbo
Records that would import us records, so my parents would

(51:48):
go there all the time. They met on the dance floor,
you know, when they were teenagers. And my dad's family
is from Saint Kitts and the Caribbean. But yeah, he's
a big collector of music, and so I think sometimes
I would just look through these forty five you know,
they were just in paper. They didn't have any covers,
so you could just maybe get a bit of an

(52:09):
idea from the name on the label, but mostly you
had to actually put the record on, you know, and
just like put the needle on. And so he had
his pile, and then I had my pile out of
his pile of things that I liked to listen to
that I kind of kept separately. So I don't know
what it was, and you know, I just I grew
up with music definitely, But then I got into music

(52:31):
at school, but not even if my parents played instruments.
I started playing violin at school and I really really
loved that, and at first I found it easy. I mean,
later on I found it really hard, because I do
find reading music really hard. But I liked the thing
of listening and picking up stuff. I really liked being
in orchestras. You know, I was often the only person

(52:53):
of color in the whole orchestra that was or at
ballet or whatever it was. But I think our parents
and especially my mum just encourage us to do express,
express ourselves things. So we did, you know, we did
do ballet, We did play instruments, We did go to
watch concerts and went to theater when we could. I mean,

(53:15):
my mum was cleaning houses when I was younger, and
then she started she started working with kids from school
from the school that was at you know, reading to
them in the lessons, the kids who were struggling. Then
she did some qualification so that she could be a
learning mentor in the school. And my dad, my dad's
kind of visically had a shop, kind of picture framing

(53:38):
and candles and clocks shop. But he was always you know,
he's got a big math's brain, which is the opposite
of my brain. So he would teach. There was a
school for kids who didn't get on well at school,
and it was mostly Black and Asian children in England.
That's like Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Black children. And that

(53:59):
was in the sort of concentration of black area, Chapeltown,
where his family came. So he would teach these kids,
you know, he'd teach the maths mostly math's a bit
of English. But so all the boys and girls in
our school that were maybe had a reputation of being
more sort of tough or like they didn't get on

(54:21):
with the teachers. They didn't get on with the teachers
at our school. They would know me because my dad
would teach them maths, you know, and they'd be like,
mister Bailey, he's so strict. Yeah, So it was. I
liked growing up there. It had a big Caribbean community leagues.
I mean it still does, so I would be I
guess I grew up between these two worlds. Where we

(54:44):
lived was a white area and a big Jewish area
as well, my high school was a big jewsh high school,
lots of the Jewish teachers and children, so when it
was Jewish holidays, like a third of the kids wouldn't
be there, so our calendar was kind of worked around
the Jewish holiday. And then my grandparents lived in the

(55:04):
Caribbean area of Leeds, so I would always be like
between these two worlds. Do I fit in these worlds?
I do. I do fit in them, but I feel different,
you know, in both places. I feel a bit of different.
You know. It's like I'm black, but I'm sort of
not black in the same way my cousins are. And

(55:25):
then I'm definitely not white, but I am my mum's daughter,
you know. So it's always just like finding identity. And
I think I think that's why I really pulled towards
I don't know, Indie sort of you know, riot girl,
like all of that stuff, you know, feeling like I
feel like an outsider. I have something to say. I

(55:47):
am underweight, I'm riding to school on a bike balancing
my violin. I'm a nerd. But I'm also not from
a wealthy background, so I'm fitting in, you know, like
a lot of my peers might not be going to
play in the orchestra or reading Jane Austin and you know,

(56:07):
Charlotte Bronte, but at the same time, that's just what
I'm doing. So yeah, I felt like an outsider.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
I guess were you born in the early eighties.

Speaker 7 (56:16):
I believe I was born in nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Okay, So who did you gravity towards musically? Like who
was the first like moment of I.

Speaker 7 (56:27):
Mean, I guess Michael Jackson was the biggest thing in
our world. Just that's the age that I had. Yeah,
could avoid him, and so I remember there was a
concert in Leeds. We used to live near this park
called Ruante Park and there was a big park that
used to have concerts, so like Madonna played there or
you know, but but Michael Jackson played there, and I

(56:48):
remember it was like a sort of pilgrimage to go
to this concert, Like we couldn't afford tickets for the concert,
but I remember it was it was a bank holiday
in August that we went to the concert. Yeah, I mean,
Mychael Jackson's stuff was so interesting because obviously there was
the music itself, then there was all the mystery around
the man. But remember how they used to film the

(57:09):
concerts is I feel like nearly half of the concept
wasn't showing him, it was showing the audience. So it
was just showing these people having these responses to him,
And I remember feeling that feeling that they had this
kind of like melting sort of spiritual feeling. I mean,

(57:31):
I think the music has what that music is doing
in sort of jazz and harmony because I'm not trained,
I just don't understand what it's doing, but it still
does the same thing to my brain where it's like
I don't know what's happening here, and this thing is
transitioning into this thing, and there's this lushness and then
there's this tension and then it goes away. And so

(57:51):
his music had that complex of beauty, but it was
being absorbed by all of us, including you know, five
year olds, ten year olds, and so I think, I mean,
aside from of course, all the separate things about Michael
Jackson which we learned about in that time when those
those issues weren't swirling, I just yeah, I just Michael

(58:11):
Jackson's music was kind of the pinnacle. But I grewup
with Stevie Wonder as well, because it's what my parents liked.
I really liked Secret Life of Plants. That was the
record I remember having. I remember touching the braille. I
remember the sort of weirdness and mystery of it, and
the way the synth sounded, and the photograph of him
inside and the way you could see, you know, you
can see his eyes. And so I sort of loved Stevie.

(58:35):
I thought, oh, like, I just felt in my heart
like I want to meet Stevie. I'm sure that all
kids feel that, right, So but then when I did
get to meet it, I was like, this is like
my dream that I had, and here I you know,
I wrote Stevie Wonder a letter and as a teenager
saying about how much I love I never dreamed you'd leave.

(58:55):
I never dreamed you'd leave in summer. I remember writing
this passionate letter about it. And then I thought, why
am I writing a letter. I should be writing it
in Braille, And you know, I never got around to.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
I was about to say he learned braille.

Speaker 7 (59:07):
Just yeah, yeah, he is a you know, he obviously
reached brail.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
There's there's a funny story where, uh, you know, producer NARDA.
Michael Walden. He produced Whitney Houston's I Want to I
Will I Know, and I Want to Dance with Somebody,
And he also did like starships, like nothing's going to
stop us now or not. Like he was like Clive
Davis's go to guy. But he tells the story that

(59:35):
he was so inspired after seeing Stevie do fingertips when
he was a kid.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Somewhere in the mid sixties.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Was a kind of solar eclipse in which you know,
they warned parents, do not let your child look in
the sun or else you're going to go blind. And
you know, they were giving out free glasses and you're
supposed to wear glasses all day and whatever. And Narda
was like, if I take these glasses off, then I

(01:00:03):
too can be a genius like Stevie wonder He told
me about the first time he got in trouble with
his mom, like she said, like you know, like yeah,
punished him, but yeah, he was he wanted to be
blind like Stevie Wonders so that he could be a genius.
Do you do you remember the first concert that you went.

Speaker 7 (01:00:24):
To, the first concert I went to. I mean, I
think I didn't go to concerts when I was little because,
like I said, well, my parents got divorced, so you know,
we didn't have a car, we didn't have a telephone,
we didn't my mum was cleaned houses and then she
worked at this school, so we didn't have to spare
money at all. You know. We used to get our
clothes in a binliner from unless it was Christmas or birthdays,

(01:00:49):
but we used to get our clothes from people from church,
you know, with their names still selling it, you know,
and yeah, I love this, like if they had trainers,
we always had the trainers then Nick's not the Nikes
and all of that sort of stuff, you know, right,
But so we didn't we didn't go to gigs when
we were little, but I remember I probably went to

(01:01:09):
something like I probably would have gone to the Cockpit,
which was a sort of indie venue, and I would
have gone to see a band like some small bands
like Shed seven or the Charlatan's, the band called the
Charlatans that I really like. I definitely got.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
I've heard the Charlatans. Yeah you saw them in their
early stages.

Speaker 7 (01:01:30):
Yeah, I saw them. I mean I think there's still
been Yeah, they've been going a little while, but obviously
that I was still still going ahead. But yeah, I
remember seeing a band called Kaniki, which had a female's
lead singer, and I remember seeing Belly, who I thought
were amazing. So yeah, just but so before i'd gone

(01:01:52):
to gigs, I was doing gigs, you know, like it
was it's just a thing because it was the nineties
and everybody I knew was that abound, and I was.
I had I was part of this church group and
we had a youth leader who was called Simon Hall,
and he was really into music. He was kind of
like a like a music snob, you know. So one
time I turn up at church and he's like, here's

(01:02:13):
a guitar, and I was just, you know, I couldn't
believe it. And so I had to pay him back
like ten pounds every month, you know, like I'd said,
I've got my seven pounds, Oh thank you, and you
know sometimes you just said, oh, just buy me a pizza,
you know, and but I might, you know, I managed
to pay back, and he is, you know, still a
dear friend of mine. But that that was really great.

(01:02:34):
And I used to play my guitar through the stereo
because I didn't have an amp, and but I just loved.
I loved learning songs. I sort of could learn songs wrong.
I liked Lena Fiedbe, I liked Buuck. You know, so
I try and learn a B York song but not
quite get the chords right. But then I had some
chords I liked, and then I could write a different
song over And I liked that time of music for
especially for women. It was really confessional. I loved Julian

(01:02:58):
Hatfield and she had this song called My Sister. The
song was like, I hate my sister. She's such a bitch.
She acts like she doesn't even know that I exist.
But I'd give her anything to let her know I care.
But I'm only talking to myself because she's not there.
I remember thinking, you can write a song about that.
You can write a song about how you feel about
your siblings. You can write a song about your walk

(01:03:19):
to school. You can write a song about how a
boy laughed at your hair, like you know. So, it's
just it was different to pop music, which was more
like universal. Everyone's included, you know, big messages, and this
was just the every day. And that was my entry
into songwriting because I thought, oh, you can write about anything.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Hey, are you aware of Nandy Bushell. So she's she's
a kid from the UK. She is notable when she
was like six or seven years old playing the drums
on Instagram.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Since then, I.

Speaker 7 (01:03:57):
Think I've seen a play. I think one time we
were borting Leny Kravitz and she came on the sound
check and she played. I didn't know she was from
the UK, and I didn't remember her name, but I've
seen her. She's played with Dave Grohl, right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
And yes, yeah, it's scary for her now. So she's
entering her teens now and already like you know, first
it was just the drums and singing, but then now
she's like on her saxophone kick, like she plays saxophone
now and keyboards. Like it's the way that she's developing.

(01:04:28):
Like it's it's really interesting to see, like who kind
of rises to the occasion, like when they start off
as I'm not saying novelty, but like when you're six
and seven, like your parents are sort of like being
backstage parents and that sort of thing. And I was
kind of wondering, like, Okay, well she keep at it,

(01:04:49):
you know, at at nine, ten and eleven, now that
she's getting up there, like she's her chops are like
she's not relying on the novelty of like, hey, you
know cute black girl from the UK and I complete
drums a little, like she's really.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Kicking ass and getting more into songwriting and that sort
of thing. It's such a rapid piece that, you know,
it's mind blowing to me.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
I just wanted to know if you were aware of her,
how did you start the band and were you guys
at all like seriously trying to pursue a record deal
or was it just like, hey, we're a local band.

Speaker 7 (01:05:25):
We really were trying to get somewhere. I think I
was very serious when I was a kid. And also
the band that i'd seen, Kiniki, they were only teenagers
when they got signed, like they got signed out of
high school. So I just kind of thought, like it
is possible, you know, it was possible for it to happen.
And so my band was my best friend who was
called Jennifer Pugh, and she me and her used to
play violins together, so we used to make these tapes

(01:05:49):
together of like I don't know if she's singing or
I'm singing, We're made of a story or like a
keyboard thing about made a song about monsters, you know,
like when you're ten or whatever. And then that just
kind of kept going. And so when I started guitar,
she started guitar, she got really good and she was
so she was the lead guitarist, you know, she had
proper lessons. And then we had a friend who was

(01:06:10):
just a bad ass, and she has called Joanne Wilson.
She played bass, and she had she'd learned a bit
of flute, she'd learned a bit piano. She didn't really
know the bass, so we used to have to teach it,
like you know two two two two two two three
through three three three three one one mightn't you know,
but she she picked it up and she just looked
the part. And it was those days, you know, we

(01:06:30):
can smoke indoors and like, so she had just like
have a cigarette and she had this bleach blonde hair.
She she was like a regular, real life bad girl.
And then my boyfriend at the time played drums. He
was two years older than me and he was in
a band. And I remember one time his band were
playing at this pub called Joseph Well, I know it
was the Duchess. It was the Duchess and that was

(01:06:51):
famous to us because Nirvanna had played there, so we're
like the duchess. And that was in those days. You
could go to a pub even though you were underage.
As long as she didn't drink, you could be there.
So you could be there at sort of sixteen seventeen
as long as you didn't go anywhere in the bar.
And he called me and he said, our support act
is not can't can't do our show next week? Do

(01:07:12):
you guys want to play? And well, you know, we've
got three songs. We have to get together and write,
you know, three more songs so we can see we
can be in the support band. But I just loved it.
And I remember being on stage. I love the transition
of like you write the songs in your bedroom, you're
practicing someone's living room, you take the equipment with you
on the bus, you walk into the pub. You know,

(01:07:35):
for us, it was like three girls and we're all
kind of like petite with our instruments, so we just
like these guys. And then but then you get on
stage and then and the music was, you know, as
distorted guitars, And I loved the fact that people weren't
expecting it of us. That's one thing I loved that.

(01:07:56):
I also really loved just being there and thinking, oh,
you know, I had this idea in my room, and
now here I am playing it on stage. And you know,
when you first do shows like that, it's your parents
and your friend's parents and everyone's saying, oh, that was lovely.
And then but I remember the first time we did
a gig where a person I didn't know came up
to me and they were like, god, that was and
I thought, like, whose dad is this? But it was

(01:08:19):
no one's dad. It was just a guy. And I
really liked when you were play in a pub and
people would be drinking at the barn and they just look
over and then one by one, you know, they would
come into the room, and then by the end there'd
be more people there. Then started and I just really
liked the feeling of it, the excitement, the fear of it,
and so I just carried on and yeah, we really

(01:08:40):
wanted to make it. We had a deal offered from
road Runner Records, who were a metal label, but we
were going to be the first indie signing, and the
manager that we had at a time ended up in
prison because he was kind of like a dodgy tax guy.
And he was the son of a very very well
known music manager. But anyway, you know, he took us

(01:09:04):
out for lunch to a fancy hotel. You know, we
never we hadn't eaten places like that. He pay and
it was all going really well. But our bass player,
who was the you know, the cool girl in the band,
she she got pregnant. And I remember telling him. I
was like, you know, Joanne's pregnant, but that's great, right,

(01:09:25):
because we'll be able to be on stage she'll have
a bump. And then so I remember the next time
we tried to call the phone, he didn't answer the phone.
And then the next time we tried to call, he
didn't answer the phone. Then the next time we tried
to call it This is before email or anything, you know,
so you've got Yeah, that was the end, and I
never saw him again. I saw that. It was like

(01:09:47):
literally went to.

Speaker 5 (01:09:48):
Prison forgot that.

Speaker 7 (01:09:54):
Yeah, But I mean that's not why I didn't answer
the phone. I think he just the idea of like
a pregnant teen bass player wasn't as cool as it
was to us. Then I had to go back to university.
I was in my second year and had to go
into the third year kind of like tail between my legs.
I'd been like, yes, you know, we're on our way.
You know, I had to come back and pick up

(01:10:16):
all the bits of literature that no one wanted to do,
you know, medieval literature. And I finished my course and
then I waitressed, and then I worked on the jewelry
counter at this fancy department store, just kind of waiting
to see what happened with my band. And in the meantime,
we got another manager and he was like, you know,

(01:10:36):
you're writing all the songs, you are standing out. Why
did you come to London and write some songs with
these different people and just sort of see what happens.
And I felt really divided because it was all my
best friends, you know at the time, but my best
friend who had a baby, she'd left and we had
a different person. Then the drummer had left, who got
a different drummer, so it wasn't really the same bad

(01:10:58):
and I just thought, yeah, I'm going to try that.
I'm gonna try this, and those songs became the songs
that I had from my first record.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
So what was what was that first year like to
just come out the box and instantly I almost feel
like it's harder to top the charts in the UK
than it is America. Like I know, for everyone, making
it in America is the dream, but I'm way more
impressed because I feel like the hurdles are harder and
higher to even make some sort of dent or impression

(01:11:34):
in the UK, because I almost feel like if you're
hit in the UK, you can work forever because they're
not as disposable as we are in the States, like
I know right now, like who's old Boy with One Eye?

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
Fante Old Boy with one Eye?

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Yeah, Like even when Betty Watt was supposed to be
the second coming of something and I just found out
he he's in jail, like I didn't even know.

Speaker 4 (01:12:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the two records he had, the Trap
Queen and he had yeah, he had like one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
He had a moment in which I found out like
he was going to be a thing, at least a
second or third album or fourth you know what I mean,
that sort of thing. But to me, like your album
Chop topped the charts in the UK, what was that
feeling like for you?

Speaker 7 (01:12:26):
It was such a surprise. I remember getting a phone call.
I was in Switzerland, because I guess Europe so small, right,
So you do your bit of promotion in the UK,
then you go to France, then you go to Italy,
then you go to Spain, then you go to Germany,
then you go to Holland then and you can do
all that in about two weeks because it's so small.
And so I remember being in Switzerland's I got a
phone call that said, like, the album's gone to number one,

(01:12:48):
and I just look like, what you know? I just
because I still didn't know anybody knew about me. And
it was of course in the days when you had
to physically go to a record shop and buy a record,
So I was like, how how has this happened? And
but I had got a lot of support from the
BBC really early on. So in two thousand and five
I had put out Like a Star as a just

(01:13:10):
an EP. It was like a limited edition EP, but
the BBC had kind of picked up on it and
they put me on this TV show. It was Got
Later with Jules Holland and I remember last week yeah
yeah really yeah, so good. We just did one a
few weeks ago. But I mean, he's such a big
supporter of music, and it's a fully live show. It's

(01:13:32):
five or six bands in a round, you know, and
you just you just watch everyone do their thing. You'll
get one or two goes at it. I remember I
was seeing the showcase in London and maybe the first
first Thursday, one hundred people came, and then second Thursday,
like two hundred people came, and the third Thursday like
people couldn't get in. And then on the fourth Thursday,

(01:13:54):
I'd done Jules Holland like earlier on in the day
before I went to it, so it felt like it
had really gone from nobody knows about me too, like
I just got to play on the first ever TV show,
you know. I remember once getting into a hotel room
and I put on the radio through the TV and
like a Star was playing and I was looking at
it thinking is my CD player plugged in here? And

(01:14:16):
then I realized it's on the radio, the actual radio.
Someone else is playing it. So it was just new
to me. And then everything was so fast, like, oh,
Stevie Wonder's on the phone, what, like we're playing a
show in America. Oh Prince has come to the show,
Like you've just met Mary j Blige and she has
heard of you. You know. It's just like I went

(01:14:38):
to read out the nominations and the Grammys and I thought,
this is amazing. I'm getting to read out the nominations
and then just in Timberlake was saying, you know, song
of the Record of the Year and put your records
on what you know? To me, the nominations were the Grammys,
Like it was that was the biggest excitement for me.

(01:14:59):
Is just like hearing my name read out in a
few categories, you know. So so yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Answer one question for me.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
I don't I don't want to interrupt you, but since
you mentioned that, I got to ask, so, since you
were on the Joni letters, do you receive an actual Grammy?

Speaker 7 (01:15:18):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
Yeah, okay, so I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
See, there's there's so much goalpost moving when it comes
to you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Who can get one? Who can't get one? Yeah, because I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Associated with a few records that are albums of the Year.
But I find out like in some categories, like especially
with hip hop and soul, because there's so many collaborators
and sample credits and all that stuff.

Speaker 7 (01:15:41):
They don't want to trophies.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
Yeah, they'll just give you a little certificate. Yeah, so
you participated.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
But then I'll notice, like on in Classical and Country
and in the main categories, like everyone gets like you're
an official Grammy winner, where mine is sort of like
I get it trophy awards, like, yeah, I participate.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
In voodoo here, here's my thing, you know. Yeah, I
always wanted to know.

Speaker 7 (01:16:05):
Well, you should, you should redress that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Man, I got my own other battles to deal with.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
So no, but I do feel like when artists win
Album of the Year and their respective categories, like we
too should get awards as well.

Speaker 7 (01:16:23):
So yeah, but I always wanted.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
To know in the main category, do you get an
award or do you not get work?

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Okay?

Speaker 7 (01:16:30):
Yeah, I remember Herbie saying if we win, I want
you to come up on stage. But in the moment,
I didn't go up. I just like, I've contributed one
song to this. This is Herbie's saying. And he had
such a he had a lot to say, right, he
had a speech prepared in his pocket.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
You know, m No, don't don't dismiss that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
That was your moment, you know, just in wrapping up
for me, like I feel like this album is the
soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist yet, or.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
Like, how do you take this further?

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
Because I feel like there's no turning, Like you've done
to open a door that can't be closed now, So
like what is your what is your next plan?

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
Musically? At least that's a.

Speaker 7 (01:17:15):
Really good question. I mean, definitely, my engagement with that
building and those histories definitely doesn't stop. You know, I
really want to write an essay about the erasure of
black childhood that I saw in the objects in the
Arts Bank, because it's a kind of strategic, you know,
wide ranging kind of assault on childhood. You know, you know,

(01:17:38):
hundreds of years long, but you know, it's two hundred
years of evidence in that in the Arts Bank in
terms of black children being depicted as not fully innocent,
they're sexualized, they're seen as labor, you know, people who labor,
like black childhood doesn't exist for the black children in
the objects in the Ed Williams collection. And then right

(01:17:59):
now next to the Arts Bank is there Tamir rice
pavilion which is going to be torn down. And Timir
Rice's mother came to Theesta and asked whether that could
have its place next to the bank, so that Tamir
Rice Pavilion is there, and you know, I think a
lot about the connection between what is it for a

(01:18:20):
police officer to not perceive someone as a child, to
think of them as a dangerous adult instead of seeing
them as a child playing with a toy because they've
been swimming in this culture, lifelong culture that extends back
generations of not affording black children the same space, innocent,

(01:18:43):
joy freedom as other children. You know, how does it?
One thing is cartoons and stories and silly picture books
and you know, illustrations in the Black Sambo and postcards
saying all these coon look alike. But the real world
of effect is, you know, it's death for some young people,

(01:19:09):
and so I definitely want to make some sort of
I want to do some sort of work around that.
But at the same time, I know there's people who
are more gifted in that area. You know, I'm just
reading Christina Sharp's book. You know, there's some towering academics
in that world. But at the same time, there's all
this collection of the stuff that I'm interested in. So,
I mean, and you wanted to find a way to

(01:19:29):
make some sort of commentary and that, But yeah, for me, musically,
I just feel like I came from a place on
my third album feeling like I am a failed pop
star who has sort of squandered their chips at the
you know, the Roulette table of music. You know, you

(01:19:49):
had all this and you could have And my third
record was that. You know, it's me just playing what
songs to music executives, you know, eight men in a
room and having them say I just don't think that's
the first single, you know, and thinking okay, And after
a while I didn't need them to be in the
room at all because they were just in my head

(01:20:10):
everything I started. What's the point of even finishing this song?
It's not an international megasmash, you know, it's not uptown funk,
So why am I even going to finish it? To
now feeling like I am an artist? An artist's job
is to exemplify freedom. I this is my work. This

(01:20:31):
is what I love to do. It's what I've always
loved to do. This is what I'll always do. That
is the position I feel like I'm in.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
Are you pleased with the response that you're getting about
the record.

Speaker 7 (01:20:41):
I've overjoyed with the response, definitely, because I feel, I mean,
I don't read it, but I've got someone who's telling me,
you know, yeah, you know, it's a good response.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
And I live between fuck Pitchfork and did you see
where Pittsfork said? And to me, you know, sometimes they
get it right. I mean even when they're this and me,
they get it right. But sometimes they get it right.

Speaker 4 (01:21:08):
What's been the difference we were talking about labels earlier,
Now that you're with thirty Tigers and kind of doing
it independently, what is that like now?

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):
What is the difference between you know, being labels? YEA,
put a number before an animal is.

Speaker 9 (01:21:24):
Right?

Speaker 7 (01:21:24):
Yeah, I think, doctor Seuss, I think. But yeah, I
loved that label straight away when I met them. I mean,
I made the record independently. I made it with my
own means, and I made it with you know, from
our studio, and that gave me all this freedom. One
I thought of it as a side project too. There
was no one saying where's the hits or when is

(01:21:45):
it finished? Which was really important because I also realized
I don't respond well to that kind of pressure either.
And my first record sort of being made like that,
I made it in the basement of an art studio
with someone that I got to know as a friend,
you know, so, and then we walked it into labels
and we worked it to Sony and they were like,

(01:22:06):
And then we walked at Universal and they were you know.
So it's like I felt, and I feel like, whatever
I do in the future, I'm going to make that
record and see who likes it, because why would you
want to work with people who don't like it? And
it's so hard, you know, my third record, it was
so hard, feeling like I was just disappointing people at
every turn, you know, and at that point, people are

(01:22:27):
getting sacked if you don't make the right record right.
People are losing their jobs, and the people you've known
for ten years and you know their kids, and so
you feel a lot of responsibility. But it's so weird
being an artist how you can feel trapped by the
things that you made. You know that it doesn't make
any sense, does it. But I think you can make
something and then it makes you this corridor and then

(01:22:49):
you think, well that I have to go down that.
You know. The way that I was able to feel
free on this was thinking it's not a Corinne Bailey
ray record, but that that's just me. So, you know,
it was only when the artist, you know, he's a
brilliant graph Writery writes, it makes amazing things for skateboard.
Skateboard magazine is where I saw his work. It's only
when he sent me the cover and I saw my name.

(01:23:13):
The first thing I thought was like, I got to
tell him not to put my name on it. It meant
to say black rainbows, right, And then I saw my name.
I thought, there's something about not seeing it as a font.
I think sometimes when you see your name as a font,
it becomes a sort of brand that somehow like tears
away from you and becomes a separate thing. And it's like, oh,
it's not in that font, it's just freehand, but it's me.

(01:23:36):
And I thought, yeah, I never want to be boxed
in again by my perception of what I think other
people's perception of me, which, which of course is too
is too circular anyway, So yeah, I definitely sort of
can't go back. And then now I'm just trying to
work out what to do.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
Next tour wise. How many weeks are you doing in
the States, And we did.

Speaker 7 (01:23:58):
Five weeks in September, then we went to Europe and
did six weeks. I know it wasn't six weeks. It
was about four. And then we've come back now and
we've done some West Coast dates and then we've got
our Blue Note shows, and then we're coming back in
June and do some US dates as well. And I'm
playing in Australia and I'm playing you know, it's like
it's that's a good thing is you know, just getting

(01:24:21):
to play all over the world. It's a dream to me.
You know, I'm not playing to twenty thousand people. I'm
playing to two thousand people. But they're scattered all over
the world, and I'm happy to get on a plane
and go to them. You know.

Speaker 4 (01:24:35):
One the last question I wanted to ask Korean. I
was always curious about your recording process for The Sea.
You mentioned earlier that you know, that was when your
husband had died, and so from what I've read, part
of it was recorded prior, and then the other half was.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
How did you make it through that process?

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
I was going to say it happened. I think it
happened when we were recording Black.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
Lily, That's right.

Speaker 7 (01:24:57):
We had done some work take and then yeah, and
we had done I've done this great jam with James
Poison and it was like, oh this all this feels
really good and I'm happy in this really happy place,
and Jason was playing with Mark Ronson and it was
things were looking so good for us, and then.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
Break and then I just remember the session stopped.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
And at first I was like, well, I guess you
didn't like where we were going with it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
I had no clue, and then they explained to me
what I can't remember.

Speaker 7 (01:25:28):
I think something something might have happened while we were on,
while we were there, but then yeah, this all happened
in the in the March in two thousand and eight.
And then I guess after that I just sort of
stopped making music. It kind of felt like the end
of my life. And I was twenty nine, and you know,
when you're twenty nine, you sort of think you're old,
you know, because you're nearly thirty, and thirty is the

(01:25:50):
end of your life, right, So I thought, well, you know,
I've had this great life and I've done this, I've
had all this great you know, I've really enjoyed my music.
Stuff that when you have an intense period, sometimes that
eighteen months feels more expansive than it really is. So
it felt like I've done a few years of this,
and then yeah, I just thought, Okay, that's the end

(01:26:11):
of my life. And then and they also it was
so painful. I kind of couldn't imagine thirty nine, forty nine,
fifty nine. I was just about how could I sort
of carry on with this amount of physical pain? And
then I guess, you know, anyone who's experienced grief is
just like slowly, slowly, slowly, it's like the sound being

(01:26:32):
sort of turned back up again, and you find little
moments or you find interest, so you find you cease.
I remember being in New York and seeing this couple
and she was pregnantly had a little baby, and I
remember sort of thinking, oh, like I had a little pine
for that, like, oh, in my future, I want to
be a parent. I remember feeling that, and that was
a little sort of crack of hope. And then, you know,

(01:26:55):
or I'd sit at the piano and just get like
two chords and think, oh, I want to finish that.
There were just little bits of things, but it's a
really really really really long time, you know. I And
when I was touring the Sea, I was still very
much in my sort of widowhood, and so I mean
it was it was useful to play the songs, but

(01:27:16):
it was really difficult to play them as well. And
also it attracted to me a lot of people who
were grieving too, which was very beautiful but also had
its own weight to it. You know. I remember meeting
a couple after a show and they had lost a
child before it was born, and they wanted to talk
to me about that, and they even wanted to show
me photographs, and I remember sort of thinking I am

(01:27:39):
not sort of qualified for that, but at the same time,
here I am in this space, which is I'm standing
on the stage talking about loss, and not many people
that are saying that this moment, and so it was
just I'd meet people in the street they say I
lost my brother, I lost my mother, I lost my partner.

(01:28:03):
People would write your letters I lost my husband, and
I just I felt in my heart were so open
and bleeding in that time. You know, just just like
the naivety that you can have if you haven't experienced loss,
you sort of walk around the world like, yeah, kind
of in control of my life, and you know, like
I just got to manifest this, and you just don't
realize how everything can change. In a moment. So I

(01:28:26):
guess when I came through that grief, the place I
arrived at was total gratitude at being alive, and you know,
and then I had my children, and then I felt
very differently about my life. I thought I really wanted
to live, you know, I want to make it, you know,
I want to make it and I want to survive
for them. So every day that I wake up, I'm
like an old person. You know, when you talk to

(01:28:46):
an eighty year old and they say, you say, how
are you and they say, well, I woke up today,
you know, they say that, It's like that's what I'm like.
Am I here? I am, I'm awake, you know, I'm here.
Like I just feel this massive gratitude and massive joy
all the time because I have been so low to

(01:29:07):
the point where I felt I don't want this life.
I don't want my life, and now I really really
want it, really want it. So I'm really grateful and
definitely play music help me to articulate those thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:29:22):
Well, I thank you for sharing that, and again I
love No, I fucking love your album. And I you know,
anyone listening now just please like give your support, like
this is really, really a great record and repeat listens
over and over again. And you know, I can't wait

(01:29:44):
to see this live. I'm going to see you this
week when you come to Blue Note. Of course, this
will be on the air way after the fact, so
if Corinth is in town then you need to support her.
But thank you for doing this for us, and I
appreciate you.

Speaker 7 (01:30:00):
Thanks, I appreciate it. Thanks everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
Uh, this is Quest Love and thank you once again, Uh,
miss Ray for joining us.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):
And we'll see you guys on the next go round
of Quest Love Supreme. All right, West Love Supreme is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,

(01:30:30):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.