+ (614) GENESIS OWUSU

Issue 02Music

4 Nov

Written By Francesca Nwokeocha

ISSUE 01

PHOTOGRAPHY Tor Wills

STYLIST Marisa Suen

INTERVIEW Francesca Nwokeocha

ISSUE 02

PHOTOGRAPHY Savanna Ruedy

STYLIST Tsiann George

INTERVIEW Mustafa Afraz

THE RISE OF THE GOONS

Genesis Owusu is well-settled into a cozy LA Airbnb talking me through specific episodes of Nathan For You; a 2013 series that’s captured his attention. No stranger to the road after his intense touring schedule, he is taking some needed downtime to write new music; the first in a while, he tells me. We breeze over freakshow session stories and the speed date studio time he’s spending with producers, searching for the spark to blow HIS HIGHLY ACCLAIMED AND STELLAR DEBUT ALBUM SWNT (Smiling With No Teeth) out of the water. It can’t be easy to dive back into the depth of creation after an album that gifted four Arias, a 23- date fully sold-out Aus tour, an American tour, a European tour and all the press you can imagine; but it’s one he’s ready and eager for. We touched on his life post SWNT, his preparation for the future and life outside of music, when the Genesis Owusu rollercoaster really picked up the pace and how he’s been putting his whole foot into his music for quite some time.

SCOTT MCMASTER Pants, GARCE BROWDERLOW NANAI Hat, MAISON MARGIELA Tabi Boots

614. You started making music with your brother Kojo aka Citizen Kay. Was he your initial influence in getting started in music?

In regards to making music, definitely my brother. He’s 5 years older than me and I’m the little brother. I’d always get teased about following in his footsteps and I was like “nah I’m not gonna make music and do something else”. He turned our family study into his own studio so we couldn’t escape from what he was doing. Everyday I’d walk into the kitchen and he’ll be making beats like “yo come do something on this”. Finally one day I was like “yeah sure” and I left it for a while. A week later, the inspiration hit in this public bathroom and I just wrote the verse. That was the first verse of my career.

614. You’re big on breaking stereotypes and being labeled or boxed in a particular category. Why is that?

I definitely feel that my experience growing up in a predominantly white community, my two options were to either assimilate, keep my head down and fit in or wear that label of the outcast to the highest degree. I chose the latter. It instilled a sense of protest in me where everything I did had to be an opposition to every expectation in place for me. I guess that way of thinking has protruded into the rest of my life and career where I don’t like to stay on a particular sound or particular aesthetic for a long time. I keep switching up so no one can categorize or box me with any label.

614. Has it been a struggle to get to that level of confidence in being unapologetically black?

As a child I knew the direction I needed to go in but it was definitely a huge process/journey, in figuring out how it is to be unapologetically black and unapologetically me. I knew from a young age I didn’t want to assimilate and be like anyone else or what anyone expected me to be. Actually figuring out how to enact being completely me and unapologetically black — especially with not many black people around me to show me — is definitely a lifelong process. It took me until year 11 or 12 to start telling white people to stop touching my hair. Just figuring out what is actually right and wrong is still a learning process I’m going through today. But gaining the confidence to do it, from a young age I just saw those two options and I chose to wear the label of the outcast. I knew that if I was going to take that then I was going to have to either take the consequences or find a way to benefit from it.

614. Do you have any advice for black people who are still on the journey of solidifying their identity?

My advice would be that self-fulfillment is the biggest thing — well for me anyway. I could get all the accolades, compliments and applaud from the outside but if it’s not matched with what’s internal then none of that really matters. Vice versa, if I feel content internally then no matter what is thrown at me externally, I’m able to handle it. In terms of being able to live and own my blackness, that’s what I needed internally, so being able to grab that and live with that really outweighed any consequences or negativity that came externally from taking that decision. If you decide to own your identity and live it whole-heartedly, the benefits will outweigh any negativity that comes with it.

614. Now, more than ever, it’s a prerequisite of being an artist to, in some ways, sell your personality and music. How do you feel about that?

Straight up and honestly, It’s very much the tightrope between not wanting to do it but being an artist in this space; needing to do it at the same time. A lot of the things that I do end up posting are a compromise, I mostly try and fuck around and as long as it’s entertaining for me then I can live with it. Even though I don’t really want to do it at the start. That’s where a lot of my Meta and absurd TikTok shit comes from.

[Top Left] ACNE STUDIOS Suit, [Top Right] SCOTT MCMASTER Pants, GARCE BROWDERLOW NANAI Hat, MAISON MARGIELA Tabi Boots, [Bottom] YOHJI YAMAMOTO Knit, Stylist Own Pants

“We just throw random shit at a wall and hope it sticks.”

— Nerdie

614. The last two years have catapulted your career into an entirely different stratosphere. How has your idea of success changed, or not changed, since its release?

I don’t know if it has changed to be honest. I think what made Smiling With No Teeth what it was, was my initial idea of success. Which was just being able to live comfortably, in a physical and emotional sense, with my art in its purest form without compromise and that hasn’t really changed. It’s been interesting to see that pushing forward with that has ironically brought about the more regular definition of success, awards, accolades and stuff like that. Success to me was never centred around winning an ARIA or grammy or anything like that but, it ended up happening through my own definition.

614. Do you feel that there’s a separation between you as a person and yourself as an artist?

For a long time, no, but now it’s gotten to a point where I’m trying to make that separation as more of an artistic choice going into whatever the next project or batch of music is. It’s been a very interesting process because a lot of my music, pretty much all of it up until this point, has been drawn on real life experience. There were things that I felt I needed to get off my chest and now I can live that with my personal life fulfilled. After SWNT, its success and then COVID, it was as if I put everything I personally needed into that album. So when COVID was happening, it was like no more life was actually lived up until now. I was put in a weird space where I felt I had nothing more I needed to say or draw from because I already had that on record. So the natural solution was to create a new character and make music as that character.

614. How do you approach the process of reinvention, especially after receiving so much acclaim? What has your restart looked like?

After SWNT, I didn’t make anything for a while and when I did, it kept ending up sounding similar and I realised it was because I was trying to make new and the different music, while repeating the same process over and over again. So that process of reinvention meant reinventing other aspects of my life as well. A big part of that was cutting my hair. I’d had my locs for six and a half years, it was a big thing for me. It was a big part of my image and of that era. I also had to change how certain parts of my life worked and what it looked like by creating and drawing inspiration from things other than life experiences i.e. from plays, literature and other shit like that, you know? Trying to change the whole formula, procedure and everything, because you can’t keep rinsing the same process and expecting different results.

614. Do you have a recurring thought or mantra that you resort to when you’re dealing with the fuckshit?

It is what it is, is it.
I think it can be taken in different ways. Firstly it can taken in a “it’s out of your control’’ type of thing but also that’s not a concrete definition either. I take it in a “it can be that way because I chose those particular steps that put me in this current place right now”. I can either keep going or drop out.

614. What do you think the biggest driver behind your work ethic is and what continues to propel you forward?

I think it’s very interesting because I’m in a strange part of my career. It’s now being propelled to a place where it’s got an engine of its own, it’s like a Tesla now and it’s on self drive. It’s more about me now having to keep up with the consequences of my past actions. It’s not really about how to drive it forward anymore, it’s how to keep up.

614. And do you think you had a specific moment where you were like “Fuck… it’s here”?

No, not a specific moment because it felt like everything came at the same time and then it all just kept coming. That was the “Oh Fuck” era. Around last year on the Australian leg of the SWNT Tour, it started with eight shows and they all sold out, which was already my longest headline to date. Then my team was like “let’s add more shows” and it went to ten. Then we added more shows which sold out and more shows which sold out. In the end it went from the eight original shows to twenty three fully sold out. That was really the start of the roller coaster, at least from an external point. From an internal point, I was the music and putting my WHOLE FOOT in that thang. Outwardly though that was when shit started coming to me and that was the “the consequences of my actions are coming” moment which felt like it hasn’t really stopped. After that came all the interviews, accolades, American leg, European leg. All that shit. Even till now, it hasn’t stopped, like we’re out here in LA.

[right] XNORKPOWKA Bib, [left] YOHJI YAMAMOTO Knit, Stylist’s own pants

614. How do you find that balance now between creating with authenticity and selling your stories and personality to an audience?

I think trying to carve out time to live outside of music and not letting music and “this whole thing” be the end-all be-all. [I’m] also trying to… Read more with 614 ISSUE 02..