Following some anonymity living in the Bronx with his Jamaican cousins then moving to LA, setting up a record label and making a film amongst other things, Tricky returns with his most personal album to date.
Knowle West Boy is his first release in 5 years and features a running theme of rediscovery… the American exile rediscovering his love of dear old Blighty; the veteran rediscovering the joy of making music; the experienced player rediscovering the struggle of being Knowle West’s very own Tricky Kid, the weird but defiant teen outsider who knew that with enough lust for life you could become a superstar.
Knowle West is the area of Bristol that Tricky grew up in, and the base of his new single ‘Council Estate’, a twisted Specials-worshipping punk celebration of self belief. Check out the video here.
‘Council Estate’ will be available digitally on the 23rd of June and physically on the 30th of June. The album will be released on 7th July via Domino.
Read what Tricky has to say on the new material below. Grab a cup of tea first though as he goes on a bit…
Knowle West Boy was recorded in London and LA. It was initially recorded over a year ago in London. But I wasn’t really happy with the writing. Some of it was just too generic. So I brought it back here to LA and rewrote everything. It’s totally self-produced apart from a couple of tracks that were co-produced by Switch. He definitely livened up Council Estate. He’s a good guy.
Knowle West is where I was born. It’s a white ghetto. I didn’t know what racism was until I left. My family’s mixed race, so we don’t see colour. I grew up on a council estate more as a white kid, but with Jamaican roots. But all of us there had something in common… we were poor.
I realised that I’d never written anything for these kind of people. I met a guy in Notting Hill who told me his songs had got him through being in prison. That’s amazing… but I’d never deliberately written anything for people like him, and me, and the people I grew up with. Like School Gates… that’s the true story of my girlfriend getting pregnant when she was 16. And that’s something every kid can relate to. Everything on that song is true. Council Estate… that song is the upbringing me and friends had. That’s why the album’s called Knowle West Boy. I mean… Coldplay’s all very well. But it all gets a bit whiny. I wanted lyrics like The Specials and Blondie and Banshees songs I loved as a kid, that someone like me can relate to.
It’s been a while since Vulnerable came out in 2003. I didn’t know it had been five years. I thought it was three!
The first two years I was living in New York. I was just… hanging out. I’d kinda got a bit fed up with it all. Album, tour… and then your year’s over. My life had become a cycle of albums. And I’d settled down but suddenly it had all got a bit crazy again.
I started hanging out with some Jamaican cousins of mine who live in The Bronx. And I immediately noticed that no-one there knew who I was. We used to just hang outside this Jamaican food shop in Manhattan. One of the guys, Rod, is on this album. And we used to do Jamaican chatting to each other. Then we’d go to a club or a bar and just rap over music.
So a year turned into two, and then turned three, and then I came to LA to do some work for Jerry Bruckheimer, for a few different films. He’s an incredible guy! Three months turned into six months in a hotel, so I thought I might as well get an apartment. I kinda got stuck in LA! I was doing the same things I’d been doing in New York… partying, to be honest with you.
LA hasn’t affected me at all… I’m still totally me. But one thing LA can do is mess you up and fuck you up more than New York or London. I’ve seen people move to LA and within a year they’re tore down and burnt out. If you don’t stay focussed you can get into big trouble here. And I nearly did. You don’t really wanna be in the studio when you can be on Sunset Boulevard drinking Saki! Within a few months I knew everybody here. There wasn’t a club or party I couldn’t get into. It just turned into one big party.
So I had to move out of Hollywood. Then I started the Brown Punk label with Chris Blackwell. And I directed a movie called Brown Punk - The Movie. That’s finished now but it took about a year.
It’s not like I didn’t wanna do an album as well. I spent a year trying to get a deal, to be honest with you. And I had some really terrible meetings. Really, really bad meetings. Really quite comical. After one particularly bad one I went to see Chris Blackwell in London. And I said, “Chris… maybe I’m gonna have to come out on Brown Punk.” But he said it’s not good for an artist to be on his own label. And I agreed, but it was getting to desperation time. Chris says, “Listen… go and see Domino”.
He set up a meeting so I thought he and Laurence Bell were friends. Me and Laurence had a great chat, then we meet again, we’re both interested. So I ask, “How long have you known Chris?” And Laurence says, “I don’t”. I ask, “Well, how come I’m here?” He says, “I don’t know.” It was perfect. I signed to Domino.
The bands Domino are breaking are not totally conventional. Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand may sound poppy and have great songs, but they haven’t made it in the traditional way. And this is perfect for me because, with this album… I’m lucky enough to have my own sound, but with this album I wanted to do a track like Council Estate, that rips off The Specials but takes ‘em into my world. And like Puppy Toy, which is a blues song.
When I was a kid I always wanted to be in The Specials. I dreamed I was onstage with Terry Hall. With this album I thought… I make music. I have the opportunity to be The Specials on one song, and Tom Waits on another song, and Howlin’ Wolf on another song. Past Mistake, though, is more like the old me, a track that people would expect from me. Coalition is me wanting to be a hardcore rapper. So all my dreams come true on this album. ‘Cos I’ve always been a wannabe!
I needed an English label to do that, and to bring me home. Epitaph was a great label for me. But they had no presence in England. This is my home country. I’m moving back soon, and I wanted to make an English album.
There are lots of singers on this album. I don’t really consider myself a vocalist. I can’t carry a whole album with my voice. It’s just being realistic. I can’t sing. And I love working with female vocalists. A lot of my lyrics are from a female point of view. I wish I could sing like Janis Joplin or PJ Harvey. But I can’t. So I need - need - a female singer to help me.
There’s a girl called Alex Mills, who’s on my Brown Punk label. She sings on Puppy Toy. She does the spoken word bits, too. She’s from Leeds. The reggae vocalist on Bacative and Baligaga is my boy Rodigan from New York… one of the guys I hung out with in The Bronx. Seven years we’ve been friends, and he inspires me. Baligaga is a made-up word… don’t ask me what the fuck it means! Bacative is Jamaican slang… if someone has your back, you’ve got ‘bacative’.
Joseph is one of two songs I’ve named after the tune’s lead singer. I met him outside a food shop in LA. He was a busker. Problem is… I’ve lost his details. I have no idea where this kid is now. So I called it Joseph so, hopefully, he hears it somewhere and gets in touch. ‘Cos I want to work with him again.
The same sort of thing has happened a few times on this album. The female voice on Bacative, for example, is this Spanish girl who I don’t really know and who isn’t really a singer. And Veronika… she’s a friend of mine from a really good band in Italy. And she wrote that song, not me. But I changed the music. So, again, I named the track after her.
The singer on Past Mistake and School Gates is my French-Moroccan ex-girlfriend Lubna, who I’ve just had an horrific break-up with. It’s funny… me and Lubna wrote Past Mistake when we were just turning from good to bad. One day much later we were in bed listening to it and we realised that it was about us going horribly wrong. It’s like we knew it was going to happen.
Cross To Bear is sung by an Icelandic girl called Hafdis. The song’s inspired by Scorcese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ and I just thought her voice would be great because its kinda innocent. I thought she’d be good at playing Jesus. Not everybody could get away with that.
And Council Estate is just me. It’s the first single I’ve ever done with just me on vocals. I couldn’t whisper that song. I had to come out of myself and do a loud, screaming vocal. I wanted to be a proper frontman on that one.
I covered Kylie’s Slow because I love that song. And the video is one of the best fucking videos I’ve ever seen. It’s sexy as fuck.
I was really conscious about my lyrics this time around. I find it easy to write lyrics… I’m blessed. And I really love doing it. But sometimes when something comes easy you get lazy. I’d reached the point where I was just… rhyming. So I really focussed on writing songs that mean something.
This album could make people uncomfortable. It’s a jumble of thoughts. When I first came into the public eye in the mid-’90s I was misunderstood. People think I’m a hardcore, dark guy. If you meet me, I’m quite a funny guy. I’m clumsy, I make fun of myself all the time. But that’s not how I’m perceived. But I don’t regret anything. I take full responsibility.
I’m so excited about Knowle West Boy. I feel like it’s my first record all over again. I just want people to hear it, I wanna talk about it, and then I just want to get out there and tour for a long time. But I’m not sure this record would have been so exciting if I hadn’t spent those years in The Bronx, being anonymous, having to queue for the club like everybody else. I realised that I’d started to take this incredible life as a musician for granted. I needed to be taken down a peg or two.
Now, I’m feeling like a kid again. That’s why the album’s called Knowle West Boy. This is where I’m from.
Tricky April 2008
