FKA twigs' "What's In My Bag?" | Amoeba Music

FKA twigs goes record shopping at Amoeba Hollywood in this "What's In My Bag?" episode. The English avant-pop singer, songwriter, producer, and dancer talks about Minnie Riperton's way of singing about love; Prince's ability to build a world incorporating music, fashion, and dancers; growing up on music that didn't have any rules, and finding her way in to darker industrial music. FKA twigs GRAMMY-winning album EUSEXUA is available now via Atlantic Records.

FKA twigs' picks:
• Various Artists - Ally McBeal: The Complete Series (DVD)
• Minnie Riperton - Stay in Love (LP)
• Leon Ware - Musical Massage (LP)
• Dorothy Ashby - The Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby (LP)
• Funkadelic - Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow (LP)
• FKA twigs - EP1 (12")
• Prince - Planet Earth (CD)
• Tania Maria - The Lady From Brazil (LP)
• Nona Hendryx - Female Trouble (LP)
• Skinny Puppy - Last Rights (LP)

Featured Artist: FKA twigs

Editor: Jacob Gray
Executive Producer: Rachael McGovern
Producer/Director: Craig Miller
Assistant Director: Derich Heath
Cameras: Derich Heath, Jacob Gray
Audio Recorded by: Patrick Emswiler
Assistant Editor: Patrick Emswiler

Watch FKA twigs' "What's In My Bag?" episode on Amoeba.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Hi, I'm FK Twiggs. I'm at Amoeba and this is what's in my bag. The first thing I'd like to show you is this Ali McBeal box set. I chose it because I saw it as soon as I came in and it gave me joy. It reminded me of a very specific time in my life being a kid and being very curious about what adult life is, trying to stay awake too late to watch it. Like you know the vibe where you're sitting on your sofa and you're just staying very still. Like and then you're just hoping that your parents won't send you to sleep, like if you're very well behaved.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

I was being chased. It was worse. Disco.

SPEAKER_05 1:17

I haven't thought about Allie McBeal for a really long time, but I just picked it up because I had like a very visceral reaction to it.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

I picked up a couple of mini Ripperton vinyls. I've kind of been in a deep mini Ripperton hole recently.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Mystical roots making me flow free.

SPEAKER_05 1:53

Just the way that the music's recorded with such integrity and the musicianship and her voice and the lyrics and it really speaks to the time of love songs where there's no ego, you know, like in modern day music. There's not a lot of love songs where artists truly like relent and truly are submissive to their love. And Minnie Ripperton makes me feel like I can be very vulnerable in giving the whole of myself to somebody in an earnest way. And I think I personally really miss this earnest way of singing about love. But I mean I grew up in the 90s, so I grew up with boys to men and these kind of like I'm on my knees for you kind of vibe of songs.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Oh God, give me no bring this meeting.

SPEAKER_05 2:50

I remember going to an RB club with one of my best girlfriends. We're probably talking maybe in like 2014. And we'd like dressed up and we'd spent so long getting ready. And then like we were dancing to these holes in Loyal. And then I remember looking at my friend and being like, I don't feel good dancing to this song. And she was like, Me neither. And I was like, I'm I don't want to dance to it. Just her range as well as a singer. It really inspired me to use my voice in a way that is like an instrument. So I I think my younger self definitely studied a lot of her vocal isms, and I used to try and sing as as high as her as like a way of training. So I guess in some ways, like I owe some of my my range to Minnie and trying to keep up with her. When I was 19, I came to LA for the first time, and I was trying to get a visa so that I could stay and I could pursue music. And I saw this old guy doing pull-ups, like you know, in the gym, doing like pull-ups on the beach. And I'd ride down there and watch the sun come up, and there'd be this old guy, like just like going for it, shredded, t-shirt wrapped around his head, like so cool. We got talking, and I said, I'm I'm from London, I'm trying to find work out here, I need a visa. And he was like, Well, you can come and and maybe like he'll like be my assistant or something. And I was like, Okay, great. So he said, like, to come to his house and meet his wife, and it was like filled with music, like filled with vinyl, filled with music sheets, like everywhere, like music sheets everywhere, especially like this one room. And and I met his wife, and I realized that this was Leon Ware. I picked Leon Ware because obviously he's a musical genius and has worked with everyone, like so many of my heroes, from Maxwell to Quincy Jones to Michael Jackson, just like a level of songwriting and a level a level of musicianship that is like rare these days. It's it's like a legend. The next record that I've picked is Dorothy Ashby. I picked Dorothy Ashby because she really helped me get through lockdown. I'm very into any musician, singer, or artist that is able to subvert their natural medium into something completely different. Like I'd never heard a heart being played in the way that she interprets her instrument. And I find that very inspiring, even though it's very different to the music that I make. I get very inspired by people that are testing the boundaries of what you think is possible. When I listen to her music, it's really a stream of consciousness. It feels like she's totally in flow state. Which is very inspiring to me because I work in flow state, but then I highly organise afterwards, and I feel like with Dorothy, it's it's just like a stream of consciousness, like almost as if you wrote a poem with really beautiful words and it goes nowhere, but it also makes complete sense. Okay, next I picked Funkadelic because Funkadelic was just a very big part of my childhood.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Your man and your hands were just the house.

SPEAKER_05 7:22

It's really indicative of the type of music that was played in the kitchen, washing up, cooking. Like Funkadelic George Clinton in Parliament, it feels to me, it's like that's my communal music. When I think of that music, I think of family, and I have a very small family and a very broken family, so so for me, this is where I kind of find my solace in belonging to something, particularly as a child. I feel that that Funkadelic like really changed the landscape of what it was to make, I guess you could call it some sort of RB or or music like based with that rhythm. It really disrupted everything and it started a new genre. Also, my mum and my dad went on their first date to a funkadelic concert and they played in Birmingham, which is where my family are from, and it's a very amazing but you know, maybe quite like obscu obscure place in London. Like not a lot of people go there. Ozzy Osborne's from there. That they went to Birmingham and they played this concert there, and it's it's kind of where my mum and my dad found like their mutual love of music. Yeah, it just reminds me of home, it reminds me of being young, it reminds me of washing up, cooking. But then also as a musician, I just have great respect for again being a genre disruptor. I got this because I don't have one, but it's my first ever record. It was a white label that I made, I think probably in 2012. Yeah, I don't I don't have one and I've not seen one for a very long time, so I got this to honour my younger artists. This was made on a guitar and a Dave Smith Tempest, but the Tempest is it's a very wholesome, like analogue drum machine that in many ways has been one of my main instruments to play because I don't play like a traditional musician, but that drum machine is me because I have a very airy voice, and the sounds on the Dave Smith Tempest they hit really hard, but they're very woody. It's like they have like a hole in the middle of them, and so that hole allows for my voice to come through. This sound, I don't think I realised it at the time, but it it was like a sound that was very new and allowed for RB and soul and electronic music to be completely broken down to like a raw skeleton. It's like an unfinished sketch or something. Um so yeah, I got this to honour my younger self.

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Oh, I got this as well because it was the first ever CD that I bought.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

I try to be a beta. I'm the world. I'm the world, the one you want to see.

SPEAKER_05 10:48

I think through Prince I learned what it was to be a world builder and to pay so much attention in everything I do from the music to the fashion to the band, the dances, to completely create a whole world is something that it's the hardest thing to do as an artist, and and few artists have been able to do it actually. But Prince is one of the main ones to do it and do it so successfully and so completely, really, for the whole of his career.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

That nobody ever wins. The next generation goes up.

SPEAKER_05 11:32

Things inspire you when you don't know how, but if you like look at even the symbol, which you know Prince used quite politically when he felt like he didn't own his name, but even to think now, like what I did with Eusexua and the symbol of Eusexua and how that became such a a stamp of like the era that I'm still currently in, I can't help but think that subconsciously, probably this inspired it in some way.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

High enough to call me, but you can't reach the bar I love you, baby.

SPEAKER_05 12:06

I always speak about Tanya Maria a lot. Again, this is something that was played at home a lot. Tanya Maria used her voice like an instrument. She was able to tell a story through the sounds in like a s a different way that felt very playful and very authoritarian and almost like more than something like in between a verse or a chorus. Like it her scat was the main point of the song. Um, it wasn't an afterthought or a decoration, like it is the main ingredient. I think she's a multi-instrumentalist as well, and her live shows look absolutely credible incredible, and it's really complex to true deep musicianship. She's a like a craftswoman and and it's pure skill. I'm so grateful now. Like when I was young, I used to think it was like super weird because my mum was a salsa teacher and I just grew up on so much like Latin fusion and jazz and like a lot of like free jazz and acid jazz. It was like honestly like hectic, like being like a kid and it's I'm like at home it's like at home it's like acid jazz Sundays, you know. But now I'm so grateful for this kind of musical idea that anything is possible, you know, because I've grown up on music that didn't have any rules. I don't know this artist, but Derek, who's behind the camera, suggested her to me. I think Nonna Hendricks. Derek said that I would like her a lot because she kind of maybe has some elements that are similar to Grace Jones. And I don't know, I just thought I'd try it.

SPEAKER_06 14:30

I have your press release from RCA, your label, in front of me, and it it opens with this incredible quote. It says, I don't think of myself as a female, I don't think of myself as a black female, and I don't think of myself as a rock artist. Did you really say that? Uh yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Well what I mean, what does that mean? If I don't walk around thinking about uh define I'm a female. I'm a rock artist. If I don't define myself, I don't feel the need for other people to do it.

SPEAKER_05 14:59

My last record is skinny poppy. I picked this because it's one of my boyfriend's favourite bands, and I wanted to get him something today. You know, it's so amazing when you like make a new friend or when you meet a new partner or a new collaborator, especially as an adult, and you really get scored in a new type of music. My boyfriend loves kind of deep, industrial, like darker sounds, and I've never heard of anything on his playlist, and it's always so inspiring, and I think it's had a really deep impact on me as an artist and kind of helped me like reconnect almost to my teenage self because I think I didn't growing up I didn't know that like this music was like okay for me to listen to as someone that's like biracial or brown. I didn't know that there was like an in for me to like listen to like I mean I I did I did listen to like punk music but more kind of like 80s punk like x-ray specs, who of course has like a female woman of colour as the lead, or like I felt like I needed a weigh in of like someone that looked like me. But being with Jordan, it's it's kind of made this like weird link to some of the rhythms and the darker industrial, like like it's like this fucked up romance that can be found in this sort of music. It's been great to be able to revisit this side of myself as an adult because I think if I had a way in as a teenager, you know, it would have been so cool. But now I've I've found a way in.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

Thank you so much. We're so happy to have you in here. Yeah, it was so fun.