Tricky

TRICKY himself about his new album MIXED RACE

The album’s called Mixed Race because being mixed race is the single biggest influence on my music. You sat down at the table in my house and you saw every colour. It’s made me much more open-minded than I could’ve been. I come from both worlds.

Back in Knowle West I grew up in a white ghetto and could go to a Jamaican club where there’s no white people, and a white club with no other black people. And I never noticed. When I was twelve and my cousins Mark and Miles from the first line-up of Massive Attack would get ready to go out, they would be playing everything from Parliament to T-Rex. My Uncle Ken who brought me up is a white guy who got me into black music - he used to play Al Green, Sam Cooke and other legends all the time. So I grew up with all this different music, I’ve been blessed because no-one can put my music in a box – it’s not black, it’s not white, it’s not female, it’s not male.

Since Knowle West Boy I’ve been promoting that album, touring and looking for a singer. Normally I just meet singers by accident. But I’d been thinking about Mixed Race while touring the last album, and one of the live vocalists was Francesca – Frankey Riley. So the two of us just started recording immediately. All I’ve been doing is touring and recording. ‘Cos it’s getting harder out there, and the harder it is, the harder you have to work.

Also, I’m staying in Paris right now. My daughter’s getting older and Los Angeles is just too far away from her, so I needed to move back. I like being in London, and I’m still here on and off. But I’ve got family and friends here and I don’t get much time to myself.

So Paris hasn’t had that much effect on my music, but it has given me space to work. Also, there are a lot of horns on this album and that wouldn’t have happened in London. Here, you’ve got to go through people’s managers, and I’m too impatient for that. A lot of the players on Mixed Race I just found on the street or met through friends. One guy was playing sax in the little square outside the studio and I just asked him to come in. This album was so different for me because it was so easy to get what I wanted in Paris.

And it’s true that I’ve agreed to work with Massive Attack again. A year ago I would’ve said no. But what I like about it now is that, if we do an album together, people’s expectations are gonna be high. It won’t be easy. We’re gonna have to make something really special. I think it’s a challenge.

Mixed Race is a gangster album. I can’t do gangsta rap. That’s not me. I can’t talk about being a bad boy, ‘cos I’m not. But I’ve been around that. So this is the closest I can get to a gangsta album. Its very gully, as Jamaicans call it… very dark. Tense, street and urban. It’s like a movie, almost.

This is also the most uptempo album I’ve done. I wanted something that could be played in a club… maybe! Which is unusual for me. Because I don’t give a shit about clubs.

MORE on Tricky’s new album “Mixed Race” + several links