Yeah, you have to walk such a fine line to play that game. You have to fit the perceived cultural zeitgeist at any given time.
Well, being a celebrity is not that great. Sometimes it's cool if you want to get free shit, but apart from that, I don't think that I actually benefit from it or use it for anything. D'you know what I mean? I don't know what that thing actually is. I spend my time how I always spend my time — now I have a baby who takes up my time. Apart from that, everything else I do is the way I used to do it. And it's interesting. I mean, what's your take on it, who else do you talk to? Who do you interview?
Who, me? I dunno, just other musicians.
I mean, that's the other thing, I don't even have a super team — I didn't have a manager until two weeks ago. I put the album out and did it myself. But I still don't know how it works, or how it's supposed to work.
Yeah — I guess one thing I've always loved about your aesthetic is that everything is a deconstruction. Like your new album has a song called "Teqkilla", which is almost a takedown of typical hip hop alcohol tunes. It mentions brand names, and it's about getting wasted, but it's really caustic and industrial, and it's almost like a deconstruction of itself as it goes on and gets weirder minute by minute.
I think that, yeah, I suppose that's probably true, because I made that song with Dave [Taylor] and he drinks a lot. Yeah, tequila, his number one drink. And yeah, "Teqkilla", that's good in the set because I get to have a drink during the set.
You performed at the 2009 Grammys with T.I., Jay-Z, Kanye West and Lil' Wayne the day before you gave birth to your son — and at the time, one might have been mistaken for thinking that were almost entering the whole pop-rap fraternity there. What did you feel about that whole thing?
I dunno; I mean, I just think that it's okay to be yourself, you know what I mean? I know that everyone's into the idea of a fraternity and shit, but it's okay for me to be myself. Like it's okay for me to be me, to have humanism. I felt that, especially, when I went back to England recently, and it's weird — because in England, I feel like they still kind of get it a little bit.
What do you mean, "get it"?
I mean, they're used to having a Bjork, or artists that do their own thing. But you know, here, the idea of me not wanting it is seen as a failure. Instead of just, "Oh, this person doesn't want it because she wants this other thing".
I think it has to do with youth culture. Because youth culture is changing the way we, like, go and find out about little secrets. You know, like "Only I know about this thing", you know? And you take a movie to your friend's house and it's all built around that sort of thing. And now because of the internet, everyone gets everything all at the same time. And I dunno, maybe that's why people say "Why don't you want 500 million hits" and blah blah blah. That's what it about, and it's okay that, 20 years from now, someone will discover my little record and think they've found something that no one else has heard.
