Born Adrian Thaws in Bristol, England, trip-hop pioneer Tricky stands poised to declare his own British Invasion for the cyberspace generation. A freshly-minted New Yorker, Tricky has been piecing together Angels With Dirty Faces--with the new romantic dread, vocalist Martina Topley-Bird--in between DJing at SoHo's Life nightclub and remixing the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize" for Bad Boy Entertainment. After creating a catchphrase with the title of his most recent release, Pre-Millennium Tension, his upcoming set just might hammer the final nail in the coffin of guitar-centered rock 'n' roll for the new age. His influence can even be felt on Ray Of Light, the acclaimed album from pop-culture Rorschach Madonna. Behold Tricky's inner visions...
LAUNCH:
What did you think of U2's Pop album? It sounded a lot like your stuff.
TRICKY:
I'm really critical, and like, it's all the trendiness. The fact that they called it Pop I think is cute, because their album is pop, right? And the thing like the video where they're dressed up like those guys that do "YMCA"--they're trying to take a piss without taking a piss. It's just like an excuse for an album. Now if they would've done it in the press and said, "Look, this is a pop album. We're just trying to peak our credibility, so we're working with all these young producers, and it's a pop album." But when they called the album Pop, it's like they're taking a piss; it's supposed to be a piss take, but it ain't. I know what takin' a piss is, because I do it in music all the time. I take a piss out my record company all the time. But they're not takin' a piss, they're just doing business, pretending they're takin' a piss. So I'm really so critical that there might be one of the best songs I've ever heard on the album; I won't give it a chance, because they've lied to me. That's what I feel like. I'm trying to keep things very honest. And if I see someone's nature which I call is untrue, I just stop listening to their music. Which is a bit hinderish, but I can't help it. And I know it's not a good thing, but I can't help it.
LAUNCH:
Your musical innovations have prompted some to call you the new Prince. Do you have a favorite Prince album?
TRICKY:
Well, you see, Christopher Tracy and Her Parade was the most albums I listened to. But there are songs like "I Would Die 4 U"...
LAUNCH:
I heard you've done a cover of "When Doves Cry."
TRICKY:
I never really did it. I've got in on a DAT. But I've never done anything with it; I don't know why. Fingers just get stuck there sometimes.
LAUNCH:
I heard the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA lost all these tapes of beats because of a flood in his basement. He said he'd just make more.
TRICKY:
See how big he is for him to say that? If that was me, I'd be crying like a baby, and I'd be so miserable. The RZA has got a wicked aura.
LAUNCH:
How was it working on that Tricky Vs. The Gravediggaz song, "Tonite's A Special Nite?"
TRICKY:
Deep. When we first worked together, we'd never met each other. The first time we met was in the studio. And he was in London. He'd been doing interviews all day, running around all day. So they were mad tired. So we met at like 12 o'clock at night, and laid some four tracks. My friend Dobie did a track. He doesn't say a lot; it's energy. You can feel him different.
LAUNCH:
Does RZA listen to your music?
TRICKY:
I think so, yeah. But he knew about me. I think I'm the only person he's worked with, especially from where I'm comin' from. And I know he's not narrow-minded--he listens to everything.
LAUNCH:
Sometimes my fellow writers will act like they haven't read their peers' work. Do musicians act shady as well?
TRICKY:
Oh, I do get people getting negative towards me sometimes, yeah. Like say someone want to meet me, right? They can be lazy attitude, thinking I've got a lazy attitude first. You do get weird kind of vibes sometimes. I had a weird situation with this artist who wants to work with me, and I didn't want to work with him. And he keeps telling people that we're hooking up. And I said to someone the other day, "Tell him I don't wanna work with him." No disrespect; I'd do it--I haven't got the time.
LAUNCH:
This wouldn't be Courtney Love, for Hole's next album Celebrity Skin, by any chance?
TRICKY:
No, I'm talking about the guy from Rage Against The Machine. I ain't got no time to do it. It's weird the way people try to treat you. Obviously he wants to work with me. Obviously, he's got no respect for me whatsoever. So I can't understand why you would want to work with someone you have no respect for. 'Cause it's obvious. He came into my dressing room when I was in Los Angeles, walked straight past me--goes straight past me with his people--and starts talking to my people. And I left. I just went, 'cause I don't hang out. A dressing room is to kill time, and then as soon as the show is done, I'm gone. And I left. I'm doing a social thing with record companies, so I just left. And the next day, I get a phone call saying, he wants to meet up with you. What the fuck is that? You want to meet up with me, you totally ignore me? Obviously, he's got no respect for me whatsoever. I can't understand why he'd wanna work with me.
LAUNCH:
Well, what about Courtney Love?
TRICKY:
Why I don't wanna work with her is I think we'd clash. I know we'd clash, because she wants me to make music for her. I'll say when it starts and when it finishes. And she might consider some of the stuff a demo, or she might say, "Redo this." I'm not big enough to be that open-minded yet. I'm trying to get there. Like when I work with musicians, I hum bass lines out to them. Guitar parts...I'm not big enough yet to let someone play their own shit on mine. It's like one person, that's the guitarist Patricia Valiant. Hopefully as I get older, I'll be able to work with people, and let them. But at the moment, I'm not. She must have a strong personality to get to where she is. It's gonna be two strong personalities, and it's just gonna go boom. And I'd rather not do that. I love what she does, like that song, "I want my cake and eat it too"? No, "I wanna be the girl with the most cake"? That is fuckin' brilliant songwriting. Fuckin' wicked. I always wanted to work with Kurt Cobain as well.
LAUNCH:
Do you think In Utero and Pre-MillenniumTension are similar? The creative process for both seems to involve discarding fans who have jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak.
TRICKY:
Not just fans, just about the way people perceive me. I didn't want to be involved with a lot of stuff. Say Maxinquaye, for instance--I couldn't make an album like Maxinquaye again. I've been fucking around with breakbeats since I was like 15. I was rapping on top of breakbeats since I was 15. Unfortunately, by the time I made an album, I'd already kind of moved on. So by the time I'd made Maxinquaye, I left the kind of, you know, rap. I had a vocalist and I'd moved on. I thought I'd, like, advanced, as in trying to take that somewhere else. Even though it's not hip-hop. I think Maxinquaye is blues. It's struggling music.
LAUNCH:
I think Maxinquaye is hip-hop.
TRICKY:
I think it's hip-hop, but I don't want to say that, because we'll get someone saying, "This ain't fucking hip-hop." But I think it's hip-hop, right? So by the time I did that, sometimes I look at my crowd--and I love all people--I've struggled, and I want some people who've struggled to listen to my music. So I kind of wanted to just swell that pop thing. 'Cause I went pop in England, and I was just fucked. It was yuppie coffee-table music. But I destroyed it with remixes and shit like that. So I destroyed it very quickly with my persona. I just didn't want to get caught up in people taking me for granted, and just wanting to hear another Maxinquaye. Fuck that.
LAUNCH:
What do you think of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the late Haitian artist?
TRICKY:
I've really just started seeing his stuff. His stuff is wild, his paintings are like... immediate. They didn't give him credit, apparently. They just showed the European side, right? I don't even know a lot about him, but you can just feel his paintings, his energy. He was a new age of black man. I think he was an advanced black kid from the ghetto. And people called him freaky, people called him weird. But it's not that he's freaky or he's weird--he's just advanced. He's come to another level.
LAUNCH:
Growing up in Bristol, England, did you have a favorite album by the Beatles?
TRICKY:
I never listened to the Beatles. Everybody thinks I did. I was into the Specials. I never listened to the Beatles, Stones, David Bowie. I never listened to any of that. I listened to the Specials and rap. That was it. Then, I got into Prince, but it was out of luck. I come from a white ghetto, and I was the only black family. It was bad, bad area. It's like Brooklyn, but white boys. Like Hell's Kitchen, sort of. All my friends, ever since I've been in school, have been Asian, white, black, Italians, Irish. Then I moved into a black community.
LAUNCH:
So you dated Bjork for a while?
TRICKY:
I'll never get involved with anybody in music again, unless they were coming from a totally different department from where I'm comin' from. Or they lived in a different part of the world, or they were low-key. 'Cause I'd be on tour, and I'd see people wearing Bjork t-shirts. And then people would come over to me and say, "Do you go out with Bjork?" And it's some kid I don't know. My relationship with her, to be truthful--I didn't treat her properly. If I start seeing a girl, I have to be completely honest with her and say, "Look, don't...the situation between us is what it is. And don't try to think ahead any further." Because I travel a lot, I smoke too much weed, and if I say I'm gonna call you tomorrow, I'll forget, and I don't want to disrespect you like that. A couple of years ago, if I fucked somebody--I don't give a fuck, I'm never calling her again. I've come into age consciousness now, where I can't do that to people. So I'm straight from the bottom now, and with Bjork, I wasn't like that. I didn't turn up when I was supposed to meet her. In some ways, she's got a little behavior from me. One of my friends put two and two together and said, "What is going on is because she don't like you." I'm learning. I don't fuck with anybody. If I work with someone, then it's over. I don't want them as friends in the music industry. I don't want no chums, I don't want no girlfriends, I don't want no beef, I don't want none of that. I just wanna make my music. We're going into a stage now, it's got nothing to do with music anymore. Can you believe Biggie Smalls' death? That's a fuckin' movie. We're in the entertainment business. We're here to entertain each other. To get killed over words, to me, is heavy. It's crazy. It's scary, man.
LAUNCH:
What's that song you performed live about "gangsta rap"?
TRICKY:
That's called, "What You Call To Talk About." That's from [Angels With Dirty Faces]. Not even hip-hop, a lot of rock music. You've got a lot of bad boys in rock music that talk about guns and shit. And it's just like the bad boy stuff, I don't think it should have anything to do with music. I think you have to make a choice. You're either a bad boy or you're a musician. 'Cause I don't think there's enough time in the day. Anything you do, you've got to be good at it. I don't see how you could be good at both things. 'Cause you're gonna meet someone who ain't got nothing to lose. When you're an artist, and you're making millions of dollars, and you're living a phat life, you've got a phat crib, you don't want to go to war with someone. So I think it's a bit of a dangerous game to play. [Last year was] a fuckin' film. I seen Snoop Doggy Dogg on TV the other day; he's got 'nuff security, man.
LAUNCH:
Tell me about the creation of your cover of Public Enemy's "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos" [re-cast as "Black Steel" on Maxinquaye ].
TRICKY:
I totally didn't keep any of the music at all. I did the tune first, and then Martina did the vocal on top.
LAUNCH:
What about the Slick Rick's "Children Story," on your Nearly God album?
TRICKY:
I had to wait for the tune. I was plannin' on using "Children's Story" for years. I knew a tune would come where I'd say, "Yeah, I'll do 'Children's Story' on that." With "Black Steel," I wanted to do that years ago. I always said to Massive Attack, "We should do a cover of 'Black Steel.'" And they weren't into it. Lucky enough. That was very lucky for me, man.
LAUNCH:
What about the whole "gangsta rap" tirade?
TRICKY:
The Geto Boys--that's gangsta rap. And when I hear the Geto Boys, the last thing I want to do is get involved with guns and cocaine, 'cause they're scaring me. So I think that's positive. It's like, young kids listen to the album, and say, "This album's dope, but fuck that gun shit, I don't want none of that." Their lyrics are so intense.
LAUNCH:
You toured on Lollapalooza with Snoop Doggy Dogg last year; why were you opening your set with a sample of his "Freestyle Conversation" from Tha Doggfather?
TRICKY:
My life is totally different from his life. But I can totally feel...Everybody feels that. [Begins rhyming "Freestyle Conversation."] Sometimes you get beaten down by the record companies and all the shit around you. Like "Makes Me Wanna Die," right? I used to love that song. Now I don't love it. The record company spoiled it for me. We decided that's gonna be a single. That's good. But it's like, we're spending more money on this video than any other songs we did. Because it's got more of a chance of being on radio. So they're giving it a push, and they're pushing it so much, it's made me not like the tune. How 'bout "Tricky Kid," or how 'bout "Black Steel"? They didn't push none of those records.
LAUNCH:
Did Island Records push "Christiansands?"
TRICKY:
Not at all. It's like, twice as much money as I've ever spent on a video. I don't like spending money on videos, 'cause it all comes out of my money at the end of the day. It's a beautiful song, but the way they've treated it...
LAUNCH:
"Pumpkin" from Maxinquaye was a dope record, with a similar feel.
TRICKY:
See, to me, that could've sold a lot of records. That's one of my favorite songs. If that was released now, I'd have a massive fucking hit, about four years later.
LAUNCH:
How do you view "genius"?
TRICKY:
See, when people call you a talent or genius, in a way, I don't agree with that. People like, say, you or I are people who are artists, are given a gift that's not ours to control. It just comes through. It gets sent through us, and goes onto paper. I'm a writer like you--it goes onto paper or onto tape. And we have no control over it all, really. So we need to be passing that gift on, and stop talking so much bollocks, because you're neglecting your gift. Straight up, you've got to pass it along. 'Cause you neglect your gift, and that's one day when you wake up, it won't be there.
LAUNCH:
Have you dated Mel B. from the Spice Girls, as rumored?
TRICKY:
I took her out for a few drinks before they were lifted off. And I think we liked each other. I don't wanna say we did, 'cause she might turn around...We used to hang out. And then I went off on tour and she blew up. Our paths crossed, but then she went mad around the world. And there's no way we could coincide. When I went to the Brit Awards, I left the Brits with her to go to a club. There was a time in Bristol you could not go out and hear hip-hop.
LAUNCH:
What do you think of Nine Inch Nails? They use samples with rock, like some of your music.
TRICKY:
I don't know, 'cause I've seen more image than I've seen music. So I haven't been able to decide. I don't find him very scary. All that stuff about him being scary, I don't...The scary shit don't kinda work for me. "I wanna fuck you like an animal"--it's like, so what? We're all animals, and most of us fuck! It's like they say about alternative music; how alternative is hip-hop? That's alternative music! Reggae music and hip-hop are very much alternative music.
LAUNCH:
How do you respond to the labels of "jungle," "trip-hop," "ambient," "illbient"?
TRICKY:
They say jungle, they say alternative. They call it black, they call it blues. I'm glad no one can put a finger on it. I could change tomorrow; I'm not stuck in anything. It's a new age. You've got white kids with 'locks, black kids with blond hair. We're beyond color, we're beyond race, we're beyond gender. None of that matters anymore. I write a lot of stuff from a woman's point of view--Martina sings it. Even on Maxinquaye, I feel like it's my mum inside me.
LAUNCH:
Have you read The Celestine Prophecy?
TRICKY:
I thought it was dope. Every time I hear the word "God," or "religion," or "Christ," it puts me off. 'Cause I don't know if I believe in God. I believe in energy. So when I see the word "God," I have to think to myself, no, no, the word "God" is just a word for energy. A lot of it mostly is true. That's what I'm trying too. 'Cause we are all God. And it's like, I'm trying to get that. I was very conscious. I was telling you about the girls. I can't just go and fuck a girl. I'm not as violent. I'm trying to be a good father. I'm trying to raise my consciousness. And I know when I get there, I'm gonna become God. I think you can get respect without being a bad boy, without having money. When I say you don't need anything, I mean you're at peace with yourself. I really believe that.
LAUNCH:
Critics have said that your music is too dark. Why don't you address more of this spiritual stuff in your music?
TRICKY:
I talk about what's happening now. Life is fucking shit for a lot of people. So, I ain't got nothing good to talk about at the moment. 'Cause I haven't really reached my level of consciousness yet. When you hear [Angels With Dirty Faces] now, it's a lot more
conscious lyrics. Very, very conscious. When I did Pre-Millennium Tension, Maxinquaye and Nearly God, I wasn't conscious. I was living in my own shit. I was playing the superstar, thinking I'm this, thinking I'm that. Struggling. Now, I'm getting conscious. And like, the Beatles sing about strawberry fields. Where I come from, there ain't no fuckin' strawberry fields. It's patterns of blocks, and they look like prisons, and no one's got no money. Now, I've traveled the world, I've sat down with all kinds of people from all kinds of religions. I've become a little bit more conscious, I try to watch what I do. I don't want to hurt anybody. So I'll write it in my music. It's all struggling music. We all struggle, and everybody knows what it's like to struggle.
