The chaos moving down and down, seep in my flesh.Īnd that kind of held the, like, foundational subtext for what the album exists, and just like the human will to survive and persevere through all odds. Put my hand up on my heart, I beat my chest. And I think that is so absurd but also so inspiring. And every day through that, we kind of all still got up and put on our ties and, like, kept on trucking. Being in Australia, we suffered extremely crazy bushfires and then hailstorms, and then we all went through COVID together. OWUSU: It's an album that was definitely framed by the last few years of this chaotic and absurd world that we've all lived in. MARTÍNEZ: The new album is called "Struggler," a theme that runs through a lot of this music - the struggle to make sense of the world, the struggle to to be who you are in this world. (SOUNDBITE OF GENESIS OWUSU SONG, "LEAVING THE LIGHT") I felt the - pretty much the exact same way. I knew that this was more about her kind of accomplishing what she hoped for her children that she didn't get an opportunity to accomplish. MARTÍNEZ: She took it from me, and I understood. My parents were immigrants, and the second I graduated college, my mom grabbed that diploma and said, this is mine. But I went to uni to kind of give them, you know, the little gift and show them that I appreciate their efforts. And they're very proud of what we do now. But, you know, my parents flew all the way from Ghana to give me and my brother a education. OWUSU: I knew I wanted to do music before I even went into uni to do journalism. Do any of those skills translate or head over to when you're writing songs? MARTÍNEZ: Well, you studied journalism, right? I mean. So I kind of had to learn how to be myself from a young age. So I was, like, either, like, the gangster or the comedian, and I didn't really fit into either of those roles. People expected me to walk a different way, talk a different way because, I guess back then, you know, the only Black people that a lot of Australians had knowledge of at the time was, like, 50 Cent and Eddie Murphy. People expected me to do different things. So it was, like, a definite strange introduction for the both of us. OWUSU: Immigrating to Australia from Ghana definitely led me to being an outsider in the space that I was in. MARTÍNEZ: Genesis Owusu might be big in Australia now, but when his family first came to the country from West Africa, the adjustment took time for him and his new neighbors. Ignorance is bliss, then I'm trying to stay blissful. MARTÍNEZ: Now he's got his sights set on America. UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: This is Genesis Owusu's fourth win of the night, making him the most awarded artist of 2021. MARTÍNEZ: The Australian Music Prize, the Rolling Stone Australia Award, the J Awards, the AIR Awards. UNIDENTIFIED PRESENTER: And the ARIA goes to. A brand-new artist started winning practically all the music awards Australia had to give.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |