Contact Admin. T he first time Destiny Frasqueri came to London, she was 18 years old and called herself Wavy Spice. It was a lo-fi house track topped off with a funny, laconic, trash-talking vocal โ the kind of thing hipster playlists and profiles in Vice are made of โ and now, inevitably, record companies were circling.
One of them was interested enough to fly her to Britain. You might have thought Frasqueri would be delighted. And there was a lot of male dominance surrounding me, wanting to be a fly in my ear and dictate or surmise what I was going to be doing. That was five years ago. Today, Frasqueri is sitting in the back of a people carrier, wrapped in a blanket, sunglasses on, clutching a travel pillow. Thanks to the success of her third mixtape , a flatly brilliant collection of tracks gleefully glorifying her own outsider status it has just been reissued in expanded form by Rough Trade, which, she is keen to point out, is just distributing and promoting her records and has no say in what she does artistically , her schedule is so tight that the only place she has time to do an interview is en route to the airport.
At first, I get the feeling that her itinerary might be getting to her. The car has barely pulled away from her hotel and her resolution to be a little more quiet seems to have gone out the window. It has glossed over these really formative areas that have inspired me in my life and raised me. So I feel offended. To have the audacity to just walk into this neighbourhood, you really got some gall.
Her musical background is fascinating. Her parents were hip-hop fans, but she was exposed to heavy metal aged six, courtesy of a goth babysitter. But her specifically, I saw and I was really drawn to. It was radical, it was fun, it was aggressive, and it had a tone that matched my heart. The obsession with 90s culture that runs through the lyrics of is clearly bound up in her troubled childhood.
It was more than the clothes, although I loved the fashion. All the shows that you go to, men would just be in the front in droves, moshing and they have such a brotherhood โ which is beautiful and very commendable and I respect it very much.
