Seinabo Sey is a Righteous Feminist Pop Star In The Making

Seinabo Sey is the fourth in Noisey UK's "debuts" - a in-depth profile of a brand new artist. We'll be doing one a month until the apocalypse, or music ends (both estimated to be in 2016).

It’s mid-afternoon on one of the most sweltering days of the year - the five-minute walk between the Noisey office and the nearby Ace Hotel leaves me feeling as though all my major organs have been unwittingly replaced by tiny, burning coals. The Ace Hotel, however, is where Sweden’s newest export Seinabo Sey is holding court, and if the back booth isn’t exactly an oasis of calm then it’s at least the kind of inviting environment you’re glad to be in when you’ve just discovered your body temperature is not disimilar to a medium-sized pizza oven.

Seinabo – born of half Swedish and half Gambian parents and a Swedish resident – has the instantly likeable aura of being in a permanent girly sleepover. I sit down and she immediately offers me a scone from the remnants of afternoon tea in front of her while complimenting my nail varnish. When I enquire if she’s knackered after a long day of press interviews, she shrugs and replies that she “just likes talking to people”. You can tell she’s not lying.

Even though we only get Seinabo for fifteen minute - she has to dash off to catch a flight back home after a fleeting visit to play at Latitude festival and then headline her first London show at Notting Hill Arts Club – she’s about the most engaging raconteur you can hope for. Her music meanwhile – brooding, electronic-based pop presided over by one hell of a pair of lungs - is the kind of empowering stomp that’s like a bluesy, earthy Lykke Li. Or, to put it another way, it's like if her fellow Swede had grown up idolizing the fighter spirit of pop’s premier independent woman, Beyoncé. Which is essentially what Seinabo did.

“I remember very clearly, the first time I saw Destiny’s Child I found my home,” she grins. “I got to see the Destiny’s Fulfilled tour when they did the reunion, but I wish I would have saw them around “Independent Women” or “Survivor” when Beyoncé was twice her size and had a big blonde afro. She looked so dope…” She continues: “I’m so fascinated by her, she’s such a perfectionist – whatever she does at least she does it perfect. And even though she’s not my biggest musical inspiration now, I just love her. I love her for being a black woman who does whatever the fuck she wants and is the biggest pop star on earth.”

If early singles “Hard Time”, a tribal, propulsive thing that pits Sey as a wise old head warning against the perils of one fatal mistake, and soulful ballad “Younger” (which has already racked up over half a million Youtube plays) find little in common with Mrs. Carter, however, then the spirit behind them does. Across the interview, Sey repeatedly references being a woman in the music industry, defiantly addressing the so-called ‘problems’ that she faces, and how she is resolutely refusing to let them be that.

“Part of being a woman is we’re meant to be really clear with who we are in order for anyone to understand us. You have to have a style and have this and that, you can’t just stand there in jeans and a T shirt and look like Bruce Springsteen and become the biggest artist in the world, you’ve got to be in a bathing suit and blonde hair for twenty years and then you’re a superstar. It’s never easy,” she sighs, rolling her eyes. “My dream would be for… Well I think Adele does it brilliantly, just being herself. Just sitting there and saying ‘this is me’ and it’s not about how I look, it’s about being a ridiculous singer. I’m way too interested in fashion to not care about [image], but some days I don’t care and I try to accept those days and just go ‘yeah, ok I look crap and that’s fine because it’s real. I don’t have time’. But then again I put on way too much make up and I like that too.”

Sitting in a comfy, all-black outfit but with perfectly coiffed hair in 20s finger rolls, Seinabo is clearly totally at ease in her own skin; she embraces all the brilliant contradictions that being a smart, clued-up woman involves. Her whole make-up as an artist seems to be centred around them. The icy, electronic elements associated with Scandinavian pop combined with the warm, powerful vocal tones afforded from her Gambian roots. An affable, endearing personality meshed against a steely determination (“I think it’s amazing that the only really international acts we have in Sweden are women,” she states, assumably forgetting about Yung Lean. “You have to be five times as stubborn, five times as everything and, mainly, five times as good otherwise you don’t get a shot.”).

The ideas that drive Sey are just as intriguing. Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone with such strong opinions, the singer isn’t one to be content with singing about boys and rhyming “love” with “above”. Raised in a musical background – her father was a noted musician and his music, she states, was the first she remembers hearing – the singer was encouraged to dream big from the start. She explains: “My father particularly was a big thinker. We were always talking and he was always saying about the Dalai Lama or trying to get me into different philosophies and ways of thinking, so the way I write songs and my angle comes from that. It’s not so much what is happening, but why it’s happening.”

Recently signed to Virgin EMI, it’s not so much about what or why things are happening for Seinabo at the moment, but that they unequivocally just are. Tuesday’s Notting Hill show was packed and buzzy enough for the room to need an oxygen injection. Now, the 23-year-old is readying her debut album for release later in the year and will return to the UK in a couple of months for another string of live dates. After that, you get the sense things will be happening and then some.

“I find the big questions and the small questions all stem from the same things and the same insecurities,” she finishes, summarizing what her music tries to portray. “People want to be seen, people want to be loved, people don’t want to be lonely… I always wanted to find the core of everything, maybe to simplify it and solve it. I just find that everything is sort of… everything,” She pauses. “To quote Lauren Hill.”

Follow Lisa on Twitter: @LisaAnneWright

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