Fousheé Releases: Time Machine

Most recently, Fousheé appeared on the digital cover of UPROXX, was named as Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Rookie of the Month and released her other tracks, 'single af,' 'sing about love' and 'golf fronts' ft. Lil Wayne.

Read our exclusive interview with the genre-bending artist below. 

Where are you at right now? Could you describe your current state of mind?

I’m in Los Angeles. It's a great temperature and it’s not too hot or cold, I feel motivated. I have a session tonight and wow, I just feel so motivated and so good.

I read in your bio that music acts as a time machine for you so how does music help you transcend into a different reality?

Wow, well, when we think about time travel we think of a machine that we get into and you pick an era and you go back to it. We can time travel through memories, like, if I close my eyes and smell a certain smell it’ll bring me back to the first time I met someone and I can relive that experience. So I think every song that I write is a little time capsule because I’m writing off of experience so when it’s present, past and a lot of the times I just like to think about what the future would be like, it’s time traveling. Also, I’m from the east coast, from New Jersey and half the project was done in the west and the other half was done in the east. I also like to think of that as time travel because it’s a 3 hour time difference so when I go to the east I feel like I’m living in the future. Time travel is a lot more tangible than we think and we do it all the time, it’s really what the project is.

Your new music video for “my slime” is like a modern take on Bonnie and Clyde and the visuals are stunning as per usual. How would you describe your visual aesthetics?

They kind of put themselves together. Like, for that one I got to direct and I just took my time and imagined what the song would feel like and kind of like generate good moments that I feel like would happen. The executive producer was Daniel Yaro and Xiaolong Liu was the DP, his eye is just so amazing so I had a really good team. I explained to him in detail, like what I wanted it to look like and what moments I wanted to happen, the scenes, and what backdrop I wanted in each scene. He just went above and beyond in making it tangible. So that’s usually what I do, I just listen to the song, a lot of the times it’s like a walk or a drive where I can space out and put myself into the song and let those moments naturally happen and then try to write them down and bring them to life as closely as possible as I see it in my head. For ‘my slime’ and ‘single af’ that was the approach. I also saw that you self-directed the video.

Do you usually take the reins when it comes to your videos? How Important is it for you to have creative control?

I have in the past let people take creative control. If I don’t have a specific vision for it then I’m more into that but if I do have it I realized that it’s better to have that creative control because the song comes from my experience and only I can translate the meaning into a visual thing because I wrote it, so I understand it the most. I like to collaborate, I just tend to express the true meaning of the song best when I’m in control of the visual aspect of it. I wouldn’t say that I’m the best director in the world, so of course, if someone has this extravagant idea that I love, I’m always down to collaborate and listen. It just depends on what the goal is and whether or not I have a vision for it.

Your new album ‘time machine’ builds around the central theme of a prospective future. What were the core elements of this album? Why are these elements important for you to explore?

Well, I decided to go this route with it because I love so many genres and grew up on so many genres. I wanted to specifically take up space in alt this time around for this project because of what I saw ‘deep end’ do. It became top 10 in alt radio which was the first time in 32 years since Tracy Chapman, a black woman, had been there. It made me think about the lack of representation there, but I mean I know of so many black alt women making music but I guess we’re just not taking up enough space there. So yeah, that just made me just wanna embrace that more. I used a lot of electric guitar and tend to like, scale back on production for a lot of the songs so that it can be embraced by a lot of different genres. I think for alt I wanted to focus on storytelling more or so like a Woodstock feel. There was like one song, ‘too late’ like the era that it was made in by Carole King, the original song that I ended up flipping. That era and just like the detail that songwriters would put into songwriting and having the stanzas, verse-chorus, bridges, instrumental solos and doing all the things that they used to do and bringing back that feeling to the present. A lot of the music I hear now is like a stream of thought and more free, which I love but for this album, I wanted to go back to the songwriting days.

So, like having more structure?

Right, yeah, I guess more structure. Which is not always a bad thing, I’m a free person but I think structure, depending on what it is, it’s good sometimes and within a song, it’s beautiful. So yeah, there's a lot of guitar, there's a lot of that classic songwriting structure and I think with my vocals I tend to have the same approach for vocals with that kind of soft textured and whispery voice and that falsetto, I love harmonies and I love rhythmic melodies no matter what the genre is.

The lyricism of your music conjures up feelings of pure ecstasy. Could you walk me through the writing process of your new album?

So I’ll hear a melodic thing that I like and I’ll write a melody to it and whatever words stick out, I like to do a couple of different takes. I’ll do a take of just melodies, I’ll do a freestyle and just see what words come up and then I think after that I’ll start to nail down a specific structure and finalize things. But yeah I usually start melodically or with a certain concept or a word that describes the concept. Time machine, I think I freestyled that but I remember just being so high and I was so emotional, I just felt so heavy, I felt a lot of pressure. It was just what I was feeling at that moment and I just wanted to run and hide. But I love when it’s realistic and I love when it comes from a real place and all of my music comes from a real place.

Earlier you mentioned that you wanted to take up space in the alt genre of music and this album can be labelled as a crossover between blissful and experimental sounds. What makes this such an irresistible combination for you?

I don’t know, I can’t choose and I don’t wanna choose, but I really love the spaces that ‘candy grapes’ ended up in and I wanna do a lot more music like that. For ‘my slime’ I think it was really cool, like the balance of feeling more like a folk song and then the words feeling like a trap song. Like, you don't hear folk singers singing ‘my slime’ and I love that unexpected conversation of things. Even when I eat I like sweet and salty so like the same thing with music it’s a certain balance and I wanna start doing that a lot more. ‘Candy grapes’ was so fun it took me back to performing in New York and just being around musicians and we had so much fun. I was in the studio with Steve Lacy the other day and he was working on one of his projects and just his approach to music was really special to me. I just wanna feel like a rock star.

Speaking of that, what kind of feeling dominates when you listen to your music and what do you want your listeners to feel when they listen to this new album?

I think I just wanna move people, a lot of music sounds the same now so I want people to hear it and be like ‘what is this? This is not supposed to be like this’ or ‘this is a combo I haven’t heard.’ Like, it was funny seeing people's reactions to ‘my slime’ and people really liked the song but it was like moms or whatever who were like ‘this song sounds so pretty but the lyrics were a little disturbing’ and I love that, I love catching people off guard. I want people to stop and listen and feel something and I want them to be able to relate to it and I want them to feel like rockstars too and I just want them to feel overall, just feel something.

You’re part of a generation that exists in the age of social media, like TikTok, Instagram, and all of these other outlets. Would you prefer to have lived in a different era or are you happy with existing in this generation?

I wish that I could just live in the future if anything or just live forever. Other than that, whatever era Jimi Hendrix was in but that wasn't necessarily an easy time to be alive in but I’m happy with being in this generation, I would just wanna live a little bit later. Hopefully, I can come back.

What are the next steps for you for the rest of the year? And can you tell us more about the central themes of your upcoming project(s)?

I do have a video coming up and I’m not done with this project. I have more coming up with this project and I have a lot of features that I’m working on now that I’m really excited about. I think visually I’m just gonna try to push myself as much as possible to try and make the best visuals I can and make it a full experience. Just getting really creative and putting out music and finding new ways to connect with the people who listen to it.