Anita Blay (a.k.a. CocknBullKid) is articulate and friendly, but she is also refreshingly honest. She started out playing her experimental electronic on the South London gig scene and identifies Bjork as her role model, but when I ask her about the new album she’s happy to be blunt. “Just a pop record. It’s simple. Mainly pop.” It is true that Adulthood is very much a pop record, with unapologetically catchy choruses. The video for ‘Hold On To Your Misery,’ a shimmering bitter-sweet shuffle reminiscent of a particularly synthy Supremes number, even features a dance routine with children as backing dancers. Yet despite the cute factor and Blay’s delicate husky vocals, CocknBullKid has a fair amount of sass, and enough cutting lyrics to ensure the music is never sickly.
Talking to Anita, it is easy to see where this sound comes from. She is polite and patient, particularly when my decidedly dodgy Nokia decides to rebel part way through the interview, but she is also quietly confident and disarmingly honest. Some reviews for Adulthood have accused CocknBullKid of selling out by glossing over her early experimentalism, and I wonder if Blay has encountered snobbery towards unapologetic pop among the music press. “Yes, I’ve definitely come across that” she concedes. “My early stuff was a lot more experimental, and this is definitely more pop, and people think I’ve sold out in some ways, which is ridiculous… There’s been some criticism that because I’ve got loads of big choruses on the album that I’ve somehow sold out. [It] is a really uneducated way to look at things because pop music is the hardest to write really…it’s a very old fashioned way of thinking.”
That’s not to say that Adulthood is a relentlessly upbeat listen. It owes much to the bitter-sweet electro-pop of the likes of Robyn (another artist that Blay cites as an inspiration), Human League and Eurythmics, pretty melodies shot through with underlying sadness. When I ask her about this melancholy undercurrent, she admits that her songs are inspired by “mainly the negative side of life really… my past, my anxieties, my hopes… it’s excising demons.”
Indeed there is a strong sense of autobiography in CocknBullKid’s debut album, even between all the dance routines and sassy backchat. “When I first started writing it obviously I knew it would be about me,” says Blay. “It starts with my early teen angst until the present day and looks at all the ups and downs I experienced… It’s quite questioning I wouldn’t even say I’ve necessarily found any answers really. It’s just putting them out there for people to have and to hear and hopefully they can share in their own experiences as well.”
The journey to recognition has been a long time coming for Blay, who grew up in Hackney and dreamed of being a popstar from a young age, devising dance routines to Eternal while still at primary school. Taking part in Tribal Tree, the East London youth music project that kickstarted Plan B’s career, gave Blay a chance to work in a studio for the first time and brought her dream closer to reality. However, it was still no easy task, with Blay supporting herself with dead-end jobs and suffering from bouts of depression as she waited to get signed. As is so often the case, music became Blay’s outlet, and she admits that she feels fortunate that she has managed to turn her outlet into something people actually want to listen to. When I ask her if she ever considered giving up on her dream, Blay is resolute. “I don’t think failure was ever an option,” she says with another hint of steely determination, “and I don’t think failure is ever really an option until you actually give up. I can’t fail, I can’t give up, I just keep going.”
With her half-shaved head and bold, colourful dresses, Blay cuts a striking figure in her videos, but she has admitted in the past to issues with self-esteem and body image. When I ask her if she believes that musicians have a responsibility to be good role models, she is ambivalent: “if your fan base is young girls and boys then you have certain
responsibilities. But I think, on average, popstars and artists – their responsibility is just to create art and be honest with it. I mean, I have a basic moral code but at the same time I’m not going to let it censor what I have to say.” Indeed, Blay has been outspoken in the past about the way in which the media pigeonholes black artists, particularly criticsing how she has been referred to as a ghetto princess even though the music she was making was closer to Bowie than Grime. “You know, its a funny issue because I guess journalists and people in general just want to understand something, and I guess when I first came out I wasn’t easy to understand” she says. “It was just really lazy because it doesn’t suit me at all in any way. And it doesn’t just happen to me, it happens to all sorts of people, black, white, gay, Muslim, whatever – there’s always going to be some sort of tag. I hope now I’ve written some more songs for people to listen to that they will see thats quite inaccurate.”
Although the stage name and honesty would suggest that Blay doesn’t care what she says, she appears to be much more balanced and thoughtful than her more outspoken contemporaries, such as Lily Allen. Her answers are thoughtful and she articulates herself carefully. When I ask her if her strict Christian upbringing has proved hard to reconcile with the realities of the music business she admits that although she has mostly shook off the “Catholic guilt”, she still occasionally hears her mother’s voice in her head. She is careful to stress, however, that she is not naive. “The music industry is a dicey place… you kind of sign off the line and that’s the deal you make and it depends on the choices you make and the people you work with.”
It’s been a struggle to get where she is today and Blay seems overwhelmed by her growing success, citing the release of her album and being asked to support Duran Duran as her highlights so far. She is also painfully aware of the fickle nature of the music business. She describes her inspirations, Bjork and Kate Bush, as from a different era, when it would take years to build people up and they’d break through on a third album. From now she’s keen to build on her promising foundations. “I want to be really really prolific. I just want to keep writing as much as I can, you know, for the next record and for other artists as well… Just be prolific, keep writing, keep improving my craft, and to travel the world a bit more, not just in UK – all over the world. Just reach some people and really get the ball rolling.” She sighs, and is lost for words for a moment. “That’s what it’s about for me – longevity, and just creating new things all the time.” Remeber the name CocknBullKid, because if Blay has her way, she’ll be around for a very long time.