YASMIN

Going from spinning records to making them.

When Wonderland meets Manchester born, Glasgow raised DJ and musician Yasmin at the Ministry Of Sound headquarters in South-east London, she recounts a recent review from a well-known music magazine that she eagerly wants to clarify. “I did a gig in South Africa” Yasmin begins. “And when I got a copy of the magazine I was flicking through and the headline was something like ‘British hiphop vixen Yasmin – we watch her blow some more in South Africa,’” she says aghast. “I was like ‘did not one person proofread that’?”
    Keen to reach the conclusion that the publication could only have been meaning that she was about to ‘blow up’, this term encouragingly predicts the trajectory of a career that has been quietly building over the last few years. With her own music soon to be released, the beginnings of Yasmin’s career in the industry are found in the world of DJing. “I’ve always written lyrics, I’ve always sung,” she says. “It wasn’t a conscious thing – I just became a DJ. When I was 17 I became a friend of a guy and he used to play in this club every week and I would go and hang out and say ‘play this – I bet everyone will like this’ or ‘oh I’ve not heard that in ages – play that.’ Eventually he just let me play one or two tracks when he went to the toilet and I just got the hang of it and I got a buzz off it and ended up getting my first gig and things went from there. A lot of DJs become producers, but I’ve never really been a beats-orientated kinda girl – I love a great beat I don’t like tracks without songs on them. For me [song-writing was] my natural progression.”
    Describing herself as “the warm-up DJ’s warm-up DJ” from when she first started out, Yasmin’s DJing antics have seen her moving from Glasgow venues to London’s West End clubs to  DJing across the globe, and supporting the likes of N.E.R.D and Eve on tour. When we meet, she is fresh from supporting rap artist Example on his UK tour and this experience harks back to her comment that she was once the “warm-up DJ’s warm-up DJ”, appearing on the billing as warm-up to grime artist Devlin who played ahead of the main star (she also played DJ between her own, Devlin and Examples sets). Despite still playing the supporting role, Yasmin is ready to make the transition into the spotlight. Her guest vocals on Devlin’s recent hit, Runaway, may give an idea of what her voice is like – however her own music is more 90s infused with a hiphop edge (Yasmin sites Massive Attack as a main influence) sounding familiar, yet fresh. Her material will be released in the UK from the beginning of next year but already a scramble is occurring over the international release rights. A process the artist is slightly baffled by. “I’ve had quite a bit of interest already,” she says with a slight expression of disbelief. “What I find so hilarious is when some people are so interested and they’ve not heard a single song. I’ve been plunged into this world in the past six months but I’m not blinded by the lights of it. I’m aware that I got DJ gigs off the back of the way I look or being a girl and in a way, the pop industry’s the same thing. But with being a DJ, I proved myself and I’ve got some really respected DJs that will stick up for me and be like ‘that girl can mix!’ and that the same thing I want to do with my music.”
    Keen to retain her own artistic integrity, Yasmin warns that other aspiring artists should be wary of offers that might not be what they seem. “I really want to be a role model,” she starts, “and I know it sounds cliché, but honestly I think it’s so important. I want to inspire other people in the way that I’ve been inspired. When I was on tour with Devlin, we went to some performing arts college near Newcastle and we did a performance and a Q&A and a guy asked all the kids in the class ‘do you want to be signed?’ They all said ‘yeah’ and I said to them ‘it’s not all about that. I could call people right now in my phone book that would give back their record deal, just to be able to make the music that they loved.’ I quite like to break down the façade. It can be quite frustrating. It can be misleading.”
    Taking a moment to think, Yasmin concludes, “I think a lot of people need to ask yhemselves – do you want to be famous or do you want to be a musician?”

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine Issue 24, November 2010. Photography Nik Hartley.]

TAYLOR MOMSEN

 The Pretty Reckless’ lead singer is finally pursuing her biggest passion.

Ahead of our interview with singer and actress Taylor Momsen, Wonderland are struck down with the now traditional winter illness – flu. Regardless, we get tanked up on Nurofen and Lem-
sip and are somewhat relieved to find Momsen herself is a little ‘out of it’ when we settle down to talk. But it’s nothing to do with the reported ‘wild child’ antics of the 17 year old that she
is a little dazed, she is just tired and only recently woken up. “It was nothing exciting last night,” she declares shaking herself awake. “But I didn’t exactly get to bed early.”
    Finding herself back on set for the fourth season of Gossip Girl, Momsen is keeping herself fully occupied following her week-days filming – sacrificing sleep as a result – by taking her rock
band, The Pretty Reckless, on the road to entertain her fans all over North America at weekends. In fact, with her busy schedule, Wonderland has had to reschedule our interview three times before finally managing to get some time with the star before she plays in Baltimore one Sunday in October.
    “I want to make music for the rest of my life,” she says with passion when we ask if there is a preference between being an actress and a musician. “I’ve been writing songs since I was five and music’s always been a part of my life and still is. It’s self expression compared to a job.”
    Born in Missouri in 1993, Momsen has clocked up an impressive CV to date with film roles including a foray into the Spy Kids franchise, featuring in Jim Carrey’s The Grinch, becoming a household name courtesy of the hugely popular Gossip Girl and has fronted campaigns for New Look in the UK and, more recently, as the face of Madonna’s Material Girl line – becoming instrumental in the label’s launch.
    “Madonna was awesome,” she says of being the face of Material Girl. “Your representing a brand when you do something like New Look or [Material Girl] so you’re not just a model, you’re a name, a face someone knows as opposed to just a model. So there is a level that they want me to be comfortable with what I’m doing and that I represent the brand as myself along with representing the brand with how they want it to be viewed. So there is usually a compromise and a collaborative process but when I do a campaign it usually has something to do with me in some way. I worked very closely with [Madonna] and Lola [Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes – also a key member of the Material Girl brand] on set. Lola and I styled all the looks together and Madonna took some of the photos.”
    But as Momsen herself states (admittedly with lots of gratitude), these previous ventures are regarded by her as ‘jobs’ (she describes the Gossip Girl set as being “a work environment.
People think of it that way – we’re all doing a job”) and her position at the front of a band allows her to present herself for who she really is and music gives her a new platform to express herself. The apparent re-invention of herself as the lead of The Pretty Reckless, Momsen professes as being her true identity, declaring she sported heavy eye make-up long before she was the fresh faced Jenny Humphrey that most associate her with. “There’s not many female-fronted rock bands,” she states, re-buffing a comparison to Courtney Love and Hole as a mere coincidence. “The influences that went into [the record] were all male-fronted rock bands – my idols and the people I look up to are mostly male. I grew up on the Beatles with my dad. He had a big record collection and I listened to a lot of the classic records growing up – The Who and Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin – all the kind of classics. The Beatles were the first band I ever heard. I’m a fan to this day. We’ve done some work on the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus [a non-profit organization that acts as a travelling recording studio allowing school students to learn about the industry – Momsen recently participated, singing vocals as high school students played instruments on a recording of All You Need Is Love] I’ve been promised I’ll get to meet Yoko Ono one day.”
    Despite the lack of similar female artists, an appreciation for Ms Ono and the confession that she idolises many male musicians, Momsen shys away from being called an idol herself. “I didn’t want to be a role model,” she says modestly. “I’ve said that before – it’s just how people look at you. I think it’s important that the best role model anyone can be is to just be themselves – that’s the coolest thing you can be – and not give a shit what anyone else would say about you because it really doesn’t matter.”
    These sentiments are echoed when we point out that some people seem intent on taking her down – notably notorious celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. “Oh he says mean stuff about everyone!” Momsen laughs. “Does he ever say anything nice about anyone ever? It’s his job. I don’t know why people take it seriously. People realise when they read tabloid stuff or a web-site like perezhilton, they [the journalists] get paid to talk trash about you and put you down. If they were talking nice about you they wouldn’t have a very popular site. Insults are more entertaining to read than compliments!”
    As a reluctant role model, what advice would Taylor Momsen have to anyone else wanting to achieve their dreams? “Everyone’s always going to talk shit, no matter who you are so as long as you stay true to yourself then that’s the coolest thing in the world. That’s the only thing I would preach. Don’t be anything like me!” she declares. “Just be yourself.”

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine Issue 24, Novemeber 2010. Photography Mark Kean.]

ANNIE LENNOX

The Scottish singer has sold in excess of 80 million records world-wide as part of electro duo Eurythmics and as a solo artist – gathering Brit, Grammy and Academy Awards in the process. A prominent voice in the continued fight against HIV/AIDs, Lennox acts as an ambassador to the UN, touring the world to give speeches and presentations on the subject, and has funded community centres in deprived areas through her charitable projects. Returning to the music charts this winter, the singer has recorded with The African Children’s Choir on a collection of personally selected carols.

Your forthcoming festive album is called A Christmas Cornucopia – can you elaborate on the title? I’ve sung these carols since I was young and I love them. Recording the songs from an adult prospective, I was looking into the words and the background of the carols and, of course, many of them are Victorian. The word ‘cornucopia’ sprung to mind because it is so old fashioned and in a way it’s a reference to that Victorian era and it’s a slightly eccentric title – this sense of abundance and each song like a veritable fruit – and it stands out from Happy Christmas Everybody or whatever other title I might have come up with.

You’ve written a song for the album as well (Universal Child). What was the inspiration behind that?
The two words – I’d been carrying around for days and I went into the studio to record and I just started to play something on the keyboard and suddenly realised that I had the idea for the beginning of the song – by the end of the day, the song was written. I’ve met children living in very vulnerable situations without parents with no resources, with nothing. At Christmas we focus on the birth of a child and I think in a reflective way it could be an opportunity for us to realise there are many children born into dire circumstances. And I’m not being prescriptive about that, but it was something I felt was a thread of consciousness running through the whole album.

So when did you start working on this album.
October last year although we [along with producer Mike Stevens] weren’t working on it every day.

So you’ve worked on the album for months and it’s now being released – won’t you be sick of Christmas when it arrives?
[Laughs] No, not at all! The whole year has been Christmas-themed for me, in terms of the songs, which has been delightful because they are beautiful songs and I don’t tire of them. I can never tire of Christmas, really. I went to a Christmas shop in Phoenix, Arizona and it is full of the most incredible decorations in the middle of the hot sun, 365 days of the year. I’d be happy to have it all year long.

[Originally published in Wonderland Magazine Issue 24, November 2010.]