Gaika releases accompanying video for Warp debut, plays NYC tonight
GAIKA: Yeah, I’m really interested in making [music] around America. I feel like this year is a big point in our history. A lot of artists surprised me by being so engaged. Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar or Kanye or whoever—people are willing to say something. It’s returning back to a time where pop music matters, it’s about something, and it’s also being driven by black American music.
[Interview Magazine’s Benjamin Lindsay]: You’re not seeing something like “We Are the World.” It’s Beyoncé and it’s Kendrick actually standing up and making a statement with their music.
GAIKA: Exactly. As a result, I’m really interested in working in America. It’s a really interesting time in art and music, and it hasn’t been that way in awhile. [Interview Magazine]
The genre-defying UK artist Gaika is part industrial, part dancehall, but mostly he’s impossible to pigeonhole. He released the Security mixtape earlier this year, and then signed to Warp and put out his first release for the label, Spaghetto, last month. He made his US debut during the Red Bull Music Academy NYC takeover in May, and that’s when Interview Magazine interviewed him. That’s an excerpt of Gaika talking about America and American music in that interview, above.
Gaika is back in NYC right now and will play a Baby’s All Right show tonight (11/17). That show’s with Princess Nokia, Chillin Island, KeithCharles Spacebar and Ezra Marcus. It’s free with RSVP. It’s his only upcoming US date at the moment.
Gaika also just put out a new video called “Another Hole In Babylon,” which “explores the themes of” Spaghetto. Watch it, and stream Spaghetto and Security, here:
