Tricky Unedited

The Wire: The big theme on the record seems to be return – return to your past, return to Britain, return to your background...

Tricky: It’s not just return. When I was at school, there was one certain teacher who said, when you go for a job, as soon as you put your postcode down and they know you’re from Knowle West, you ain’t gonna get the job. So lie, if you’re going to fill in your application forms, lie. Calling it Knowle West Boy, one of the reasons is ... it’s like “Council Estate” the chorus, people think I’m famous now, that I’m a successful musician. But when I grew up in Knowle West, it ain’t as if someone all of a sudden sprinkled me with success dust. I must be the same person. So it’s like, if you’re coming from Knowle West, or Southmead or wherever, you can do what I’m doing or whatever. So basically it’s a return, but it’s almost trying to say... Teachers used to tell me I wouldn’t amount to much, it’s just to say that some good stuff can come out of Knowle West, and where I come from, if you work hard enough and do the right things, success is out there for you.

The Wire: So it’s return as revenge and vindication?

Tricky: Yeah, and saying I’m so proud to be a Knowle Wester. There are generations of families there, a very old school mentality. When I was growing up, you could ride around on bikes all night, without fear of paedophiles of being abducted. There wasn’t any rape in my community because families controlled the community, so if you done certain things, you’d have to answer to certain people. So it was a really safe place to grow up in. There doesn’t seem to be much community left any more. It was a community then. I was always in my friends’ house, my friends were always in my house. My grandmother knew my friend’s grandmother. Generations, there was that kind of community, which England’s lacking a bit now.

The Wire: Has a lot of this come back to you from being in America?

Yeah, and coming back to Bristol and missing the community vibe, and going back to Knowle West, and things have changed. It’s almost like it’s the end of an era. This is to remind me of the good stuff. I’ve got a picture of my uncle and my granddad on the back of the CD and it’s like those days are over. I was lucky enough, that until I was about 12 or 13 my grandmother’s mother was alive. We used to go there. I could visit anyone in the family in ten minutes. I could walk to school, I could walk to my grandmother’s, but as people get older they have their own families, things split up.

The Wire: ‘Superstar’ seems to be an important word for you – you used it in “Tricky Kid” and you used it in “Council Estate”...

Tricky: Yeah, because it’s such a stupid word in a way. Say, for artists like Pharrell, I’m not really into his thing, so I can’t say whether he’s talented or not. His whole thing, and Justin Timberlake, is more than their music. I think there’s something wrong there. What used to happen is that you make an album, and if you’re album’s successful, fame is almost part of the game. You don’t want the fame, that’s business. Right now, I think people are more interested in being famous than making a good album. When I was starting off, I just wanted to make a good album, I wanted to make something that no-one’s ever heard before, I wasn’t interested in anything else. If I had to take pictures, that was business, and it ain’t hard work. But I’m not gonna have a persona, I’m not gonna have secondhand emotions in a music video. You know, it’s all secondhand emotions. You see these people singing and dancing and I think it all comes along with the superstar quality, you have to look a certain way, you have to act a certain way. I was watching a Pharrell and Justin Timberlake video two days ago, it’s just ridiculous. C’mon man, I’m forty years old, I can’t see through that? And it ain’t an industry of just twelve year old girls. So you’re looking in the camera being sexy. Marvin Gaye was a good looking, sexy man but women found him sexy. He didn’t pull faces on stage and like get dressed up so it's like 'yo, I’m a sexy beast', women just liked him. It’s like Clint Eastwood, women just liked him but now it's like the facial expressions, it's just all real fake and for 12 year old girls. Actually, my daughter is 13 and she don’t like none of that shit.

The Wire: You’ve said that you can’t make your music without women – why is that?

Tricky: My lyrics are written from a female perspective a lot of the time, like “Puppy Toy”, like a man-female. If you think about “Broken Homes”, it almost could be written by a woman. This is gonna sound stupid, one day I was in LA and some guy sat next to me and said, I feel you have two souls. I thought the guy was crazy but I find out he is a famous comedian Robin Williams ripped off, can’t remember his name. So I go and see him in the Comedy Factory, whatever it is and he’s like, I just can’t explain it and, where are your parents? And I said my mum committed suicide, he goes, ahh that’s it. My first lyric ever on a song was “your eyes resemble mine, you’ll see as no others can”. I didn’t have any kids then – Maisie wasn’t born – so what am I talking about? Who am I talking about? My mother. My mother, I found out when I was making a documentary, used to write poetry but in her time she couldn’t have done anything with that, there wasn’t any opportunity. It’s almost like she killed herself to give me the opportunity, my lyrics. I can never understand why I write as a female, I think I’ve got my mum’s talent, I’m her vehicle. So I need a woman to sing that.

The Wire: You’ve said that you find lyrics quite easy to write...

Tricky: Yeah they just come to me off the top of my head. One day I was in New York. I came out of the Tai Chi place and there was a bus and I see a girl’s profile and she took her hair and tucked it behind her ears, I’ve seen that a million times, but I was like wow so straight away I took that and used that image. It just come from one word, noticing something or saying something. I was in a studio in LA and this guy’s friend who died choking on steak and I’m like, that is fucked up wrong breath at the wrong time and I’m like wow, we all say hundreds of great things a day but we don’t notice them. Basically I observe, I listen, I watch if I’ve got one line like ‘tuck your hair behind your ears’, the song is written. All I’ve gotta do is remember that and the songs written, I might not write it for a year, one lyric and I write the song in like 20 minutes.