Nocturnal Animals: Rochelle Jordan Interviewed
The Underground Queen honours her UK roots on her first release in seven years….
“I don’t want to be on a rotator feeding people content, that’s never been the way I operate. I just had to make sure my soul was fed before I could feed others,” *Rochelle Jordan* tells Clash in a soft Torontonian accent from her base in City of Angels when probed why she took so long to release another album. For the best part of a decade, Jordan has amassed a cult following, her career a lesson in active resistance, fortitude and manifestation. Jordan arrived on the scene with the advent of the “blog era”, a pre-streaming epoch where word-of-mouth made her an underground star: projects ‘Pressure’ and ‘1021’ laid the groundwork for a new wave of neon-lit R&B and “dream trap” that prevailed during the course of the 2010s.
Jordan looks back wistfully on the genesis of her career and her long-lasting impact: “Listening to it now, I can understand its value. It’s amazing to reflect back to when I was younger, I’m amazed that people are so taken by ‘1021’, because when you create you don’t often see the value in it. Speaking specifically to my ‘Pressure’ project, the spirit fell on me to merge nostalgic melodies with hip-hop and trap. Hearing music now, I feel I left some deep footprints. I know I’ve led, it’s just that I’ve led from behind.”
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After the release of 2014’s ‘1021’, Jordan had to fight through periods of disenchantment, some of which was a result of internal label drama. Jordan ultimately refused to relinquish her control in order to appeal to the masses. “They said ‘R&B is Dead!’. Some of them were saying that throwback R&B - throwback sounds in general - would never work. Labels were nervous about me and I became wary as a result,” Jordan recounts. “Then a few years later Ella Mai breaks through with ‘Boo’d Up’.
On her first release in seven years, released on TOKiMONSTA’s Young Art Imprint, Jordan is finally unbound from the shackles of industry interlopers, grounded by a support system who’ve given her time and space to calibrate her talent. This is Rochelle Jordan emancipated. “I feel very much independent but also extremely supported, that’s rare - you don’t get the best of both worlds. TOKi and the label were never trying to chokehold me or make me feel an immense amount of pressure to produce something. I was able to cleanse my palette and create from a place of freedom.”
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Through ‘Play with The Changes’ Jordan has fashioned her very own Clubland, a spiritual gateway recalling the beatific dynamism and salvific high of 90s gospel house; mind, heart and body converging to transcendent effect. Fashioned from a deep reverence of sound system and rave culture, Jordan reimagines sounds from her youth: born in High Wycombe, England, she moved with her family to Toronto and her elder brother crammed tokens of their life in the UK, in the form of classics from the likes of Artful Dodger, into his suitcase.
“He’d play these tapes so loud in the house, my Mum would go crazy,” she laughs. “I didn’t know the names or the titles but I recognised the music from listening. It’s intuitive. I was always intrigued by the chords and the sonic exploration in UK genres. I really miss the UK scene and, in some ways, this album is a love letter. I remember going to a rave with my cousin in 2008, the energy was on a whole other level. This record is influenced by that energy. This album is an honest reflection of the sounds I love and grew up with.”
Jordan likens her triad of core electronic collaborators on the album - KLSH, Machinedrum and Jimmy Edgar - to iconic vocalist-producer partnerships of past: Kelis and The Neptunes, Amerie and Rich Harrison, Aaliyah and the Missy-Timbo combo. “There’s just something about me and KLSH, we always stand true in our own identities, that’s why we’re such a good team,” Jordan says with pride.
“We spoke for a long time about expanding the sound and experimenting with other producers. Machinedrum reached out after I remixed his song and we were losing our minds. Shortly after that, I got hit up by Jimmy Edgar and I wasn’t aware of who he was. I listened to his music and was blown away. Lo and behold we recorded hundreds of records together. Our spirits collided, we’re all similar in our inspirations, we all have our own identities and we’re not easily boxed in when it comes to the music we make,” Jordan continues.
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RoJo, as she’s affectionately known to her fans, is no supporting player on ‘Play With The Changes’; this is her vehicle, she is “the vessel” through which the London-Toronto synergy comes alive, and through her vocal the album truly crystallizes. A powerhouse in her own right, Jordan’s airy voice is deceptively malleable; contorting and morphing in tandem with slick, skittering rhythms, traversing chopped staccato garage, breakbeat and jungle.
When the tempo slows however, Jordan’s incisiveness as a writer comes to the fore: on ‘Broken Steel’ Jordan sings of world weariness and the fragility black women aren’t able to express, on ‘Lay’, chronic anxiety specific to the black experience plays out a tale of fear and foreboding. What happens when a loved one has to leave the safe haven of embrace and the fortified walls of their home? “I’m singing from the perspective of all the women left behind; I’m voicing their fears about their children and partners. It was influenced by all the police brutality, this recurring trend we were witnessing.”
She continues: “Nipsey Hussle had just passed away, I was thinking a lot about Lauren London at that time. I was speaking to the anxiety black people feel specifically. But also, anyone who’s ever been discriminated against, the fear of being in - existing in - a society and not knowing what will happen next. It was a matter of time before I wrote a song like ‘Lay’. I gave myself the space to really dig deep with that one. I can’t describe it, sometimes it feels supernatural. It just clicked and the words flowed, as did the emotion.”
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Having teased the album with high-octane singles, ‘Got Em’, the affirmation anthem of the year and the 2-step coquettishness of ‘Next 2 U’, is Jordan slightly apprehensive what her fans, who grew up on the northern soul of her early career, will think of her most experimental work to date?
“I would say to them that this is the sincerest I’ve ever been. My fans know me for the classic R&B records I’ve made; I don’t want them to feel that I’m removing myself from that world. This record is true, honest, the part of me they haven’t seen but that I want them to see. This is the just the next phase.”
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'Play With The Changes' is out now.
Words: *Shahzaib Hussain*
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