Joy Crookes has always written like someone who refuses to flinch. On her debut 2021 album ‘Skin’, she weaved her Bangladeshi-Irish heritage and South London upbringing into social commentary and emotional candour. Her music carries the weight of lived experience, all delivered with a sharp pen and a universal voice that has not only earned her a Mercury Prize nomination, but also cemented as one of Britain’s most fearless young storytellers.
The NME 100 album’s anticipated follow-up, ‘Juniper’, is a move inward. Written just months after ‘Skin’, Crookes describes it as “a get-to-know-me album” – although it’s written for the masses as much as it was for herself – one built around bass and drums to give her melodies and lyrics space to breathe. “The production part was difficult: getting it wrong a lot of the time, working across locations, short stints in London, and trying to get the sound around the bass and drums,” she recalls.
Leaning on trusted producers Blue May and Harvey Grant, she pushed herself to “go deeper” and capture emotion at its rawest, creating a record that is lush, melodic and groove-driven, but also unflinchingly honest. Speaking to NME over Zoom, Crookes is funny, candid and unguarded, happy to pull at the threads of her own process while swerving easy definitions because she’s “just Joy Crookes, innit?”
Joy Crookes talks about everything ‘Juniper’: how she balanced light and dark, what it was like working with Kano and Vince Staples, and how the record is her most revealing work yet.
When making ‘Juniper’, were you hoping to continue and build upon the world of ‘Skin’?
Joy Crookes: “I don’t think I was looking for a continuation. I was looking for something to stand on its own and actually be a progression, not a continuation.
“I was more up for prodding at myself, like, ‘No, go deeper.’ And that doesn’t necessarily mean deeper emotionally, but whatever emotion was being evoked, I wanted to get to the rawest form of it, as opposed to skirting around it. With ‘Skin’, it might be more voyeuristic – like looking from the outside – whereas ‘Juniper’ feels like it’s all happening within.”
That internal perspective comes through strongly on tracks like ‘Carmen’.
“The lyricism in that really lends itself to the people who really needed to hear that song. It’s about that inadequate, or not enough, feeling. I wanted it to feel intimate but also recognisable to anyone who’s felt that way – the kind of song that hits exactly where you live emotionally.”
With all these personal offerings, did you make this album cathartically or with the masses in mind?
“I don’t ever create for the masses because I don’t think that’s the correct way for me to create – I’ve always noticed that’s when I make my worst work. But I challenge myself to write like the most ‘song songs’ I could write, so that it could sound fantastic in bare bones and then, produced, lusciously as well. I also challenge myself to be introspective and work hard on what I’m trying to say, and tell it in the rawest form. I don’t mean to be for the masses, but I definitely made a pop record. I’m not saying this album is pop music, but it has elements of popular culture and the songwriting is not that complicated; it’s laid bare and quite accessible.”
What’s a “song song”?
“For this record, I wanted to write songs where you understand the lyrics – it’s really laid out there. It follows a traditional songwriting structure, or songs that could be played on a single instrument. That’s what I mean by [it]. Almost like what people see Nashville as – the heart, the capital of songwriting. I cite people like Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen – people where the art of songwriting is incredibly at the forefront of their minds.
“I don’t think there are any mandatory [rules to songwriting]. The only mandatory thing is focus – if you can reach some level of focus, that’s always a given with every tune I’ve written.”
You wrote most of these songs using just bass and drums – did that limitation shape your melodies or lyrics?
“Yes, totally. I chose bass specifically for this record because it doesn’t dictate harmonics. When writing melodies, you can play with major and minor freely. Ironically, it’s a limitation because there aren’t as many notes, but it creates freedom in melody because you can explore more melodically in songwriting.”
What were the influences for ‘Juniper’?
“I was listening to everything: Madlib, Madvillain, MF Doom, post-punk music like Young Marble Giants – there’s nothing I wouldn’t listen to. I like listening to a lot of music because it’s interesting, even if I don’t like it.”
You explore such heavy emotions without sounding pensive or heavy – were you trying to balance light and dark on ‘Juniper’?
“I was more interested in space because it leaves room for interpretation. I think that is potentially the humour in this record. Some of the most political people in the world are comedians, because they can manage to make you leave with a message. You were laughing the whole time, but they were actually saying something really serious and addressing quite serious topics – almost like a Trojan horse effect, I want you to be dancing, but understand that these are important things to me [and] topics really worth exploring. But it’s hard to make people think in this generation by forcing things down their throats.”
What’s an anti-ballad?
“It’s just a bit unorthodox. Although [‘Forever’] is a song that’s on the piano, it’s got synth weaving throughout the song and an 808 at the end and it’s a little bit less sonically ballad orthodox. It’s flipping [what it means] on its head and using instruments that aren’t always associated with a ballad.”
Kano and Vince Staples feature on ‘Juniper’ – how did that come about?
“Hip-hop is storytelling at its core, and it doesn’t always have to sound like what people expect. So, [they] made a lot of sense to me [on this record]. With Kano, he chose to be on ‘Mathematics’. I actually wanted him on ‘Pass The Salt’, but he said no, [but his verse is] beautiful. He’s talking about love, which you don’t really hear him do that often in his discography. When ‘Mathematics’ was released, even a family member was like, ‘Oh, do you really think it should have had Kano on that? Like, a rap verse?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, but it fucking does now, doesn’t it?’
“Vince was similar: we actually had AI’ed his voice (we didn’t use AI, just isolated his vocals from one of his previous songs) into ‘Pass The Salt’ for a while as a placeholder, and then we just decided to ask him if he wanted to be on it.”
You haven’t collaborated much across your discography.
“Artists are really hard to work with. The actual admin behind trying to get a feature is difficult unless it’s a really natural thing, like with Kano, or unless you’re pretty lucky – Vince is one of the most prolific rappers in our generation. I also don’t love featuring on other people’s stuff because sometimes I don’t know if I am artistically contributing or if it feels like some kind of handshake. I don’t love the handshake feature thing. I feel like listeners are not that stupid. They know when something feels disingenuous. I’d rather it be organic.”
Genre has always been hard to pin down with you.
“I honestly don’t think I have a genre. [My sound is] part soul, part R&B, part folk – pretty genreless. You could even argue that there are moments where I have The Kooks as a reference. I don’t think that I have one genre [I can be categorised in and] I don’t think I want to either.
“I’m quite happy to exist in a liminal space between genres, but I think that’s quite difficult for people to grasp if you’re a female artist. I just sometimes think the whole soul, neo-soul, R&B [comparisons] – I don’t know if I would be called that if I wasn’t brown. They’re definitely influences, but I don’t think I am a soul, or a neo-soul, or an R&B act, or a pop act. I’m just Joy Crookes, innit?”
Joy Crookes’ new album ‘Juniper’ is out now via Insanity.