When Fousheé was a child, she decided that she was not cut out for sports when she attended a basketball camp in a skort. The other players laughed at her, but that wasn’t the precise moment that changed her trajectory from “potential athlete” to “destined star singer.” Instead, it was a moment within the training for the game itself. “You have to guard in this little box,” she recalls. “I would always not be in my box. I was confused about the boundaries."
Scroll for story v
by AARON WILLIAMS // HIP-HOP EDITOR
MAY 3, 2021
NO BOUndaries
That confusion about boundaries made her bad at basketball — that, and an aversion to running back and forth on every play — but it’s what makes her a fascinating character as a musician. A viral star who was vaulted to fame seemingly by accident thanks to a confluence of technological opportunism, TikTok, and timing, the quirky singer’s eclecticism permeates songs like “Gold Fronts,” “Single AF,” and her trademark song, “Deep End,” as she combines R&B, reggae, rap, folk, and more into a genre-agnostic gumbo of soulful reflections and incisive wit.
Despite her brief detour into athletics, Fousheé always knew that she wanted to be a singer growing up in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Music was in her blood; her mother played in an all-female reggae band in Jamaica and exposed her early in life to an extensive record collection including everything from Brandy to Bob Marley to Celine Dion to Toni Braxton. Drawn naturally to singing and songwriting, Fousheé told Billboard that she wrote her first song when she was just five years old. That inclination led to a short-lived stint on The Voice in 2018.
Via a lengthy Zoom call (that could easily have gone on for hours more), Fousheé reveals an alternate future that could have existed, even if she’s been on her current path since the time most kids were learning how to write their name. “I feel like I would've ended up being a teacher,” she admits. “Half of my family are teachers on my dad's side; my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle. So more than a good portion of them were teachers… They really wanted me to be a teacher so badly.” However, as is so often the case, life had other plans.
I WAS CONFUSED ABOUT THE BOUNDARIES.
There was just one problem; Sleepy’s version of the track didn’t credit Fousheé, because as far as Sleepy was concerned, it was just a sample he downloaded online from a service billed as “royalty-free.” Before long, the haunting, ethereal voice heard on loop throughout the beat became fans’ focus, but there was no information about just who the woman backing Sleepy’s boastful rap was. Ironically, the sample was one Fousheé “wasn’t crazy about” and initially slipped under her radar, since it was just one of many samples from the pack that had been used and she was being tagged in other songs across social media already.
“I was just kind of focused on the music that I was making,” she muses. “I didn't necessarily even like... it was just something I put out into the world. I'm like, okay, great people are using it. And then that was it. I didn't instruct it to go there. So someone made a sample, made a song with the sample. It blew up on TikTok within a week. And my friend just sent me a YouTube video of it. She was like, ‘Is this you?’ I clicked it and it had a couple million views.”
Unfortunately, getting credit for the track proved to be an ordeal in itself. “There were a lot of people like, ‘Who is that?’ And there were a lot of people who were like, ‘It's me, look over here, it's actually me…’ I made the song. And they were tagging different versions of them using the sample pack as the original. The real one was kind of just getting lost in the sauce. I was really just like over it.” Fousheé’s mom and sister, though, wouldn’t let her give up on the track or the credit she was due. “I'm working on my music and my mom and my sister just hounded me every day: ‘You should make a TikTok video.’
She says that TikTok video generated even more buzz around the song because of the reactions and controversy it caused. “When I posted, I'm like, ‘Hi, I'm the singer.’ And no one knows or believes me because all the information was just all scrambled up by then. So people are like, ‘What, did he steal it?’ And then like, ‘He stole from a Black woman.’” Between social justice warriors and Sleepy Hallow’s defensive supporters, Fousheé woke up to find that her explainer had gone viral, with thousands of newly-minted fans pushing her to craft her own version of the song, which she eventually did — albeit, reluctantly.
“I didn't even like the simple one,” she remembers, bemused. “I made it and I'm like, ‘Wow! What the hell? You actually like this? All right let me finish it.’ I shot the video with Zac and I met my manager in the midst of it all. And he helped me get credit for the song and connected me with RCA. And they just kind of took the video and the song and put it in the hands of everyone. And I think altogether, we made it a victorious moment... ‘Cause not all those stories end like that.”
The saga is both instructive and possibly indicative of a shift taking place in the music industry. Up until very recently, female artists having such leverage and control over their work — how it’s made, how they’re credited for it, how it’s presented, and how they get paid — has been somewhat rare. However, in recent years, we’ve seen a growing number of women, specifically, Black women in Black music genres like R&B and soul, making strides in creative control, self-determination, and directing their own narratives as opposed to having their output carefully curated to fit narrow designations determined by, well, men — ones who don’t always have the artists’ best interests in mind.
we made
it a victorious moment...
‘Cause not all those stories end like that.
It’d be easy — a shortcut, of sorts — to compare Fousheé to artists like Ari Lennox, Solange Knowles, SZA, or Teyana Taylor, all R&B revivalists who not only address typical subject matter like love, sex, relationships, and heartbreak to speak on questions of identity, politics, culture, and self-confidence in music that sounds increasingly like whatever they want it to. But those easy comparisons fly in the face of a history that builds on itself and includes forebears like Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and more. That’s a legacy Fousheé wants to honor.
“I went to this afterschool program called the Martin Luther King Center,” she recollects. “I learned a lot about my history there. There was this teacher, Ms. Anderson. She just had hella knowledge. We used to make jokes like, ‘Oh, she used to jump over Martin Luther King.’ She just knew all of the Black facts and she would make me memorize ‘Still I Rise’ from Maya Angelou. She really beat our Black history into us. I knew where I came from. I knew my history.” Fousheé calls this time her saving grace growing up in predominantly white Bridgewater, New Jersey after moving from the more diverse Somerville.
She says the move was due to her mom’s proud outlook on life. “She was like, ‘I'd rather have the smallest house in the best neighborhood than the biggest house in the worst neighborhood,’” she remembers. “I hated every single day of it because I felt very much like an outsider. It sucked because you can't really relate to most people there. So in addition to learning about your body, your hormones and shit, and learning who you are as a person, you get that race lesson very early on and it's so confusing.”
This self-consciousness was expressed, as it so often is, in attributes like her hair, which she straightened to fit in. “I wanted a perm,” she says, matter of factly. “I wanted my hair to be straight and blowing in the wind like everyone else.” Her aunt denied her request, warning that her hair would fall out. Now, her hair is a defining characteristic of Fousheé’s eclectic style, which is on full display in the videos for the songs she’s put out, which pair that visual signifier of self-confidence with lyrical ones.
EDITION 2
MAY 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Paul L. Carter
Contrary to popular belief, no one is truly an overnight success in music. Laying the foundation of a solid career can take years or even decades, with artists supporting themselves through temporary jobs, writing gigs, paid performances in tiny clubs, and whatever other hustles present themselves. For Fousheé, the hustle that kept her going was Splice, an emerging music production platform that offers its community’s members access to royalty-free sample packs with which to craft beats. Incidentally, this hustle was also the key to her mid-pandemic breakthrough.
In 2019, Fousheé recorded a sample pack of about 250 fragments of songs — freestyles, melodies, vocal runs, and the like — and uploaded them to Splice in order to generate a little extra income; artists contributing samples get a nominal fee based on how many downloads their packs receive, although artists don’t receive royalties or publishing rights of the works that use them. “I'm friends with a lot of producers,” she explains of how she got plugged into this world. “The things that producers need the most are hooks and these little vocal phrases.”
However, she says she still wasn’t aware that she would be relinquishing so much control over her work, and cautions any artists considering following in her footsteps. “I probably wouldn't recommend a pack of hooks, but maybe just like oohs and the ahs.” She explains that in her case, because she was a friend of someone who worked for Splice, she was able to finagle an up-front payout, which she says made sense for her at the time. She does add a caveat: “I wouldn't do anything like that again because in scenarios like that, where the song kind of just takes on a life of its own, you're left without any rights.”
The scenario she’s describing, of course, is the saga of “Deep End Freestyle,” a clip from her pack that became a viral favorite when it was sampled by emerging Brooklyn, New York drill rapper Sleepy Hallow. Riding the wave of interest in the nascent regional scene after the death of its resident superstar, Pop Smoke, Sleepy Hallow released the mixtape Sleepy For President — which contained the “Deep End Freestyle” track — in June of 2020. The track quickly became a favorite on TikTok, the video-centric social network that had previously helped drive hits for the likes of Doja Cat, Lil Nas X, and Megan Thee Stallion.
I WAS CONFUSED ABOUT THE BOUNARIES
I knew where I came from.
I knew my history.
One example is “Single AF,” which is less of a breakup song and more a declaration of independence and inner contentment. She says she and the ex who inspired the song are still on good terms, but that he “hates” it because zealous fans have turned a theoretical version of him into a straw man/punching bag who gets dragged in the video’s comments nearly nonstop.
“It's very exaggerated,” she says of the verbal smackdown the song delivers. “It was a good breakup. I have no ill feelings. “Single AF” was inspired by a very real breakup and me just saying, ‘This is not a bad thing.’ It's a new beginning. And I love growing.
I love exploring and that's kind of what I was saying. It's a fresh start and we didn't end on bad terms. So there's no bad blood so I’m single as fuck and I'm happy about it… I was playing around vocally. I was like, ‘This is the most ridiculous run vocal thing I can do… why not just do that?’”
Another trapping of her bold self-awareness and swagger is her “Gold Fronts,” an ode to the classic ghetto fabulous fitting that flashes wealth with every toothy grin. Lil Wayne, who appears on the track to deliver a boisterous guest verse to a groovy loop with no drums, gives Fousheé her biggest-name cosign on a record to date — which turns out to be another perfect example of the creative freedom and control she exercises over her music. “My manager was like, "This needs drums,'" she smirks. ”I was like, ‘For real?’ I love a stripped-down song. So I was like, ‘I like it as is.’" The version of the song that made onto DSPs — and later, onto YouTube — is the version she liked, not the one that seemed like the safest bet at the time.
These creative flourishes showcase the intentionality with which Fousheé approaches the craft. She takes care that she doesn’t just feed into stereotypes or take the easy way out. “I think I always try to keep in mind, the way I describe things. I never want to talk about Blackness in a negative light. If I do talk about nappy hair, textured hair, I'm going to talk about it positively and I'm going to wear my afro and be proud of it or whatever. My mom was a darker skin lady. She was darker than me and I never saw that as bad. She actually taught us this is where the actual beauty is. So I try to reflect that in my music when it comes up, if it comes up. But I want it to be a moment where you don't even have to think about anything like that. You're just in your own world. You don't have to think about your daily problems.”
Those were the thoughts that inspired the expanded version of “Deep End,” which was equally influenced by the events of 2020. The seemingly interminable lockdown, the uprisings against police brutality, and the extended presidential election all provided fodder for her defiant, but not bitter or poisonous, lyrics. She also adds her own rhythmic lyrical flair, inspired by her love of battle rap, which she flashes in intricate rhyme schemes throughout her growing catalog. “I used to love Cassidy,” she admits sheepishly. “I used to watch Smack DVD.”
I never want to talk about Blackness in a negative light.
It's a new beginning.
And I love growing.
I love exploring.
Maybe her disposition toward revealing this fact is due to her awareness of her image, and how it can seem to be at odds with a love for vicious punchlines and uncharitable metaphors. After all, she says she wants her upcoming album — tentatively titled Time Machine — to “be genuine, organically me. I want to take out a new sort of space.
I think seeing “Deep End” being the top 10 of alternative radio really changed my perspective of all this. And it's making me tap into that space that's been untouched for so long. The last time somebody did that was 32 years ago and it was Tracy Chapman. And I feel like we should take up any space that we want and I want to exist in that space.”
Which includes writing about love, her driving force. And it includes working in the forms that stem from the roots of her musical education: soul, reggae, R&B. It includes telling “real stories” and it includes collaborating more and feeling “a great deal of responsibility” and wanting “everything to be perfect,” even though she knows “the most perfect moments are the ones that aren't planned and are very vulnerable and unpolished.”
Amid all those contradictions and paradoxes and stigmas, preconceptions, expectations, and assumptions, it’s a good thing Fousheé doesn’t believe in boundaries.
I want to take out a new sort of space.
the most perfect moments are the ones that aren't planned and are very vulnerable and unpolished.
Another trapping of her bold self-awareness and swagger is her “Gold Fronts,” an ode to the classic ghetto fabulous fitting that flashes wealth with every toothy grin. Lil Wayne, who appears on the track to deliver a boisterous guest verse to a groovy loop with no drums, gives Fousheé her biggest-name cosign on a record to date — which turns out to be another perfect example of the creative freedom and control she exercises over her music. “My manager was like, "This needs drums,’" she smirks. ”I was like, ‘For real?’ I love a stripped-down song. So I was like, ‘I like it as is.’" The version of the song that made onto DSPs — and later, onto YouTube — is the version she liked, not the one that seemed like the safest bet at the time.
These creative flourishes showcase the intentionality with which Fousheé approaches the craft. She takes care that she doesn’t just feed into stereotypes or take the easy way out. “I think I always try to keep in mind, the way I describe things. I never want to talk about Blackness in a negative light. If I do talk about nappy hair, textured hair, I'm going to talk about it positively and I'm going to wear my Afro and be proud of it or whatever. My mom was a darker skin lady. She was darker than me and I never saw that as bad. She actually taught us this is where the actual beauty is. So I try to reflect that in my music when it comes up, if it comes up. But I want it to be a moment where you don't even have to think about anything like that. You're just in your own world. You don't have to think about your daily problems.”
Those were the thoughts that inspired the expanded version of “Deep End,” which was equally influenced by the events of 2020. The seemingly interminable lockdown, the uprisings against police brutality, and the extended presidential election all provided fodder for her defiant, but not bitter or poisonous, lyrics. She also adds her own rhythmic lyrical flair, inspired by her love of battle rap, which she flashes in intricate rhyme schemes throughout her growing catalog. “I used to love Cassidy,” she admits sheepishly. “I used to watch Smack DVD.”
I never want to talk about Blackness in a negative light.
I WANT TO TAKE OUR A NEW SORT OF SPACE
Makeup: David Velasquez (@mugopus) / Rare Creatives (@rare.creatives)
Stylist: Kaamilah Thomas
Photography: Paul L. Carter
Designed by: Daisy James
