Virtual-band leader recruits other voices
Being a virtual band has always been part of the sales pitch of Gorillaz, the pairing of the Blur musician Damon Albarn and the illustrator Jamie Hewlett, which has been releasing hip-hopinfluenced concept albums since 2001.
And yet, with “Humanz” — the fifth Gorillaz album and the first since 2010 — Albarn found himself at the center of a decidedly real-world conundrum.
To unify the album and its many collaborators, he tried to imagine an apocalyptic event — the election of Donald Trump as president — and the possible reactions to it. Then he convened some of the most vibrant talent in hip-hop, rhythm-and-blues, house, reggae and more: the pointed rappers Pusha T and Vince Staples, the nimble singer Peven Everett, the dance-hall tear-jerker Popcaan, the early house-music innovator Jamie Principle, the soul legend Mavis Staples and many more.
The cartoon band featuring four animated characters was created by Albarn and Hewlett in 1998. Albarn, 49, recently talked about “Humanz,” out today, and his career.
Every post-Blur project of yours involves some sort of cross-cultural conversation. Why is that?
In Britain, I grew up with Pakistani and Jamaican kids. So, for me, it was in my DNA as well. I got separated at the age of 10 from all of that and moved to Essex, which was exclusively white, rightwing and afraid. And it’s still today — voted Brexit, surprise, surprise.
Your parents decided to move there?
They did because they wanted their kids to be in the countryside for a while. But I came back to London and went straight to West London, which I felt would be the right place for me to be, and I’ve been there for 30 years since. Were you welcomed? Well, not really, because I came back and, you know, I was in an indie band. And experience and life in those crucial years had taken me completely away. There was nothing, apart from this one club called Andromeda in Colchester, which played soul music. There was nothing, there was no black culture in Colchester, so it took me up until — really about the late ’90s — to start to find a way back in.
Is that what the first Gorillaz album is in response to?
Definitely, I think it’s the beginning of me getting back to where I started emotionally, you know? Always when I land in New York, I put (the hip-hop radio station Hot) 97 on. I’ve been doing that since I even thought, “Oh, maybe I could make music like this,” from back, like, the mid-1990s, when I used to come here with Blur, you know? With my Britpop Fred Perry on.
What is the theme of “Humanz,” especially with the guest appearances. What are Vince Staples and Pusha T talking about?
When I start a record, I always like to imagine what the world’s going to be like when it comes out. So I just sort of imagined what could fuel me, what fantasy could I really sort of find rich pickings from? And it was the fantasy of Donald Trump winning the election. Right from last year — just imagine if that happened! But also I wanted to make a party record. Always wanted to make a party record since I was a kid. So I kind of juxtaposed that with this dark fantasy of what was going to happen in America. It was the idea of “How can you make a really dark party record?”
What made you choose the specific people who ended up on the album?
It’s the tone of the voice; it’s the atmosphere that the individual kind of has. And we don’t know whether it’s going to fit. We meet and we take it from there, you know? Sometimes it doesn’t work. I’m never going to tell you the people that I’ve tried on this record (when) it didn’t work — but there were a lot.
On the list of collaborators, almost everyone is American. No grime, no British rap, nothing like that?
It’s a very valid question. Why? Because when you put the two together — which I have, I’ve tried, I had loads of British artists have a go — it didn’t work. My record’s set here. My imagination was, it was set here on that night after the inauguration. It was set in the future, it was set in when the world was just going to go slightly mad, and the world has gone slightly mad, there’s no question about it. Reassuringly, bizarrely, I think that, outside of the core base that brought Mr. Trump into our lives in such a big way, it’s worked the opposite way.
People are being awakened?
I think he’s done the opposite of what he thinks he’s done.