Two years in the making, the new CONTROLLA mixtape released last week finds Mysie exploring her most genre-defying, “boundary-less” innovative and refreshing work yet, she sounds fully plugged into her influences and the sounds of London as she grew up, and her African heritage, propelled by the influence of dance-oriented sonics, each song is infused with her innovative knack for earworm melody. “I want people to pre-drink to this. I want them to party to this. And I want them to put it on whenever they want to feel uplifted or empowered” asserts Mysie.
CONTROLLA finds proud South Londoner Mysie straying from the intimate, soul that’s previously imbued her music. Instead, she explores the sounds that defined her upbringing in London, a city home to endless subcultures and musical movements, mirroring how genres collide on the capital’s dance floors. With a string of excellent singles over recent months, such as ‘PLAY’ and ‘CTRL’ set the scene, and ‘LITTLE TOO LATE’ going viral due in part to her dad’s dancing on TikTok, she’s an artist with undeniable talent.
While 2021’s ‘Undertones’ documented a relationship in its earliest, feverish stages and ‘Joyride’ its tragic demise, CONTROLLA doesn’t dwell on love – instead, MYSIE is unbothered and in charge.
Mysie is also in control of her sound as a co-producer: her presence leading each moment – each note, chord change, and collaborator has been selected by her. The process, she says, is a welcomed contrast to her prior experiences in the industry, which often left her feeling hollow. “With everything I did before, I was like heavily involved, but I wasn’t really in the production phases of it.” She explains.
“So, it always feels different when you’re in front of the computer compared to when you’re in front of the computer, but behind a producer, and this shift of sound came from a dark place in my life where I felt like I needed to reevaluate and strip away who I thought I was and why I got into music in the first place” She reveals “How I got into music in the first place was through dance and through being introduced to a lot of house, D&B, jungle, dance music, Krump music, because I was a Krumper when I first started out as a dancer.”
“When you go into these kind of like dark spaces, you start to realise your purpose and I feel like my purpose is to create moments of nostalgia and make people create a moment on a night out.” She says ” Growing up, I’ve always loved being a part of like going to Dogstar and Brixton and going to the Bussey Building. I’m a South Londoner through and through. When I think back to those times and I think back to like how I felt and how I feel in those moments, I felt like that shift in sound was needed and was my home and what I was naturally making from producing alone at home.”
“I feel it’s a project of empowerment as well. It’s an affirmation for me to to stay in control, be in control.” She asserts.
“I’ve always wanted to be in the forefront, even visually with everything that’s going on with the project. I’m involved in every aspect conceptually, visually and, you know, sometimes it can be very easy when you’re younger to hand that over, to hand over the baton. You know, sometimes it doesn’t necessarily feel completely you. But with this project, it’s 100 per cent completely me!”
The eclecticism of the city’s music scenes has long been integral to Mysie’s music, but it’s never been more prominent than in this project. She points to House, Electronic, UK Garage and Pop as core inspirations but also credits the American music that leaked from her earphones on the tube growing up..“This was my time to follow my natural creative instinct and that has always been dance, electronic, house music. Music that makes you dance and feel something inside. Music that creates a moment” says Mysie of CONTROLLA. “I am not one-dimensional. I don’t think any musician is one-dimensional”
She points to House, Electronic, UK Garage and Popas core inspirations but also credits the American music that leaked from her earphones on the tube growing up. She’s a big fan of electronic music too, but also a broader set of influences “I have always adored people like Flying Lotus, Thundercat, those people, the people that I kind of got into music in the first place.So that and then, of course, Jersey Club has been an influence within this. So specifically, Cookie Kawaii, that EP that she did, Club Soda, Volume 2, which absolutely adore that project. Even just the limitless energy of things, I was super inspired by people like Yeji and like Rosalia and yeah, those sort of folks.”
Music runs in her family with a lineage in Ugandan and Congolese jazz and blues. “My mum’s dad played trumpet in that band. I only found that out not that long ago, because of my mum, she is funny sometimes.” She details. “My granddad and my dad’s dad went to Congo to learn more about jazz there, Congolese jazz and then jazz and blues. Then when he came back to Uganda, he kind of brought what he learned from there. So it’s funny because a lot of people think I’m Congolese or they think my dad’s Congolese, just purely off the basis of how my dad moves.”
“I grew up listening to Disclosure. So I remember the first time I saw the video, I’m pretty sure it was at my mum’s house. It was a video for Sasha Keable and Disclosure that they did. I remember being like, oh, my gosh, this music I like. You listen back to that album now and you’re like, oh, my gosh, like this still sounds so fresh. It just takes you back to, you know, just moments that you won’t ever forget, whether you’re in the club or not or not.”
“Also another huge influence that crept into this project was Baila Funk and some people may not be able to hear, the use of like either the intonation with the voice, the shouts with the voice, you know, really experimenting with the vocal. I feel like in Brazil, they do that so amazingly with Baila Funk. It’s that, you know, it’s that slightly in between the notes sort of thing of, rhat it gives this energy and then with that pumping beat, on songs like ‘Vulture’ and ‘Phases.'”
In 2020, she received the Ivor Novello Awards’ prestigious Rising Star award, resulting in a year-long mentorship with Fraser T Smith (Stormzy, Adele) “I think as artists and as songwriters, it’s really, important to understand what we’re getting into and especially in the music industry. Through, getting into the Ivers and getting a mentor in Fraser T. Smith.” She remembers ” I learned so much in that period, especially as an independent artist.” As artists, we want to believe that everybody is on our side and wants to help work and push the music. But it’s not always like that. There’s a business part to the music industry you should be aware of, and that scheme helped with that. And then obviously winning it was a great experience and, it’s great to be recognised so early to be awarded for my songwriting.”
Utilising the virality of TikTok, a video of her dad dancing to her tracks. She has generated – with special thanks to her Dad’s waistline – over 13 million views on TikTok since the release of her last project.
“So the whole premise was like getting my dad to dance to that song, and the idea of that came from my mum, not many people know this.” She tells me “My mum always sends videos of my dad on family chat. The first one she sent was of my dad dancing at a party, and the second one is just of my dad in the bedroom, just doing this waistline dance to a Ugandan song. It was from that moment I got the idea. I was like, oh my gosh, I need to get him to dance to my music because this is hilarious and he’s really good at the same time!”
Commenting on the skittering electro pop of ‘LITTLE TOO LATE’, Mysie said: “This song is about moving on and refusing to let people back in who only return when you’re on a high frequency. It’s about letting go of those toxic cycles and standing strong against their attempts to re-enter your world.”
The video is inspired by console games and their soundtracks. “So a lot of the sonics of this as well, and the kind of the visual element, a big part of my phase of trying to reconnect with myself, growing up games have always been a part of escapism. So not only music, but the games I played, you know, Simpsons, Hit and Run, Grand Theft Auto, FIFA, reconnecting, with the feel that you get in some of those games, Need for Speed, Sonic as well, you’d hear kind of those sort of electronic kind of dance soundtracks. I knew that I wanted to bring that through visually, but in my way, obviously.”
Mysie released music under her real name Lizbet Sempa, but the UK music industry’s tendency to pigeonhole black female artists led to a string of lazy comparisons, so she came up with the moniker MYSIE, a reclaiming of her artistic identity.
She began releasing songs on Soundcloud, eventually garnering a following for her pensive explorations of love, lust and longing. She quickly captured the attention culminating in the release of her debut EP ‘Chapter 11 (Ostereo)’, in 2019. “I’ve seen the industry change in the sense of I’ve seen how it’s gone from, SoundCloud to like, I remember SoundCloud days ad before that, you had MySpace, Then before TikTok Vine.” She reminisces.
“With the previous stuff I was quite hidden in a sense, ‘Bones’ was probably the only point in that period where I was nearly getting there to being openly myself even with the video as well, because I did it with my friend who did the same video phases. But it had such a huge reaction, that track.” She confesses “I feel, I just needed to go back to my roots and just be open and not be so scared of the world, because, the music industry is quite a scary place, sometimes I feel like it’s not talked about enough.”
“Whenever I listen to music in general, I always hear that under the influences underneath songs.” She explains ” I think it was Dave Grohl and he was doing an interview with Pharrell about Nirvana‘s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and he was talking about how the opening drums, the drums in the intro were inspired by 70s funk and Cameo, and that’s amazing. That crossover is amazing. Who would have thought that if they hadn’t watched that interview? That’s what it’s all about. It’s that boundaryless, that limitless. You can 100 per cent, you know, seek influence from different places and most of the cases for me, it’s subconscious.”
“It’s so funny how when I talk about being boundaryless and sometimes I feel like actually the music industry in its way is boundaryless because there’s so much that goes on that is so unregulated, yet it’s weird to have all these limitations when it comes to pigeonholing artists.” She explains and discusses the limitations of streaming and playlists for her “For me as a musician, I want to know who made that track. I want to know who is the producer and the writer of that track.”
Tapping into the sound of the genre blurring sounds of the naughties yet bringing it bang up to date and stamping it with her own personality ‘Phases’ is an excellent “city girls” anthem. Riven with hop-skipping beats and illuminating keyboards, vibrant vocal playfulness juxtaposes snatches of empowering melody that celebrates taking control and letting go of someone messing you around, with the urgent and addictive bars from featured guest £MONZO.
“I’m a city girl through and through” She smiles. “So I’d linked up with Monzo, I found her through Instagram Reels, she did a PGG freestyle, where she’s in this car in this silver bikini. I was like, who is this? And I hit her up and I was figuring out whether I wanted to have a feature on ‘Phases’ and I was just studying her lyrics. My co-producer and I were going through her music match, we were just print-screening lyrics she was citing, I was like she’s a genius.” She recalls.
“I think she’s fire. So, I worked on her on that and brought her to the studio. She completely understood the track, she knew she knew what City Girls meant. “
“It’s really standing your ground. It’s about a specific scenario, of dating a rich boy, and the idea that I’d be disposable is a joke. You can’t buy me with, you know, rings and jewels. I don’t care about that, I care about if you are a good person and, you know, I’ll let you go if you do this whole thing where you’re hot and cold with certain situations. Oh, it’s exhausting. In a Nando’s meal,, I’m 100% the chicken. I’m not the peri rice or the chips,” She laughs.
“Just be transparent, If you’re not on it then just say, don’t keep me waiting at the doormat like a little puppy. If it’s not going to happen.”
With her dad in her videos, and her cousin spinning discs and introducing her on stage, MYSIE’s creative industry is a family affair. “I love that I’m mainly only using the people in my team right now, pretty much people that I’ve known for a very long time. Whether that’s family, my dad’s my marketing tool or my cousin, it’s a family business we’re running over here.” She laughs.
Mysie has a new ethos, it’s one she sum up pretty quickly: “It’s about playing and slaying,” she grins. “That’s what it’s all about.”
Mysie is currently supporting IAMDDB across Europe, and CONTROLLA is out now.
Photo Credit: Gesualdo Lanza
