Foushee on flipping the script, embracing vulnerability and changing the world
Welcome to CHEW THE FAT WITH…, our long-form profile series where we invite you to sit down with fashion’s next generation as they dig deep into their memories. To chew some fat - defined as an informal conversation brimming with small talk - we encourage you to pull up a chair and take a big old bite as we spill the tea on the life and work of the industry’s need-to-knows. Just remember to mop up after yourself.
“You were in my way, and you set me free!” FOUSHEÉ sings softly over the Zoom call from her apartment in LA, breaking into song whilst trying to recall the first ever lyrics that she wrote. The singer-songwriter, whose career skyrocketed to success on the back of her 2020 TikTok viral tune, Deep End, is reminiscing about her upbringing, the days when she used to perform mini concerts for her family as a kid, and how her Mum used to play Toni Braxton’s Un-Break My Heart on loop. “I think what drew me into music was it being an alternate reality,” she says. “I used to sing and relate to songs about love way before I knew what it was. I would picture myself doing shows and concerts as a kid. My reality was a very different place. In the house we didn’t have cable so, for me, [music] was an alternate reality.”
On TikTok, Deep End has been used as the soundtrack to almost 4 million videos. To put that into context, OLIVIA RODRIGO’S drivers license - the song that holds the record for the most streams in a single week - features on half the number of videos as Deep End. But unlike Rodrigo’s overnight journey to mega-stardom that is more common for an increasing number of artists that are born out of the ‘TikTok Effect’, Fousheé had to fight for her deserved recognition like no other. Hearing her sample on rapper SLEEPY HALLOW’S track, Deep End (Freestyle), blow up on the platform without any credit to her, her work and her voice, spurred people on to ask the “alt-soul” artist to come forward as the vocalist on the track and get the recognition she was owed. Now, clutching hold of the credit that was due, and with her instantly recognisable soulful voice and resonating lyrics bouncing around the biggest social media platform in the world, Fousheé has so much more that she wants to say.
“I wouldn’t say that it’s my favourite song,” she admits. “But that’s usually how it goes.” For Fousheé, her first hit could not have come about in a more natural, organic and dignified way. TikTok, in her eyes, is an opportunity for emerging artists to bypass the obstacles of the conventional music industry, and a chance for audiences to decide what they want the next big thing to be. “Each creative chooses what they want their narrative to be and the content they want to create. Everything just relied on labels and companies before. That’s not natural. I like that it’s the people who are saying what they like and what they don’t like,” she explains.
Creating on her own terms, Fousheé puts herself amongst the people with the hope of writing music that will connect with her listeners on a deeply personal, profound level. All of Fousheé’s work is an exploration of intimate experiences, hard-to-face emotions, struggles, and moments of joy that help build her music into the authentic, multi-layered creations that make up her discography. One of the artist’s recent releases, single af, for example, may ostensibly feel like an uplifting pop song that aims to empower post-break-up singletons and bring on that very centring moment of ‘I don’t need them’. And, in a way, it is very much that. However, single af also channels the emotions that Fousheé was feeling at the time of writing: the fleeting fears that accompany relationships, the reminders of how cautious you have to be whilst navigating the cusp of love, but most importantly the vulnerability that weighs heavy on each of us at different times in our lives. “I feel like I have to be vulnerable in order to really get to the root of how I feel,” she says. “In the moment of writing, I don’t think about it that much. I just think about what I want to express. I guess it gives you a little anxiety knowing the world is going to hear about that vulnerable place. But I always try and be as vulnerable as possible because that’s where the honesty is. When ego gets in the way, the truth gets a little distorted.”
Authenticity and truth in Fousheé’s music is no end goal. Instead, it’s an integral factor to her creative process that has been there from the very beginning. In the artist’s pre-Deep End days, her work echoed the sensibility and fluctuating combination of emotions and thoughts like that of Frank Ocean. A year on, the artist, who prides herself on her perpetual development and passion for trying new ideas and concepts, still delves into those emotions in order to tell her story in ever-changing light and context. Most recently, the artist’s collaboration with Lil Wayne on gold fronts is a celebration of personality, identity and nostalgia. And her forthcoming project in spring this year will no doubt journey through the essences of Fousheé and her thoughts in the same way that all of her music does.
Much like Frank Ocean, Fousheé’s work offers her listeners a chance to connect with their own inner-feelings through the emotions personal to Fousheé. And ultimately, that is what she is trying to achieve. “I want people to escape. I want [my music] to be whatever they need it to be. I want it to be healing. I want people to say, ‘that’s exactly how I feel’, and what they do with that is up to them. What I wrote Deep End about was my personal experience, but it really took off in Russia. So if some kid in Russia relates, then that makes me happy too. I want them to just make it their own.”
And the fact that young Russians - among many other people - have fallen madly in love with a song that explores Fousheé’s struggle breaking into the industry, not just in light of gaining recognition for her sample but as a Black woman too, is emblematic of her capabilities as a songwriter; a writer who is finally starting to get the esteem she knows she deserves, with Deep End reaching the top 10 on ALT Radio, making Fousheé the first Black woman in 32 years to do so. Back in October last year, the artist wrote in a tweet: “Black women deserve more than the scraps of the music industry” - a crucial mantra that contextualises a number of her hard-hitting, recognisable lyrics. “Had to come and flip the script, had a big bone to pick,” she says, quoting her viral song. “It comes from so many places; my perspective of the industry and how Black people are treated in the industry, how I feel moving around in the world as a Black woman, how I feel being a woman, how I felt getting my credit...” And whilst much of the artist’s work focuses on society’s injustices and the entrenched problems of the industry, Fousheé also wants her music to provide a release for her listeners; a chance to step away from the real world and find sanctuary in her thoughts.
“We can create our worlds with words, with the people we choose to put in our worlds, and I hope I can make people’s worlds a better place with my music,” she says. “I’m excited to finally be able to bring my little daydreams to life. I have an active imagination and now I have the means to make them into actual things. I want to change the world, please,” she laughs as the news hits social media that the success of Deep End has just made history.