5. Bad BrainsRock For Light

H.R. is the lead singer of Bad Brains, and whenever I think about influences on my melodies it’s H.R. and Nina Simone. Bad Brains were hugely important to me, because they were a punk rock, hardcore band, and they were black and from DC, and they were rastafarian. They were especially interesting to me as a young girl – I didn’t get to see them live in their prime, I was too young, but my sister did and that’s how I got to know about them. She’s three years older and she had great taste in music, and I learnt a lot from her. She would come home from a gig drenched in sweat and I was like 11, 12 and just thought it seemed so cool! So I started listening to Bad Brains. I was always interested in lyrics, and trying to sing along on this was so fast – it just opened my mind. There weren’t many black singers you would hear about in rock, so for me as a kid it was great to see that they were black and sick and legit. They were pioneers in the genre. The first time I ever lost my voice at a gig was after covering ‘Right Brigade’ because I screamed so loud for it, and I was kind of excited by my voice going. I performed with Bad Brains later which was really cool. They were innovators: they took gospel drumming and sped it up, and that’s what hardcore was based on. They claimed a space and didn’t let anyone put a box around them and what black music was supposed to be.