“The 90s are in right now, the clothes, the fashion… In terms of physicality, the defense… This is some 90s basketball.” – Grant Hill on NBA on TNT, 5.13.24
I. Right This Way
The 1990s are back, or so popular culture keeps telling us. They must be back if Grant Hill feels compelled to announce it to the entire country/world during one of the NBA playoff games in mid-May. The announcers say this again during one of the Knicks-Pacers games; look at how physical they’re being on defense, look at how much they’re driving into the paint, this must be what Hanif Abdurraqib calls “Real Hoops.” What maybe was a throwaway comment (“the 90s are back”) is actually quite profound, something that signals some level of societal self-reflection on the Bush I into Clinton years in America. All around me, I see and hear the 90s (re)approaching. In the irl and virtual classroom, my students wear Aaliyah, TLC, and N.W.A. shirts to class. Out in the world, I see the Gen Zer’s reppin’ the JNCOs I shunned as a youth (funny, as I almost exclusively wear baggy pants from Wild Fang and Big Bud Press now) and the bell bottoms (themselves recycled from the 70s) that I did wear as a late 90s preteen. And, most of all, in the realm of experimental pop music—and its channeling the late 90s pop-R&B-hip hop collapse—I hear and feel the 1990s. (In a glowing report, Reader 1 of my manuscript asks if I might write more about the 1990s into my book that centers the sonic femmeness of 2010s/2020s artists Blood Orange, Janelle Monáe, FKA twigs, and Dawn Richard.) I hear the 90s in Amaarae’s mix of pop-R&B-hip hop with alté and Afropop on Fountain Baby. I hear the 90s in how bbymutha went out dancing in London’s electronic music scenes and brought that sound into Sleep Paralysis. I hear the 90s in how shygirl raps-sings-whispers over a collection of house beats on Club Shy. I hear the 90s in Tierra Whack’s World Wide Whack, preceded by a trio of tongue-in-cheek EPs entitled Rap? Pop? R&B? in late 2021.
Most of all, I hear the 90s in Erika de Casier’s Still, her third LP (second for 4AD) that I have had in rotation since the moment it dropped in late February. Erika de Casier is a 33- or 34-year-old mixed-race Portuguese-Danish singer, songwriter, and producer. She first performed as part of the R&B duo Saint Cava before going solo and has since co-written songs for K-pop group NewJeans as a “side gig.” In an interview from 2021, de Casier lists her influences as Craig David, Aaliyah and Timbaland, Sade, Destiny’s Child and Darkchild, Portishead, Tricky, and Mariah Carey. In her own words, “In my pre-teen years, I’d go to the library and borrow CDs from the likes of Erykah Badu and I’d listen to lots of trip hop. But I was also a pop radio kid, you know? I grew up listening to MTV.” No one has succinctly described a sound that I’ve heard from the likes of not only de Casier but also FKA twigs, Kelela, and Dawn Richard (all with their own VERY different variations on it): that of intermixing the capital-P pop music of their/our youths with the electronic music (especially trip hop), hip hop production, and richness of R&B across time. It’s a take on pop music that emphasizes the physicality of the beat; as a late 90s preteen who grew up on hip hop and R&B, discovered 90s alternative in high school, and started to dig back to the electronic 90s in college into grad school, this kind of experimental pop music is the core of my music-listening at this point. Earlier in the interview, de Casier confirms, “Before I met Natal (Zaks) from Regelbau I was interested in electronic music and when we met, we shared a common interest in searching for music we didn’t know, music from other worlds… But we’ve also had conversations about the fact that I make pop music…” Meanwhile, in the actual 90s, these were musical worlds that did not always collide; sure, we had Björk’s Homogenic and Janet’s The Velvet Rope (which is, unsurprisingly, de Casier’s favorite Janet Jackson album), but those felt like rarities. In the 2010s’ into 2020s’ revisiting the 1990s in experimental pop, artists mash together these previously not-as-connected 90s musical elements—and you can feel it on not only an emotional level but also on a visceral level that pulls you in and shakes you up.
Still/ Let’s go/ Do you like it like that?
“Right This Way,” the first track on de Casier’s Still, opens with that glitter/sparkle/twinkling star synth sound familiar to anyone who grew up listening to 90s R&B. After some synth harp sounds, the keys enter the mix, along with de Casier whisper-panting “Oh. Oh. Oh.” in a tone of pre-orgasmic build up. (“I still live with people in a collective and I can’t shout in this apartment. I’m literally whispering into the microphone, so there’s an element of not wanting anyone to hear me. I like it intimate,” de Casier recounts in that same interview.) “Welcome to my party,” she talk-sings for the first fully crisp and clear vocal, with the drums boom-booming in a forceful yet intimate manner. At one minute in, she mouths, “Still,” announcing the album title and word that will linger in the affects (and, sometimes, in the actual lyrics) on the rest of the album. “Let’s go.” Boom-boom. “Do you like it like that?” In a rendezvous interview with Clash in early 2024, Harry Thorfinn-George narrates, “The cornerstones of RnB and UK dance are still there, but the frame of reference has slightly shifted: think less Sade and more Timbaland. For example, the funky, exotic synth-line on ‘ooh’ could easily have been off the backend of ‘Miss E… So Addictive’.” And, as de Casier herself adds, “‘I definitely think there was a need to work with others. Inviting people in naturally gives it something new.’” New people, new mixing of genres, new sounds.
II. The Princess
Still. It’s a little word with a big punch, a word that can mean a handful of related yet different things. Again. Continuing. Present. But also: Not moving. The moment before a beating (heart). The same old. The word also has a fascinating etymology in Old English: stille, or “motionless, stable, fixed, stationary,” and, later, “quiet, calm, gentle, silent.” At some point, our American English colloquial understanding of “still” came to hold non-movement and movement together. Still as in “again;” it’s still happening. Still as in “continuing;” this is still the situation. Still as in “present;” I am still here. This versatility of still is not lost on de Casier, nor on her interviewer Thorfinn-George, who narrates,
When Dr. Dre released ‘Still D.R.E’ in 1999, he was asserting his status as a legend, ‘still the beat bangs, still I’m doing my thang’ he rapped. Both Monica and SWV released comeback albums titled ‘Still Standing’ and ‘Still’ respectively. As the title of Erika de Casier’s new album, the word ‘Still’ has a more tongue-in-cheek ring to it.
Adding onto his setup, de Casier replies, “It’s funny because I haven’t actually been around that long, but I’m still me. I’m still Jenny from the block!” With an early 2000s JLo reference and a laugh, de Casier brings us back to the 1990s influences on her music, again. At the same time, she also brings up back to these multiple means of still. What does it mean to simultaneously be still and be in movement? It’s kind of like the opening boom-boom drums of “Right This Way,” which continue (still) in variation throughout the rest of the album—although they also are strangely absent on “The Princess,” the fourth track on the album.
‘Cause I wanna have it all/ I wanna have both/ I wanna do it hard and I wanna make love/ Make my own money/ And still feel you love me down to my core/ I wanna be [me] and still do my job/ Why can’t I have it all?
“The Princess” is a track on Still that I wish had a different name, although I can fathom how de Casier landed on it. In her version of the above lines, de Casier sings the middle lyric as, “I wanna be a mom and still do my job.” She sings these lines over some of her sparsest instrumentation on the album, her voice soaring over a soft guitar and some light electronic atmospheric distortion behind it. If there’s a “confessional” moment on the album, then this is it. As AFAB people, we’re made to feel like wanting a complex and layered life, full of dualities (that, albeit, can be held together with just some creativity) that might require some additional communication or conversation is wanting “too much.” (Another duality: “princess” as subservient to a man but also as wanting to bust out of that mold.) Meanwhile, I have spent my entire queer/adult life believing that I (we) can have it all, that wanting more is not setting ourselves up for failure but rather setting ourselves up for abundance. I have loved with an open heart (no matter how many times I’ve still gotten hurt—or caused hurt) and have been truly in love close to a handful of times. I’ve most enjoyed—and therefore sought out—sex that is hot/hard yet witty, with an emotional connection (a sweetness) at its core. Most of all, I’ve built a career and community life for myself (my “be [me]” substituted into the lyric) that creates a fulfilling life in itself, regardless of whether or not I’m in the kind of romantic, long-term partnership that I’ve never stopped wanting at any point in my adult life. Although she words it a bit differently than I would, this is where I most connect with de Casier on Still.
One of my favorite words in the Italian language is ancora. In inglese, significa: Still. Yet. More. Again. Those first two meanings connect back to the original etymology: I am still here; I am not yet moving. And then, we also land on the other side of the spectrum (again): I am moving through it again; I am going through it again. The word “more” is the wildcard on this list; it signifies both a stuckness and sweetness, something we want to get beyond so that we can have more—or, perhaps, something that is keeping us stuck from having more. Put differently: when I stop being still in the walls I put up around myself, I can be still in a different sense: present, vulnerable, and completely open to another. (Still.)
III. Anxious
I still feel tired when I wake up… I kinda still think you are not that bad
There are two you’s that I won’t write about anymore, because you (each) were that bad—and, if I’m ever going to love someone (new) fully again, then I have to leave those memories of you behind two or four years ago. (“Aged a century in one year,” as de Casier sings at a different point in “Anxious.”) This is not to pretend that neither of you happened; rather, it’s to leave your energy drains in years past. Maybe this is healing—or maybe this is incorporation. Whatever the case, I’m not anxious anymore.
IV. Ex-Girlfriend
An old flame/ Still burning with desire
Everyone that I have (romantically) loved the most has passed through Philadelphia at some point. For me, the City of Brotherly Love has always been the City of Sisterly Love (in the most expansive sense of the phrase). I lived in Philly from August 2005-October 2011, the longest I’ve yet to live in a place during my adult life; it’s where I “came out,” an open but ongoing process, stretching out over those entire six years, growing from gayness into queerness over time and space. My first girlfriend lived across the street from Woody’s, the gay club where we’d go for the 18+ nights (where I’d later return, on the night that Prince died, with one of the people that I won’t write about anymore)—and, once we were both of age, would meet up with our friends at Sisters (RIP) around the corner and play pool. An undergrad at Penn from 2005-2009, I was in college during a moment in time where gay marriage seemed (disappointingly) like the most important issue to some or many of us deeply involved at the LGBTQ Center; every time someone rehashed this argument, I thought our of Queer Politics, Queer Community professor Heather Love standing at the front of the class in Fall 2007 musing, “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with gay marriage. I just wish we would imagine (value?) other forms of queer community too.” (If anything cemented my queerness as a simultaneous sexual and political identity, it was that exact moment in time.) My three year and three month relationship with my first girlfriend was ultimately my first everything: first long-term relationship and first sexual partner, along with a space where I actively started to sort through what being “queer” (I have never in my life identified as a lesbian) might mean for me. In addition to youth, I’ve always considered this to be one of the things that ultimately drove that partner and me apart, a breakup that I initiated in a way I’ve never felt great about. (“We were young and stupid,” my first girlfriend would reassure me when we reconnected last month.)
But still/ You gotta be missing me
I felt badly on and off for a long time (over a decade) for how and why I broke up with my first girlfriend, who was the last of my past partners with whom I would actually want to be in touch (a handful) that I alerted about my cancer. Knowing that I would be in Philly in mid-April, I started to think about reaching out in the beginning of the year, taking the time to be really intentional about contacting someone with whom I had kept radio silence for 12/13 years. “There’s a reason I’m your ex-girlfriend,” de Casier sings before the above couplet, a line that both stands on its own and holds the entire chorus together. Raising her voice over the (still) present foreboding opening drum machine boom-boom, de Casier sings with a clarity about the relationship being over… if she leaves it there, that is. Given the clean break that this girlfriend and I had, it’s always been there, a healthy boundary well in place for any possible future meetup. And so, when I watched her walk into the Vibrant Coffee downtown on the Tuesday afternoon in between my giving a big talk at Haverford the day before and getting ready to go see my favorite band Land of Talk at Johnny Brenda’s (which I last visited in 2010 to see/hear Land of Talk with this particular ex-girlfriend) with two of my best friends, I immediately felt at ease as I went in to hug this person who knew me the most intimately of all during my early 20s. In Rittenhouse Square, we’d sit on a park bench with the divider between us, slipping into the intimacy of people who knew each other well a long time ago and now were attempting to channel that into a friendship. Long married with a house and a dog, I’ve only wished the best for her, this person who has been one of the most important people in my life.
Still/ You gotta be missing me
Of course, “Ex-Girlfriend” is actually about two other/different ways of dealing with a breakup: “Yeah I lied when I said I was over you though/ Have to find another to get under you know” (as shygirl sings on the second verse) and getting “caught slipping with my hand in the cookie jar” back into your… ex-girlfriend, as de Casier sings on the third and somehow strongest verse on the album’s standout track. These lines come after the bridge, where a string soar starts to boom-boom along with the previously foreboding drum machine—and de Casier gives into the sweetness of the memory of sexual bliss. In October 2015, after my second girlfriend had moved from Brooklyn (via Boston) to Philly for work, it only took a few drinks at Tattoed Mom and a walk to gelato in my old neighborhood for us to open up the door to having sex again next time, when the Christmas lights would be up all over the city—and we’d move with the intimacy of having seen Sleater-Kinney at Market Hotel in Brooklyn together the week before, curled into one another in the 300-person room. (We’d end whatever that period of time was at the Land of Talk show in Brooklyn in May 2016, with her kissing me tenderly before leaving the show early.) Now, when we meet up as purely friends, we schedule the hang mid-afternoon and everyone makes set plans with someone else after, so there isn’t even the slightest temptation (Besides, I wouldn’t again at this point.). On my Wednesday in Philly, I take a midday break from my dad (who’s down from New Jersey) to sit outside on campus with this ex-girlfriend. It’s the most comfortable we’ve been with one another in our friendship years, and I’m really happy to have reconnected with her on this trip too. When it’s time to go, I ask if we can take a selfie together, since we somehow never took a photo together when we dated in the second half of 2012. She smiles and happily obliges. When I look back at the photo, I see two people who once loved one another very deeply, who still do, now in friendship.
V. Twice
“Twice” is another song about a breakup, but I also think (feel) about it as a song about leaving a place behind. “Fool me once, fool me twice,” de Caiser and Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) sing in harmony with one another, a riff on the old saying, sounds off twice in the song, again, still. It’s a song about experiencing a breakup in a place and through space, more specifically of when the places and spaces you used to share with someone else are now missing that person. The narrators struggle to remember these spaces without one another, even as they, at least subconsciously, remember how they were once able to exist in those places with different others—or, more tellingly, even completely on their own.
Still you got me stalling here (What’s your problem?)
Whenever I go home to Jersey City/New York City or anywhere near it, I am suddenly filled with the urge to stall (still), to retreat into an older version of myself that seemed simpler and less agonizing. I want to be the dutiful daughter, the child who never left, the person who wasn’t fundamentally changed by going to Penn (“That School”), the cultural capital of being a humanities professor in 2020s America often feeling like an absolutely insurmountable gap between us, even for my third generation—and highly educated—Italian American family. What if I just lived here, what if I could just drive home for holidays, what if I stopped trying to “run away” from where I’m from? This particular visit, there were extra layers, as it was my first time back in Philly (my East Coast home away from home) since my cancer diagnosis in 2023. However, going “home” is not living at home; it’s being on vacation in a place where I once lived, an entire country of distance between me and the realities of my LA-present (most prominently, still being in a cancer treatment of some kind). In this sense, my week in Philadelphia in mid-April was a calm in the storm before the PET scan, before my oncologist decided to pre-emptively change my treatment, before I went to the ER (again)—and my insurance finally approved the medication that the PA and nurse had been yelling at them about for two weeks straight. It was getting to spend an entire day with my dad, staying with one of my best friends in the world, seeing a handful of other friends and/or mentors, doing IASPM-US for the first time with two of my most trusted friends in academia (and in life in general!), and getting to know, or continuing to get to know, people I’m excited to know further, on multiple levels. It was the week in my 2024 so far when everything felt most in sync, a moment in time and space that part of me wishes that I could put in a bottle, like a ship that stands still, always immediately accessible.
In my book manuscript, the Blood Orange chapter is where everything bursts open, where I start(ed) to really write myself into the material, to feel through an ever-changing New York City, the home of my heart. I write about seeing southwest Brooklyn gentrify more and more every time I go home, about being in class with José Muñoz and Tavia Nyong’o during the Fall 2013 semester when the former died and the latter walked out of our last class of Topics in Queer Theory: Wildness with a video of José playing, about watching the queer and trans history and herstory of our city get bulldozed over by a bunch of real estate mogul or cop mayors. (“Moreover, the politics of space, and of identity as a white genderqueer person in Black and sometimes white music spaces that Capetola theorizes in these personal sections is incredibly important.” It’s the sentence that I keep mentally revisiting from the reader reports, because writing about myself this way was a last-minute addition after my comrade Dan read the manuscript—and he encouraged me to run with this thing that he knew I wanted to do but was also scared to do.) On “Twice,” Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes is a ghost, an ex singing back to de Casier through the cracks of memory, as she sings in another powerful outro, “You know the walls are tainted/ With all the love you didn’t fill/ My favourite meals are tasteless/ ‘Cause I cooked them once or twice for you/ And all my favourite places/ Made the mistake of showing them to you.” (Oh, how New York is still the most haunted place of all for me.) There’s a piano that runs throughout the song that sounds both straight off Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound and also run through de Casier, Natal Zaks, and Carl Emil Johansen’s songwriting/production. Something old, something new. Of all the songs on Still, “Twice” sounds the least like an ode to 90s R&B, trip hop, pop, and hip hop. Still, it’s a song that I can’t imagine the album without, conjuring up a herstory that I can’t imagine myself without.