To be trusted with a verse on a Kanye/Jay-Z track is no mean feat: Beyoncé, Frank Ocean and Otis Redding (oh, and Mr Hudson) all stepped up to the plate on Watch The Throne, then soon after, Detroit’s Big Sean was the fresh first voice on ‘Clique’, their monster hip hop monument to being part of a shit-hot crew.

Big Sean doesn’t just make a token appearance on ‘Clique’ – his rap is the strongest of the lot; the line about being up for nine days and needing a spa day is delivered in some mysterious way that has it hanging permanently in the inner ear, always ready to strike. (For the record, Sean rarely takes spa days, but admits, “I like to keep a nice sweet little female around though, to help calm my nerves.”) And with Kanye also giving his G.O.O.D. Music protégé the opener on ‘Mercy’, he obviously trusts the 25-year-old rapper to make that vital initial impact. Perhaps Yeezy’s still impressed by the balls it took for Big Sean to get his attention in the first place.

“I was doing a show every Friday at a radio station for about a year,” Sean explains. “One day, Kanye was at the station. I was at the bank, cashing my cheque – telemarketing, you know how that goes, making like 150 bucks a week. Anyway, one of my friends called me and was like, ‘Yo man, you listening to the radio? ‘Ye is down at the station. If you go down there and rap for him, he’ll sign you breh.’

“I just remember thinking, ‘That sounds stupid as hell.’ I hung up on him, then I called him back and was like, ‘Nah, that’s an awesome idea.'” So Sean hot-trotted down there and asked Kanye if he could rap for him. “He was like, ‘Man, I ain’t got time.’ I’m like, ‘Man, you my hero, yo! I ride to school listening to you.’ I gave him the super guilt trip, just really making him feel bad! And he was like, ‘Alright, well you can rap as we’re walking out the station.’ He told me I had 16 bars, but I ended up rapping for ten minutes straight. He took my CD, but it took a couple of years for him to actually sign me.” Big Sean soon started making a name for himself on tracks.

with Justin Bieber, Kelly Rowland, Nicki Minaj and Chris Brown, but he’s ready to make more of a solo impression with his second album, Hall of Fame, out this summer. “With my first album, I just wanted to be known and to have a song on the radio, but on Hall of Fame, I want to inspire, I want to make songs that people will remember forever.” Big Sean is all about the big ambitions.

Of course all rappers excel in extreme braggadocio – entire tracks are made from bloated boasts – but there’s a cool confidence here that makes you believe the hype. His European tour has added to that confidence too. As well as toking on Amsterdam weed, getting greazy with London’s Nando’s and visiting cities he’d never heard of, Sean says the crazed crowds have inspired him “to do it bigger and better – it’s good I got to see that before I put the last touches to my album.” Travelling the world and seeing people’s love for his music has been a boost.

A lil’ Big Sean realised he could rap his way out of his birthplace when fellow Detroiter Eminem showed him that one of the world’s biggest artists could come from his hometown. “That was inspiring,” he says, before going on to talk about his own take on the Michigan city. “I grew up in a pretty middle class neighbourhood, but it was pretty hood. There were a lot of bad things going on, but my grandma and my mom saved up for me to go to private school, so I’d have best friends that were white, black, Jewish there, then I’d come home and have super ghetto-ass friends. It was a good balance.”

Speaking of his mom, it’s been rumoured that Big Sean hasn’t had any tattoos because she doesn’t approve. Not true. “I’m just really indecisive. If I get a tattoo, a year later I’ll be like ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’ She doesn’t like tattoos, but she doesn’t like a lot of things that I do!” By this, we gather he’s referring to his lyrics about ass quakes and lines like “I got that mad dick you know it always nut up / And it got attitude no wonder why it’s stuck up.” But like all good artists, he doesn’t worry what the family think. He’d rather speak his mind. Plus, he just bought his mum a brand new house, “so she’s happy.”

Hall of Fame is out 27th August. uknowbigsean.com

Words: Stuart Brumfitt (Follow Stuart on Twitter @stuartbrumfitt)
Styling: Jayson Hindley

The post Blue Sky Thinking with Big Sean appeared first on Wonderland.

Sky Ferreira – Everything Is Embarrassing (Unicorn Kid Remix) by Sky Ferreira Official

Tell us about your change of direction since ‘One‘.

I got signed when I was 15, and I had a lot of people telling me what I should do, and I didn’t necessarily agree with it but I was like, “I guess I’ll try it”. After ‘One’, they were like, “Oh your song didn’t do well…” It got attention, but it didn’t sell anything, which was actually for the best, because I don’t think I really wanted to make that kind of music to begin with.

It was a great track though.

It was a great track – totally. I don’t regret it.

Tell us how you hooked up with Dev Hynes for ‘Everything Is Embarrassing‘.

I met Dev Hynes through mutual friends. We were always trying to work together. My publicist sent it to Pitchfork and they posted it and made it best new track, and it got traction from there.

Your album will be dropping later this year. You’re like a Cassie figure – the longer you’ve been away, the more the mystique and expectation have built.

Yeah, that’s why I have to make sure it’s good! Some people might be disappointed because it’s not ‘One’ or ‘Obsession’, but there are still a lot of pop elements in it. It’s a lot more guitar driven, there are acoustic songs and it’s very stripped down. A lazy, easy comparison would be Blondie.

Who have you been collaborating with on this one?

I worked with Jon Brion on half of it and then Ariel Rechtshaid on the other half. Ariel produced that Usher’s song ‘Climax’, which is completely different to what we’re doing, and then he did Vampire Weekend. Jon Brion did Elliott Smith and Fiona Apple.

I was going to say that some of your new work has a bit of an early Fiona Apple feel to it.

Yeah she’s a really big influence – always was. She was my number one idol as a kid. I’ve seen her play like 10 times, and I cried the second time. I cried at the front.

It was so embarrassing!

Discreet tears or full-on sobs?

I wasn’t sobbing. Definitely tears though!

A lot of your artwork and videos remind me of a young Vanessa Paradis.

Yeah, and Nastassja Kinski is a very big person for me. Vanessa Paradis as a teenager! She’s still glamorous. I love all that look of French girls, like Brigitte Bardot.

How did you get approached to be the face of Saint Laurent Paris?

Hedi Slimane and I met a few years ago, and always kept in touch. He took photos of me for his diary, then he did my artwork, and then asked me to do Saint Laurent. So yeah!

You’re touring North America with How To Dress Well. Great combo.

Yeah it’s going to be a cool tour I think. We have mutual friends, and we like each other’s music. We thought it’d be a fun tour.

What’s your go-to album at the moment?

Kendrick Lamar. That’s my favourite album of last year. I love his music, but I think it’s also the LA in me. I’m from Venice Beach. When I listen to him, I’m like “LA! Yay – repping the West Coast finally.”

Are you off to some Paris fashion shows whilst you’re here in Europe?

Yeah. I skipped New York fashion week this time, but I’m going to Givenchy and Saint Laurent next week. Riccardo Tisci was one of the first people – even during my whole break – who had me play his parties. He’s really supportive. And I’m playing a show at Silencio, David Lynch’s nightclub there.

Tell us what it’s like shooting with Mario Testino, Terry Richardson and Hedi Slimane.

They’re all quite different. Hedi’s thing is quite intimate, you know, and then Terry is just like my friend. We just hang out.

Is he still getting his dick out all the time?

I think he’s stopped that – too much commercial work! And Testino’s a bit more glamorous. That’s like shooting like a diva.

Sky Ferreira’s EP Everything is Embarrassing will be released 8th April on Polydor. She plays tonight at White Heat and tomorrow at XOYO, London. skyferreira.tumblr.com

Words: Stuart Brumfitt

The post SKY FERREIRA: Interview plus 'Everything Is Embarrassing (Unicorn Kid remix)' appeared first on Wonderland.

When Miguel opened for Usher at his recent London show, it was by no means incidental. The R&B legend is the young gun’s mentor, the two of them brought together by music exec – and one-time Notorious BIG manager – Mark Pitts.

“Mark was very keen that we become as close creatively as possible,” says Miguel in his LA drawl. “He wanted to put me in with Usher so he could show me the ropes and give me advice. I was a nobody kid. Usher just trusted Mark, plus he’d already heard some of my music and was a fan.”

So Miguel ended up co-writing three songs on Usher’s 2010 album Raymond Vs Raymond and supported him on the US-wide OMG tour. Miguel’s contributions to the album were far removed from the will.i.am-produced anthem that gave the tour its name: OMG might have been the danced-up, dumbed-down hit that sold the albums, but it was tracks like the spacey, sexual opener Monstar, the sparse, slo-mo Mars Vs. Venus and the Cali-funk Pro Lover that made it so good when you got it.

Miguel’s earlier solo 2010 album All I Want Is You was chock-full of the same such eargasmic R&B. Sure Thing had an old-school fuzz and feel, a haunting choral harmony ran through Girl With The Tattoo, Quickie was a cocky call for a swift shag over clashing instrumentals and Hard Way was a hip hop beat softened by the swoon of his voice. It went criminally unnoticed in the UK, but hopefully his new work, Kaleidoscope Dream, will make a bigger dent in a 2012 climate where Frank Ocean’s obscuro-R&B has thrived.

Like Frank, who first made a name for himself through a free mixtape, Miguel was keen to circumnavigate the norms of releasing this time round. Certain tracks on Kaleidoscope Dream were initially put out via Art Dealer Chic, a tripartite (and freely downloadable) EP, perhaps to appeal to the influential music blogs who love a leak or a slow drip. The tease of tracks helped draw people’s attentions to their rarity and quality and fans on critic-infested forum I Love Music were going wild; many of them claiming that lead track, Adorn, was the song of the year.

Alongside Frankie O and The Weeknd, Miguel is one of R&B’s biggest game-changers; all of them switching up the genre, harnessing their love, fear, doubt, horniness and loneliness in a clever, cool new manner, albeit with soul.

“You can hear it the moment you hear the voice. There’s a soul, there’s feeling behind it. It’s progressive, it’s not the same sound, not the same topics, not written from the same perspective. People lost sight of the individuality and R&B became so urban,” he says, suggesting that machismo meant male singers couldn’t be emotional or experimental. But he adds, “I think the great part about R&B now is that individuality is starting to be celebrated again. There are a few people who are really pushing the boundaries of what has become the stereotype. Artists in the genre are tired of the bullshit and the same regurgitated, soulless stuff. The soul of it had completely gone and it lost sight of what it was.”

Kaleidoscope Dream is Miguel’s way of “sitting down and having a drink with the listener”. But which drink and what’s the chat? “It’s Jamie, Johnnie or Jack, so Jameson, Johnnie Walker or Jack Daniels. We’d catch up on current events and talk about women as well, obviously. I want people to understand the full spectrum of my personality.”

Even though he’s from LA, he’s been living bicoastal in recent years and wanted to record the album in New York to reflect the life he’s been living there: “Being a Lower East Side kid in skuzzy bars with random people drinking, ending up at random parties, having a good time, making fucking stupid mistakes and laughing about it the next morning.”

When I tell him that I adore Adorn, he sings a short refrain, reminding me what an odd feeling it must be to have music pouring out of you. “It’s real cool watching a song from its inception and then seeing it become other people’s song. I remember the night I had the Adorn chords in my head, then getting home and playing the chords and drum pattern. It wrote itself in two hours.

“Then I went and listened to it in my car. That’s how I know if I love a song or not: if I get in my car and I’m like ‘Oooooooh’ [pulls pained, satisfied frown], then I know. I remember playing it at about 3am, sitting there jamming and being like, “This shit feels crazy. I don’t know if anyone else is gonna like this shit, but I love it.”’

His music’s for himself in another way too – as a way of staying sane. “I think all artists are a bit emotional. I try and reserve my emotion for my music and in everyday life, keep it as even as possible. If I wasn’t making money, I would do this regardless. It’s like health – mental fucking health.”

Words: Stuart Brumfitt
Photographer: Kim Jakobsen To
Fashion Editor: Francesca Turner

The post MIGUEL: Dream Lover appeared first on Wonderland.

In the wake of displaying her real life in a fake way in the British cousin of The Hills, Amy has been lapping up the love, laughing at the haters and making the canny business moves of a young Jordan, bagging a contract to be the face (and big-boobed body) of Caprice’s lingerie line and a column in New! magazine.

Fun and lucrative though all these side projects are, Amy can’t wait to be filming again. “I love it. I can’t wait to go on telly.” At its peak, TOWIE sucked in audiences of 1.2 million, so why has it proved so popular? Amy ventures: “I think because it’s never been done before.” Really? “Yeah, it’s so different. It’s quite glamorous, it’s funny, it’s quite serious, it’s like a drama.”

But the reason Amy loves it herself, is because it appeals to all ages. She’s particularly touched by a scene in which she sees the sweet where others could see the seedy. “I went out for some drinks” she regales, “and a guy who must have been 75 come over and said, ‘Thank you for giving me the best entertainment on ITV2, Sunday and Wednesday.’ And I was like, ‘How lovely is that, that I’m entertaining people of all ages?’” Where dirty, cynical minds see an old man rubbing his knees over the show’s top totty, Amy sees TOWIE as some form of care in the community.

Now series two is on its way, it’s a worry how the newly famous Brentwood boys and birds will manage to keep it real (in that spooky, stilted, not-very-real way), but Amy knows her worth: “The time we start saying: ‘No, we can’t do that’ will probably be the time they say, ‘No, you can’t be in the next series.’ I’ve got to keep grounded and my mum and dad will make me stay grounded as well.”

Post-shoot, Amy revealed her latest catchphrase, her fave supermodel and her top TV shows …

Do you watch yourself in the show? How can I not watch it?
It’s brilliant though. I like it.

Is there a scene you’ve watched and regretted? I don’t regret nothing.
I’ve come across as the fun character, the nice person. The only thing is my make-up. Sometimes I think, “My God Amy, why do you wear that much make-up?” And sometimes I think, “Amy, you’ve got to think before you speak,” but at the end of the day that’s me and I let it all out.

You’ve had great catchphrases like “jel”, “shut up” and “Vajazzling”, but do you have any new ones?
“Professional.” That is my favourite word. Even if I’m not trained in something, I say I’m professional at it. I’m professional at eating that dinner. You’ve got to be a bit professional and I am professional, so it’s a new word for me: “I’m professional.”

And you’re a professional model – why do you have a no topless rule?
Do you know what, I’ve got so much respect for my family and seeing your daughter topless and nude, it just don’t appeal to me and I wouldn’t do it to my family.

Who’s your favourite supermodel?
I love Claudia Schiffer. She’s brilliant. I see her on the advert and her hair’s lovely. Kate Moss, I’ve gone off a bit, but I look at her 10 years ago and she had it. She was stunning.

What are your favourite few TV shows?
Definitely My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Take Me Out and then One Born Every Minute. That is a brilliant programme. It’s a bit different. It’s a bit involved. It’s about childbirth. I just love watching it and think it’s amazing. You see everything – I’m not gonna lie – but I love watching it. That’s my Monday night, 8 o’clock. I used to love Big Brother, X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent. Love all that. Pete and Kerry show I love. That’s reality, so obviously I watch theirs.

Now you’re queen of the Essex scene, are you tempted to move to London to try and become big on that circuit? No, all my friends are in Essex, I’ve always lived in Essex, I love going out in Essex.

You’re not tempted to live anywhere else?
Well I always say Marbella’s lovely and want to love in a hot country, but not really. I’d probably just have a little house out there. Not yet obviously, but in five years’ time.

Essex has got some gorgeous countryside – do you ever go for a stomp on the hills?
No, not really. I like Brentwood because it’s really countryside, and green, but I’m not – what’s them walkers called?

Ramblers?
I’m not one of them. I ain’t got a stick. I read about Kate Moss that now she works on a farm. Has she got a farm?

She’s got a big country house, so maybe she’s got a farm on it, yeah.
Mmm, bit different, innit? I’ll stay in Essex thanks.

Photography: Danielle Levitt
Editor: Anthony Unwin
Words: Stuart Brumfitt

This article first appeared in full in Wonderland #26, April/May 2011

The post Amy Childs appeared first on Wonderland.