4AD

From the outside, it looks as if Tkay has been living a charmed life for the past few years: the first female rapper signed to storied indie label 4AD, and a flagship artist of her longtime Australian label Dew Process, in 2020 and 2021 she released successive instalments of her Last Year Was Weird EP series, to increasing acclaim and popularity. She moved to Los Angeles, collaborated with indie-rap luminaries like JPEGMAFIA and Baby Tate, supported Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa, and was heralded as one of pop’s brightest new voices everywhere from Rolling Stone to Pitchfork.

Sweet Justice, the long-anticipated second album by Tkay Maidza, arrives with a message etched into its face: “I’m never choosing compliance.” Uttered at the outset of “Ring-A-Ling”, the album’s fiery, bass-heavy lead single, that line is a mantra and warning from the Zimbabwean-born, Australian-raised, Los Angeles-based rapper, singer and producer. An artist who’s been releasing iconoclastic music since her teen years, on Sweet Justice Tkay comes fully into her power, leaving behind toxic people and situations – and the crippling self-doubt she contended with as a result – in her dust. Bright, soulful and seductive, Sweet Justice shows off every facet of the irrepressible Tkay: her lacerating wit and infectiousness, her staunch self-belief and refusal to compromise. “It feels like, at some point, I became too serious. This album feels like a homecoming – a return to the energy I’ve always wanted to embody,” she says. “It’s warm, it’s fast, and if it’s sad, it still has a feeling of hope – I don’t feel defeated.”

Behind the scenes, she was beginning to feel the wheels fall off: she had just moved to Los Angeles, but was finding that the people around her were causing her to feel stressed and creatively blocked. “There was a whole year of making music I didn’t like,” she recalls. “The music was really dark and depressing, and I just started spiralling – I just stopped making music for six months, and started going back to Australia to see my family heaps.” At the same time, she began to realise that she was stuck in toxic friendships, “seeking validation from people I don’t really resonate with.”

Tkay sees the idea of overcoming as the animus of her music. She makes records for fighters: her best songs channel the feeling of pulling yourself off the ropes and swinging for a knockout. The moment her music stopped evoking that feeling, she realised something had to give. Trapped in Berlin, alone, at the start of 2022 during a trip to renew her visa, Tkay decided to sever ties with the negative influences in her life and took time to breathe. “I needed to be alone to realise that everything I’m looking for is already within me. I had no choice but to look at myself and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong – keep dreaming and believing that your reality can happen’,” she says. Upon her return to Los Angeles, songs began flowing out of her, writer’s block melting away after a dark night of the soul in freezing Germany.

Already named one of Pitchfork and LA Times’ most anticipated albums of Fall 2023 with early praise from the likes of NY Times, People, The Needle Drop, Stereogum, The FADER, Sweet Justice is an album that embodies the beautiful contradictions of Tkay’s art: it’s a coming-of-age record by someone who’s been in the game a while; an album about karmic justice and accountability that’s bright, breezy and incredibly fun, eviscerating those who are dishonest and disrespectful with a venom-laced kiss. As Tkay sings on “Love Again”, a song designed to sound like a meditation session: “Gone are the days I was falling/And seeing there’s no escape.” It’s like they always say: Living well is the best revenge. On Sweet Justice, Tkay shows you firsthand.

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Bills & Aches & Blues
Jul 23, 2021

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Foreword

2021

4AD

2021 saw 4AD release debut albums by Dry Cleaning and Spencer., plus saw the return of Tune-Yards and the the first releases on 4AD by Erika de Casier and Helado Negro. Explore these albums, and many more, in this year's Foreword...

2020

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