Loverboy was intrigued to sit down with the enigmatic Babymorocco during this pivotal moment in his pop career. He opens up about the inspiration behind his first full-length album Amour—which may mark the final incarnation of the Babymorocco character—and he’s just dropped the latest single, “Bikinis and Trackies,” featuring the Frost Children. This wildly unique fusion of Electroclash and Y2K British pop manages to tackle challenging expectations of identity and sexuality while also addressing the humorous dilemma of hiding an erection in trackie pants on the dance floor—all in one song. Known for his fearless approach to identity and performance, Loverboy’s Features Editor and Professor of Punk, George Alley, was delighted to uncover more about Babymorocco’s evolving persona, the wild reactions he gets about his sexuailty, and the perils of FlixBus travel.

Tell me about the inspiration for the new single ‘Bikinis and Trackies’ from your upcoming album, Amour. Do you think that a bikini top and trackies make the ideal outfit for clubbing?”
When Frost Children came to London, this was one of the first tracks we came up with for my album. My idea was to capture that feeling of getting sexy in your tracksuit, where you can’t really hide anything. Like, if you’ve got an erection, it’s there; you can’t hide it in a tracksuit. That’s why, in the lyrics, I say, ‘standing at attention like a soldier do.’

Then Angel jumps on the track, and she starts talking about bikinis. You know, weirdly, I actually think bikinis and trackies together make a really ugly outfit. But the idea of someone in a bikini and someone in a tracksuit, making out, having sex—that’s kind of sexy. But as an outfit for the club? I don’t love it. It’s too micro-trendy, like on TikTok when someone wears every single trend all at once.

‘Bikinis and Trackies’ seems to reference Electroclash—it reminded me of Peaches, Fischerspooner; sounds that take me back to New York in the early 2000s. Obviously, it has a new interpretation, but were you thinking of that era when you were writing?”
Yeah, I love all those musicians you mentioned, as well as Larry Tee. In the UK, it was more like Bodyrox, with that classic British shouty vocal, like when Dizzee Rascal got on the track with Calvin Harris. I was recently asked who I’d like to collaborate with, and honestly, I don’t listen to much current music. I’m more into the stuff I grew up with, like the artists you just mentioned. I also think my vocal style fits perfectly with that heavy electronic production. I love that world.

Was the approach to writing these tracks different from how you approached The Sound EP?
This time, I was writing a lot more on my own, so I wasn’t collaborating as much. Do you know the groups Girls Aloud and Sugababes in America?

They weren’t big here, but I do.
They were huge in the UK around the same time period you referenced. I actually got to write with some of their writers from Xenomania, this crazy production team in the UK, for the song ‘No Cameo’. That was a big deal for me—real pop writing. Also, having to write and fend for myself more on this album made some of the tracks feel a bit more heartfelt, not just all about ‘I’m sexy, look at my body,’ which I enjoy too, but I wanted to go beyond that this time. I didn’t need every track to be like that, especially for a full album.”

In the recent video for ‘Babestation’, you’re being torn apart by girls playing volleyball. It feels like a commentary on being objectified to a point of violent frenzy.
That theme continues in ‘Bikinis and Trackies’. I’m at a point in my career where I’m questioning who Babymorocco is as a character. Am I killing him off after this album? These videos are like odes to tearing him apart because I’ve done the Babymorocco persona for a while now, and I think Amour is an interesting way to explore who he is. What’s next for him? Does he disappear? Do I stop doing music altogether? I kind of want to kill Babymorocco. I feel like I’ve performed him enough that it’s time to let go.”

Something I didn’t realize is that Babymorocco isn’t your first foray into performance art. You gained some notoriety while at school for your project Art School Stole My Virginity.
I was actually going to name my album that, but I thought it was too on the nose. I think, with everything, I’m a performance artist first and foremost. With Babymorocco, I’ve become so immersed in him as a character that I do love it, but I also feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. I want to kill Babymorocco, in a sense, or at least parts of him, to discover what or who I’ll perform next. Like Cindy Sherman and Nikki S. Lee, I love playing around with identity. I love lying, talking shit—all of it. What’s life if you can’t do that? I want to live about 500 different lives in my own life.

We’re in an interesting time where artists are starting to rebel against sincerity and transparency. I think it’s refreshing to see people like you embracing a character or aspects of a personality that aren’t necessarily what everyone expects or sees as a role model.
Yeah, I definitely push boundaries with the performance aspect, to the point where I’m a very divisive figure online—people either really hate me or they really like me. I don’t mind being the villain to some people, as long as I’m fully realizing the character of Babymorocco as I envisioned. But I’m also excited to move on from that. Amour is great because it introduces two identities: there’s this French boy named Jean Paul and Babymorocco, and the album plays out as a kind of conversation between them. I want to see how people respond to that, and then I’ll decide what’s next for Babymorocco.

I think performance can be so much more complex than people realize when they’re just consuming the songs. Identity in music is huge; people listen to music because of the person behind it, and people connect with the person through the music. So to play with the interpersonal relationship you have between a listener and a musician is fun, I think.

You’ve been getting a lot of feedback from the gay community about your sexual identity. People seem to want to speculate about it, make comments, or even claim some sort of ownership over it.
I think I should give a sincere answer. Usually, I play it off. It has been very hard in some aspects. I do in fact realize why people care so much about their sexuality, obviously, and then when others play around with that. I can understand why that would be upsetting.

I mentioned to the Gay Times I dated a man for four years, it’s not a thing that I’ve hidden. But it upsets me that people will put a ‘queer baiting’ label on me because I in fact am part of it..[the gay community]. They’ll post the most visceral horrible shit about me like when someone’s canceled; the hate I get is on that level. I can’t compare it. I think sometimes, and this is just an an objective thing from being in gay culture, I think gay men,  have a problem when other gay men are successful, because every gay boy kind of wants to be a pop star. When they see people like Troye Sivan, Omar Apollo, even people like Frank Ocean, they go so hard. It’s not like “Oh yeah this music kind of shit.” It’s like “This fucking con releasing this shit. He’s, ugly as fuck.”

Obviously, I’m not as big as those people but as you’ve seen, but there is a certain amount of attention I get and I’ve never had it before, so it has been very hard to deal with it so that the last month I feel like not wanting to do this shit anymore. ‘Cause it hurts a lot, you know, what I mean?

Absolutely, I know what you mean. I am a gay man who puts out music, is sexual, and is the subject of my videos. It’s something I often talk about with my friends; like going to Pride Island at the Pier in NYC there are no gay male artists performing to a crowd of mostly gay men. Instead it’s Madonna, Kylie, etc. I default to thinking that gay men are insecure around each other because of their delayed adolescence and trauma, we fear rejection so we feel threatened by other gay men until they know that you like them too—or better yet, want to fuck them. I know that’s a bastardization of something I got from The Velvet Rage. Essentially if they don’t think you want to sleep with them, they hate you. And if they don’t want to fuck you in general, but you’re getting attention they also hate you because they think they are more deserving.
Yeah, I don’t want to come off as crass or like “they just want to fuck me.” I think I see that with other musicians for sure. I’ve noticed that because I was never super clear about my sexuality, there seemed to be so much anger about me existing within a space. But I will fuck with anyone I want and make music for everyone. I don’t just want to stay within one community. As much as I love the gays, that’s who I am as well. I want to make music for everyone. And it’s like, if there’s a group of people where there is a sense of anger, it’s just like, “You guys are talking about me in such a crazy way. Like, how—like, how am I meant to feel now? You are pushing me out of a community that I’m very much a part of.” Just to be frank with it, I used to not care about it, but it has gotten incredibly hard over the last month.

I’m learning how to deal with it because I think as the project is getting bigger, it’s only going to get bigger—this sense of ownership and anger and all of that. So I may delete Twitter at some point, or give it to my manager. Twitter’s the meanest place in the world; everywhere else I can deal with. I don’t mind if people drag me if it’s funny. But it’s when you’re just being that evil with it—just not that.

One could say, if you’re fanning such a flame of ire and causing such a furor with these basic people, that maybe you’re doing something right!
That’s what everyone has said to me, especially my team and my friends. Every person who makes waves is always divisive. Like, even you get how Chappell Roan is, and I love her and her music. But it’s weird to get used to, because I’m not huge yet or anything like that. The guy who does my PR said to me, “I’ve never seen anyone like an emerging artist cause such a divisive thing.” That’s why it feels overwhelming. I can’t fall back on anything, and I’m broke as fuck. So when you’re getting all this shit online and you’re broke and you’re doing music, nothing balances out. You know what I mean? You feel everything. If I had money, I’d be at the bar every night, and I’d be drinking and feeling good about it. I wouldn’t give a fuck. But I’m sober as hell, looking at the computer, like…? [laughter]

‘Crazy Cheap’ is talking about living on a budget in London. What are some tips you have for people to live cheaply?
Oof. Be sexy, get people to buy you meals, there you go. Be “hobo-sexual.” You ever heard of that? Where you just go on dates and eat? No, to be honest, I have good friends who cook for me. When I say broke, I mean it. I’m probably one of the few musicians I know who actually comes from a poor family. I know everyone says that, but I’m talking about zero pounds until the government money comes in, that kind of broke. And it’s weird because, like I said, I showed up to my music video the other day for ‘Bikinis and Trackies’. Huge budget. I’m showing up with like £2.50 in my bank, so I don’t have tips because I’m broke as fuck. It’s going to pay off one day. But right now, I don’t have tips because I’m broke all the time. Give me tips, please

People don’t realize how expensive every single thing costs as a DIY independent musician—thousands—from photo shoots to video shoots, PR, and all of that. And you’re not making any money back from streaming.
 Yeah, nothing.  I do a lot of shows, and for a while, they weren’t covered. Now they cover my travel and my hotel. There was obviously a time when they didn’t do that. Like, even a flight to Paris can be 200 quid, but the show is only paying you a hundred. That’s why I wrote ‘Crazy Cheap’—because I was broke when I wrote that. There’s the lyric: “Oh, you’ve got five pounds? I’ll give it to you next week,” and literally, that’s me at a table according to all my friends.

During a recent New York show at Rash with Frost Children I heard you got injured during the performance.
Do you see that scar? [Shows palm] It’s actually made my lifeline longer! Yeah, that was crazy. I don’t know what happened—there was glass either on the table or someone had smashed a bottle, and I landed on it. I got on stage, and I’m bleeding down my wrist. But then I’m just like, “Fuck it.” I look at my hand, and I realize I can see the tissue in my hand. I was like, “That’s too much. I can’t continue.” It was one of my debut shows in New York, completely sold out with people screaming. I’m on a DJ table performing, people pulling me down, the table’s rocking. The energy was amazing. I went to the hospital and had a moment where, looking at the blood and tissue inside me, I thought, “Oh, that’s the real me. Like, why am I nearly about to die?” The nurse said if it had cut two inches deeper, it would’ve hit an artery or vein or whatever that’s called.

I imagined dying while playing Babymorocco, and I was really in my head about it. Walking around Brooklyn again, no money left because I had to pay for the stitches. Blood all over my white tank top and shoes at 4 a.m., I’m from London, trying to walk home to the flat I’m staying in. It really was a mess.

Amour and the videos from it feel like emotional snapshots into your world, while 2023’s The Sound EP felt more about partying and being hedonistic.
Totally. Even the ‘Homosexuale’ interlude on Amour where she talks about me being like, “What am I? Who am I, sexuality-wise?” Then there’s ‘No Cameo’, which is about a friendship that went down the drain. With The Sound, I was literally feeling crazy good about myself, on some kind of high—I wish I could feel that good again; just being like, “Yeah, I’m big as fuck.” I’m talking about electronic music. Whereas this is stuff I feel is going to resonate a little more because there’s more feeling in it. Even in the new song ‘France’, I’m talking about meeting on a FlixBus to France for a show in Brussels. Have you ever been to Europe on a FlixBus?

No, I haven’t done the bus.
They are filthy little buses—eight quid to go from London to France, stink like shit for like 14 hours. So I’m talking about all that because that’s who I am. I’m a broke boy. That’s it. Being broke is in all the themes of my music. This is just the essence of me—I’m broke. That’s it.

What’s after ‘Bikinis and Trackies’ this year?
The next single Body Organic and the album comes out on the 6th—it’s like a bisexual Christmas album. With the shows, I’m still planning them. I have a headline show in London that I’m about to announce. I’ve always done shows in such a rush and agreed to do a bunch of them, but everything else, I want to make sure it’s specific. I don’t want to do too many supports and festivals. I kind of want to keep it very concise because, like I said, I don’t even know if I want to do Babymorocco anymore. So I kind of need to make sure it fills out what I need, if that makes sense.

Loverboy Magazine is named after the huge Mariah Carey hit ‘Loverboy’. Do you have any Mariah Carey songs or moments that you enjoy?
It’s actually crazy you ask that because I am one of Mariah Carey’s biggest fans. My favorite is probably Circles. I love that song. And Angel (The Prelude) where she’s doing a whistle note the whole way through at 1:30. It’s so good. That’s my favorite track. That used to be my Tumblr song—my Tumblr page would just be Mariah Carey whistling. I love a woman who plays with that super feminine aesthetic—like butterflies, charm boxes, ribbons, all that shit.

(Amour comes out on 12.06.2024)

 

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Photos: Charlie Baldwin    Interview by George Alley