Skin: ‘I’d rather Boris Johnson stayed in power and f***ed it up’

It’s never been a better time to be in rock trailblazers Skunk Anansie. Stephanie Phillips talks to their history-making frontwoman Skin about authenticity, shaking up the music industry and their punchy, political new single ‘Piggy’

Despite Skunk Anansie’s many successes, there’s still a part of Skin that feels like an outsider (Arved Colvin Smith)

On the wall of Skin’s Brooklyn home studio hangs a picture of Grace Jones. The Jamaican model is crawling on all fours, her face frozen in a sultry snarl and angled defiantly towards the camera.

For much of Skin’s career, she has found herself compared to the artworld icon and disco firebrand. “I always saw it in a positive light, but it used to annoy me that people are so limited in their imagination of how many Black people, Black women, there were,” explains the Skunk Anansie frontwoman over Zoom, the spectacular image of Jones just behind her. “It’s like Grace Jones was the easiest and the first they could just compare me to because there was nobody like me.”

A queer Black woman from Brixton with an alluring, androgynous aesthetic, Skin was unlike anyone in the UK mainstream when she emerged in the Nineties. Her multi-racial rock band, Skunk Anansie, were a welcome antidote to the whitewashed world of Britpop. On their acclaimed 1995 debut album Paranoid & Sunburnt, the London band forced audiences to come face-to-face with radical takes on sexuality, race, and gender through the likes of anti-facist anthem “Little Baby Swastikkka”. Their uncompromising approach and earworm hits made them one of the most successful bands of the era, selling over 5 million records. Skin even sang “Happy Birthday” to Nelson Mandela at his 80th birthday celebrations.

Over a quarter of a century later, Skunk Anansie remain as outspoken as ever. Their latest single, “Piggy”, buzzes with the raw ferocity of their early records. A visceral critique of societal greed, it sees Skin’s soulful vocals transform into a guttural scream as she repeats the one-word chorus. “I wrote the song on the tube on the way to the studio. ​​I think I had just seen something on the news just before and it was just kind of like, ‘oh my God’.” Skin recalls, referencing one of the many scandals that rocked the UK government last year. “Sometimes you just put your hands on your head and you’re like, ‘what the f*** is happening?’”

As the face of Brexit and a man who has been accused of racism a number of times, Boris Johnson is the epitome of everything “Piggy” represents. Yet despite the many calls for him to leave office, Skin doesn’t want him to go just yet. “If he leaves now, they’ll just put someone in place that the Conservative majority want to vote for,” she explains. “I’d rather he stayed there and f***ed it up.”

With a UK and European tour and a headline spot at the Grace Jones-curated Meltdown festival on the horizon, Skunk Anansie are figuring out how to be a band in a post-Covid world. “It feels like Skunk Anansie 3.0,” explains Skin. “We need to sit down and work out how we’re going to do things, because everything is changing.” A new album is already in the works, with two further singles set for this year, including this week’s glammy “Can’t Take You Anywhere”. “The next [singles] are completely different flavours,” she reveals, explaining that they’re a radical departure from the melodic, grunge-rooted sound they’ve spent decades honing.

Skunk Anansie won the Kerrang! Hall of Fame Award in 2019 (PA)

Even though they’ve reached heights few bands could imagine, Skunk Anansie are rarely as lauded as their contemporaries. Despite her taking the top spot on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 1999, Skin’s achievement as the first Black British act to do so was almost erased from cultural memory, leading rapper Stormzy to apologise for inaccurately claiming he was the first Black British artist to headline the festival.

Stormzy and Skin settled their differences, but the incident brought up wider debate around how the achievements of Black British artists are often forgotten. For Skin, the erasure feels deliberate. “Their greatest weapon is to just pretend you don’t exist,” she says of the music industry. “It’s kind of like the old Mexican belief where if you don’t have a picture of [your ancestors] and you don’t honour them, eventually they will seem to have not existed.”

In 1995, Blur’s Damon Albarn tried to start a beef with Skunk Anansie by dismissing their second single “I Can Dream”. “There was really nothing we could do about it,” says Skin. “He was in a very successful band. He was the media darling and we had no power.” Looking back, she sees the attack as part of Britpop’s attempt to promote the UK over American-leaning grunge, but it still had a huge impact on Skunk Anansie. “I don’t think he was being racist, but I think the subtlety they may not have realised is part of us not appearing to be British was because we were Black.”

Skunk Anansie’s Skin performs at the 1997 Brit Awards (JM/Rex)

Albarn’s unique ability to rile other artists certainly hasn’t faded over the years. He recently fell foul of Taylor Swift after claiming she didn’t write her own songs. “I really identified with that,” says Skin. “As the main songwriter in Skunk Anansie and the main producer, there’s so much that I never really took claim over because women don’t, do we? We just let the men claim it.”

The quick reaction on social media to Albarn’s comments proves that the aggressive posturing of the Nineties doesn’t cut it anymore. Audiences are looking for representation, not snarkiness. That representation, guided by the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, has led to a new generation of artists breaking down the boundaries of genre and what is expected of artists of colour. Consider the rise in Black artists making alternative music. It’s a change Skin celebrates, praising grunge pop duo Nova Twins and queer superstar rapper Lil Nas X. “Skunk Anansie were the only one for such a long period of time,” she says. “It’s like we got through the gate and they shut it behind us. Now I feel like there’s a lot more scope for what Blackness is. It isn’t just R&B, rap or drill.”

But there’s still a long way to go before Black alternative artists are given the recognition they deserve. “I think Nova Twins should have a major record deal,” says Skin. “The fact that they haven’t got a major deal really is just obscene. If they were white they would have one.”

Despite Skunk Anansie’s many successes, there’s still a part of Skin that feels like an outsider. “I saw a whole thing the other day that 6Music did about Nineties bands and Skunk Anansie just never got mentioned,” she says, exasperated. “‘How did you manage to do this thing about the Nineties and not mention Skunk Anansie!’”

Though they won the Kerrang! Hall of Fame Award in 2019, at this point in her life, does Skin still need validation from the old guard? “Obviously we don’t need it, but it would be nice to be respected a bit more by the industry and for people to actually recognise the work that Skunk Anansie have done,” says Skin before pausing briefly. “That’s not gonna f***ing happen though is it!”

What is certain is that there’s never been a better time to be a political, fierce Black female-fronted rock band. “Now there’s a freedom in Skunk Anansie where we can do what we like,” states Skin. “We can put out the singles that we want because we don’t care if we get radio play or not. Those things don’t matter. There’s a freedom in being our authentic selves.”

Skunk Anansie start their UK tour at Brixton Academy on 25 March