Let Em' Talk: retropxssy guides us through her excellent new album 'I Haven't Told Anybody'

 

London-based rapper retropxssy been on our radar here at NNWNF since her 2023 single of the year contender 'SPEEDING' dropped in the summer of that year. Since then,  she has released a series of singles that have been dripping in creativity, creating a unique visual style to accompany her exciting sounds. The live circuit is where retropxssy thrives, with her performance often bordering on the surreal as she creates a balance between manic punk energy and the downright weird - to see is to believe. That led her to playing the inaugural edition of SXSW London earlier in the year and more industry eyes on her.

Listen to our retropxssy interview from January here

Last week, she released her brand new album I Haven't Told Anybody - A collection of tracks recorded over several sessions in the last year. It's dark, it's emotive and her most ambitious effort yet, further pushing her to the forefront of the UK's thriving alternative Hip Hop scene. We got retropxssy to go through her new album track-by-track and tell us more about this excellent new release.

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1) Headache

The opening track on the album and one that developed quickly. It's a song about recognising bad habits and being scared to break them. Feeling like you're constantly doing the wrong thing, no matter how hard you try. But also, along the way having those feelings of freedom and accomplishment that keeps you looking to strive for more. It's a delicate balance that is not always easy to maintain.  

2) Hydro

This song is about me reflecting and looking back at good times, the hedonism of being a teenager in Bristol, which is an amazing city to go out in. The party lifestyle at that time was fun, but also not sustainable and it will take it's toll. There's a lot of darkness that you can quickly stumble across when you over do it and you find lots of people running from lot of different things. You can find yourself running from your own things and a party is an amazing escape from it. In the subsequent years, I took a break from it, stop drinking alcohol and faced those things head on.

It's also set in the wider context of the state of the country we live in and how inhospitable and - at times - inhumane it is. Life has become not only expensive on a monetary level, but it also double charges us our humanity. That's the focus behind that line where I say "Price is too high to be alive, I decline the expense."

          

3) Creatures

This is another dark one. It's my experience of depression and anxiety, they're a part of you and they are the creatures I'm talking about. They live with you and it'd be great if they let you go. It's also about how living with those things can make you obsess about things that you can't fix, that you have no control over; yet time passes anyway and the aging process moves on regardless.

4) Trees

This is a an emotional one for me, it always makes me cry when I listen back to it. It's definitely one of my favourites on the album. I wrote it about one of my close friends and she had passed away recent to when I wrote it. We shared similar struggles in a lot of ways, especially when it came to mental health. There's a sense of yearning in the track; whether that be yearning to be someone else or just to not have the thoughts that you experience, basically wishing for the impossible. It's definitely the head space I was in at the time in the midst of mourning.

5) Mine

Sometimes you don't have a clear idea for a song and it's just the things that come out; 'Mine' was definitely one of them. I'd just moved house, so it was a collection of thoughts in the midst of the stress of that. I felt I really hated where I was living before and I needed the change. Some of it was also about the power dynamics in relationships I've had or social situations where I've felt uncomfortable by the energy of it. It's a cathartic song I did with a producer called Dane Burge, who I met last year and really enjoyed working with. I'd admired his previous work and it was really cool to make this one with him.

6) Shadow Bones

I wrote this on my birthday in 2024 and released the album on the same day this year, there's a beautiful bit of cyclical synchronicity to that! It's produced by my long time collaborator JoeJas, my rock. I love working with him, he makes me very comfortable. Again, it's more a release of frustration than a coherent thought process.

7) Risky

This is a fun song to me, another one of my favourites on the album. I love having sessions with a variety of producers and the album is a fusion of different sounds from different sessions. This is a track I co-produced with Tom Saint. I'm nervous and tentative on the production side of things, but I want to improve and do more of it. I had this line in my head: It's always risky on the first try. It was me thinking about skateboarding and dropping in, which is something that has always really scared me; I'm generally rather scared of jumping off things. 

In 'Risky', I'm imagining a post-apocalyptic scene, being in a tin house with acid rain coming through and that turns into being a club and feeling out of sorts. People with anxiety will relate, it can distort your perspective of things. Things can seem taller, sharper, scarier - even your sense of space and time can be distorted by your mind and 'Risky' explores that.   

                                          

8) Pieces of the Picture

I love the heavy guitar on this, I grew up listening to a lot of Metal and I found it the perfect canvass to project a lot of angry energy. It has an outro that is very different, it's me reflecting on exhaustion, pushing myself to me limits and it rocks!

9) Do it Better

I really loved channeling a bit of naughtiness! The great things about songs is it gives you the opportunity to say things you may not have been able to at the time. You know when you have an argument and you think of the things you wanted to say afterwards, songs are a great place to do that. It's a song about people who try to put you down and it's a wry quip at them in hindsight. 

10) Taste

This song from my thoughts on feeling in danger as a woman. The dichotomy we have of where we want to be independent and free night owls, going out and enjoying life and adventure, but having to constantly analyse threat and potential danger from men. In my mind when I was writing it, I had the case of Sarah Everard, where she was abducted and killed by a Police Officer. How terrible that is and how terrible that we're constantly under threat and you have to have that at the forefront of your mind.

 11) Dominion

'Dominion' is a fun one, produced by James Yuill who also did 'Do it Better'. Growing up around Bristol I developed a love of big, bassy music and this beat has that. One of my friend's in Bristol who is a DJ called Slaggamuffin was in our group chat saying 2 Send me this, I play it out in the club!" Shoutout to James on this one. It's an anti-capitalist song that questions the values that we have instilled in us from an early age.

12) How Far Can You See?

I thought I'd end the album with an ethereal closer. I was thinking of witchcraft and what it must be like to be a witch on this, which always a good way to finish an album. All of the thing that witchcraft implies: power, the mysterious power of women and how that can threaten the established order of the patriarchy.