Ghanaian-Australian artist Kofi Owusu-Ansah—better known by the moniker Genesis Owusu—is anything but a conformist. With a genre-defying discography that communicates deeply personal, critical narratives, Owusu is constantly pushing the boundaries of his medium; Owusu touches on themes of racism, depression, and Absurdism, utilizing soundscapes that veer from R&B to EDM to Hip-Hop. Having shot to sudden stardom with the release of Smiling With No Teeth in 2021, we chatted with Kofi Owusu-Ansah about his sophomore effort, taking inspiration from Kafka, and creativity that runs in the family.
This interview has been edited for clarity and cohesion
Interview by Ava London and Zoë Busenberg
Ava: All right, thank you again for meeting with us! So yeah, we’ll just get right into it. Our first question for you is: in your debut album, Smiling With No Teeth, the album revolves around a central character, which is the Black Dog. You do something similar in your album, Struggler. Could you just tell us a little bit about what inspired this character-driven approach to your albums, as well as how that impacts the storytelling that you do in your albums?
Genesis Owusu: I think, like ever since I was a kid, I was really interested in just stories and storytelling in general. Yeah, before I was making music, I was writing actual short stories. So I think that was really pivotal in the way I wrote music, because it was the way I wrote everything, I guess. I love a good character study, I love a good YouTube essay.
So, yeah, I think, I think that’s really just my preferred style of writing. And I weirdly find it kind of easier to talk about real life stuff, almost through the lens of fiction. You can kind of make the realest, most poignant things out of the most abstract.
Ava: Thank you so much! We sort of have a follow-up for that one.
Zoë: Yeah, so at what age did your storytelling move from short stories to music, and how do you balance storytelling with the pressure of making hits?
Genesis Owusu: I feel like I probably wrote my first story in English class, probably somewhere between kindergarten and year two, I want to say–that’s like where my memory stops. The balance of storytelling and like trying to create, you know, pop-y kind of music, is one I’m still figuring out myself.
Like, I definitely come in with a logistic kind of mindset, like it would be good to make something that is easily palatable and easily understood. But then, like when I get into the studio and start writing and start making the music, it kind of just does what it does. And it’s hard to kind of fight the intrinsic urge to just write how I like to write and do what I like to do. So how do I balance it? I kind of don’t. It’s kind of just what comes, will come, yeah, well.
Ava: Well I love that you’re putting yourself first instead of focusing on making a hit…So next question. First off, one thing that I really appreciate about your music from when I first discovered it was you kind of reject the archetypal objectification of women, which, you know, you see a lot in the hip hop realm. I just wanted to ask you, could you tell us a little bit about your decision to depart from that tradition and how it sort of impacted your music?
Genesis Owusu: Yeah, honestly, I think my music is just a reflection of me and who I am and the values that I hold. I think if I compromised on that in any way, whether it was about my feelings towards women, or, you know, my feelings towards social issues, or anything like that, the music would be completely different. It’s really just an expression of who I am and what I believe in. And like I said in the last answer, it’s kind of very hard for me to stray away from anything that doesn’t actually just feel authentically me.
Zoë: So we read that you take a lot of inspiration from Kafka–could you tell us a little bit about the influence of Kafka on the character of The Roach?
Genesis Owusu: Yeah, I think Struggler was very much just like an account of the feelings and general vibes of, I don’t know, what I and other people around me were feeling from like 2020, to 2023. You know, we had just gone through COVID. Back in Australia we had just got through these crazy bushfires. Like, my house almost burned down, and, like, there’s just like thing after thing after thing, and it kind of highlighted how very out of control we all were.
And I think that kind of ended up playing into how the character of The Roach came to be, that kind of feeling of insignificance, and that was obviously very much inspired by The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Yeah, so that was one way that Kafka inspired that. I think the other way was just in the style of writing and the like kind of Absurdism of it all. Like I said before, it could feel easier to get the point across through just things that feel kind of ridiculous and completely out of the ordinary. And the way he would write about almost mundane things. He’d write about really fantastical, absurd things in an almost mundane way…
Ava: Very simple language! That struck me when I read it the first time.
Genesis Owusu: Yeah yeah, I don’t know something about that really struck me. Because I also think that’s kind of like how life is obviously. We as humans are used to it, but like, shit is ridiculous, like, when you actually think about the things that we go through on a day to day basis. I mean, even the fact that we all just lived through a global pandemic…
Ava: And proceeded as normal.
Genesis Owusu: Yeah, and just woke up and forgot about it, it’s insane.
Ava: Sometimes you just have to accept the Absurd because what else can you do?
Genesis Owusu: Yeah, and just reading that in the form of a book was really inspiring.
Ava: Can I ask when you read–was this like a recent read, or was this something that you maybe read in childhood, and then rediscovered?
Genesis Owusu: No, it was a thing that I’m sure a few English teachers tried to throw at me, that I just completely ignored. But yeah, I only would have read it for the first time in 2022 I think.
Ava: You know, when you’re older, I feel like you kind of understand better than when you were 17, sitting in class, like, wanting to reject everything, so yeah, probably an appropriate time [both laugh].
Ava: So I noticed in an interview that you did with 15 Questions, you sort of talked about reinterpreting sounds that are currently existing, and how pretty much everything has been done, and all you can do is reinterpret it in your own way. I just wanted to ask how you define your sound, and what sort of sounds you look for when you’re doing your sort of genre-bending.
Genesis Owusu: I mean, I just try not to define anything honestly…like how do you define a human being? It’s like I said before, the music is just a total expression of who I am, the good parts, the bad parts, the parts I like, the parts I don’t, and I feel like as artists or as, like public figures, sometimes you can get seen as this kind of 2D character that you know, throws catch phrases out or whatever. But this is just like the expressions of a three dimensional, multifaceted human being. So, yeah, I try not to define anything, because it kind of feels like, once there’s a definition around it, there’s borders around it. So everything is kind of intrinsic, instinctual, same with the sounds that come. They’re rarely, kind of predetermined. A lot of it just happens on the fly, and if it feels right, then I pursue it further.
Ava: And I love that about your music. It’s so, I mean, you can’t confine it to any genre. And I feel like listening to an album, you get a completely different experience with different songs.
Genesis Owusu: Thank you!
Zoë: This will be our last question. The beginnings of your music career paralleled that of your brother, Citizen Kay. Could you tell us how your brother influenced your sound, if it all, and how your relationship as artists has evolved since your own career has taken off?
Genesis Owusu: I wouldn’t have become an artist at all if it wasn’t for my brother. So that’s probably like the biggest influence ever. All of my early, early stuff, like pre-Smiling With No Teeth, was pretty much recorded by him. My first EP was done in a bedroom in our family house. He now focuses more on audio engineering, and he records and produces for other artists, and he’s gotten to a point where he can do that as a career, and like he’s made it to that level, but still, to this day, he’s never charged me a dime, like it’s just…
Ava: Brotherly love!
Genesis Owusu: Yeah, exactly. It’s the love of the family, the love of the art. And I think that kind of…I don’t know, getting influenced by something stylistically is kind of fleeting, in a sense. Like I hear something I like, and that’ll do something for a month a year, whatever, and then I’ll hear something else, and that might do something else, but, like, what he’s actually done kind of supersedes all that…Nothing but love and gratitude to that man.
Ava: Sounds like a beautiful, creative relationship, as well as familial. We’ll set you free now, but thank you so much for speaking with us. This has been super, super cool–we’re both fans of you, obviously, it was awesome to have this opportunity to chat.
Genesis Owusu: Thanks for thanks for the insightful questions. Thanks for inviting me.
Listen to STRUGGLER here:
Cover Photo by Ava London
