Erika de Casier songs sound familiar and distant at the same time, and part of the fun is connecting the dots. Whenever one of her hushed, new-old R&B joints really hit me, I’ll have six or seven new phone tabs open by the time it finishes. Sometimes, it’s because, with her delicate melodies, she drops in a casual hangout detail so specific that I’ll remember someone or a situation that I haven’t thought about in forever. Her late-night club adventures on “Do My Thing,” have even made me dig up an old college Facebook photo album once or twice. Other times, it’s because tiny instrumental effects send me down wormholes of genres I’m both up on and getting hip to, from the R&B girl groups of the 2000s to vintage UK garage.
Depending on what catches my attention—the dazed riff on “Space” that sounds like the sample on Biggie’s “One More Chance” remix; the droning opening notes of “December” that feel out of OVO’s R&B canon—the songs feel a little different every time I listen to them. I think of “Intimate,” the first de Casier song I ever heard, off her debut album, Essentials, which when I focus on her soft vocals reminds me of the funky singles on the only Groove Theory album. But then, when I pay more attention to the synths and her dirty romantic fantasies, I think of it more as a sensual take on Tha Dogg Pound’s “Let’s Play House.” Or, “You Got It!,” one of the moody standouts from her self-produced new album, Lifetime, where in the heavy bounce you can hear the trip-hop influence she’s referenced in the past, but, also, in my ears, I hear a spin on the Hitmen beats circa Mary J. Blige’s My Life.
Since the beginning, her writing has been intimate and personal, emblematic of a storyteller who can pinpoint a fleeting emotion and describe scenes fit for a rom-com. But, on Lifetime, a lot of the talking is done by her sample-heavy beats. Personal favorites are the balmy groove of “Miss,” which establishes the album’s daydreaming spirit, and “The Chase,” where faint breaths and phone sounds punctuate the loneliness and drama as she exhales, “Hit midnight/Not even a text to hold me warm.”
Raised, in part, in Ribe, a small town in Denmark, Erika de Casier stitched together much of her familiarity with pop, alternative rock, R&B, and hip-hop by watching MTV and borrowing CDs from the library. In her music, you can sense a soundtrack of her life subtly being formed. Lifetime, the first album she produced entirely on her own, made me want to dig deeper into de Casier’s work as a beatmaker, so I hopped on a video call with her while she was on a writer’s retreat and vacation with some friends on an island off the coast of Denmark called Fanø, about four hours from her home in Copenhagen. As her cat roamed around, de Casier spoke carefully and intentionally, wary of the attention her words get as she becomes more popular, as we chatted about her beats, hip-hop origins, and new album. A lightly edited version of our conversation follows.
Erika de Casier: I like both. I work on my own, then I miss working with people for a while. And then I work with people and miss working on my own. I feel like I’m in a cycle of being an introvert, extrovert.
I was talking to my friend about this thought that now sounds kind of awful, that I thought life would stop somewhere around 30, and, early on, I felt like I was in a hurry to do so much before I got there. And, I guess, I found out it doesn’t stop. I can just keep going and there’s not a rush. It’s given me the space to just do all kinds of projects I wanted to do.
Yes, because I’m not thinking about the outcome so much. I don’t want to treat everything like it’s my life’s work; I don’t want to go into a record thinking I have to show all sides of me. Sometimes I can just stay in one realm, which is what this album is. I remember when I was younger I admired the artists with big discographies. The ones who made a shit record, then this amazing record, then with maybe only one or two tracks I like. But what you really remember is the material that you really connect with personally. I admired that they weren’t afraid to try things and this being my fourth record I feel like proved what I already needed to prove and now it’s time to stop counting.
That’s something I’m trying to work toward. For example, I used to work on one project at a time and then I needed a big break because I was so drained. Now, I’m workin’ on a little bit on multiple projects and it helps me keep my sanity. But if I did release a mixtape I don’t think it could be like Lifetime. Performing everything myself would be draining; I would need people around me.
Prince and Madonna. There’s so much Dolly Parton.
I have an older brother and he introduced me to 2Pac when I was younger. One day, he called me into his room and he was playing, “First off… and the clique you claim/Westside, we ride….”
“Hit ’Em Up”! At this time I was really into writing down the lyrics of songs I liked. So I think my brother noticed that and tried to find the hardest and fastest song for me; I think I was maybe 10 years old. He ended up finding the lyrics and told me to rap along, but, of course, I couldn’t. But I just remember being blown away by the attitude and energy. That’s a core memory.
It wasn’t often. I just remember him liking Tupac so much that he told me I wasn’t allowed to listen to Biggie [laughs]. But he did fuel my love for hip-hop and R&B, which grew when I watched MTV and went to the library for CDs.
I remember finding Erykah Badu. I couldn’t say her name at first, and then I found out it was pronounced just like my name. And I was like, “Erykah! That’s me!” So I brought it home. But the library had a lot of stuff like Radiohead, Portishead, Craig David, and a lot of indie Danish acts. In my small town a lot of my friends loved alternative rock music, so that was really big. I remember one friend was obsessed with Björk. I remember I was writing to one friend recently ’cause he just had a baby and pointed out to me that I was always curious about music because I was the first one to have an iPod and I was always begging my mom to take me to concerts in Copenhagen. That surprised me because I never really thought about how I was interested in music that early; I kind of just assumed that was what everyone was doing.
Yeah, because I remember when I was a kid you had to have the artists you were a fan of and nobody else was allowed to make that their favorite. My friend had Blink-182 as her top.
N.E.R.D. and Pharrell. I used to have N.E.R.D., Neptunes, everything. The posters were all over my room; I claimed them.
It was really experimental. I hadn’t heard hip-hop and rock be merged in that way before. I felt so seen. I was in a small-town rock environment, but also loved the rap I was seeing on MTV. I felt like I had to choose. But that was the moment where I was like I can have both.
I downloaded Kelis’ “Milkshake” illegally off Napster. I remember that so clearly because I had it and then it came to Denmark, like, six months later.
I didn’t even know that at the time. All I knew was I liked the one that went, “I hate you so much right now,” and so I typed her name in. But back then, I just assumed artists did everything without even thinking about it all that much, but it made so much sense when I found out.
I saw this meme of how artists talk about how they made records, and how they’re always like, “It was so random, I found this synthesizer on the street and this cool sound came out” [laughs]. But it does feel like that sometimes, one thing leading to another over years, collecting so much inspiration from life and listening to music. And, with this one, I just had so many old sample CDs, so I started playing around with downbeat lounge samples and really heavy hip-hop beats. I think I was making a collage of what I liked, a record I would put on myself and chill to.
The base of that beat is these robotic sounding voices, I don’t know if you can even really hear it until the end, that I sampled from another song I made that I didn’t use but chopped up. I kind of used the rhythm and added another beat to it if that makes sense.
There’s so many songs that I’ve discarded and I go back to them and I just really like one part. I try to really kill my darlings. Take one bassline or element that’s sick and get rid of the rest.
That would be amazing. I’ve never really been asked until Lifetime, even though I’ve always co-produced my other stuff. Maybe it’s because I’m a female producer so when there’s other names attached everyone is like, “What did you really do?” But I would be nervous, I wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s sound.
Dr. Dre’s 2001 (Instrumental). I can listen to that forever. I listen to the instrumental album all the time, probably because I listened to it with the lyrics so much that I just started listening to the beats. I notice things about the beats now that I didn’t notice before.
It’s so spacious, each sound gets room. It’s confident, has a mood, and all the choices feel natural. Nothing is forced. It’s harsh but still slow and vibey.
You need it for a groove to work. When I make a beat I layer, layer, layer, and then, I remove, remove, remove. If I remove something and don’t notice it, it’s disposable. But the second I remove something that I notice, I put it back and the beat is done. But I want to prioritize space; I don’t know if that’s something people can notice about my music or if it’s just in my head.
Ones that [are] like a little story or movie. Do you know Modjo’s “Lady”? There’s a handheld camera and, like, three people on a summer adventure; it’s quite magical. Or like Destiny’s Child, “Bills, Bills, Bills,” where they’re walking around the hair dresser, or “Independent Women, Pt. 1,” that is like them as Charlie’s Angels. I like a mood.
They don’t have the same weight as they did once. But I still like when an artist takes a chance to make them, even if there’s not one channel that everybody’s watching and you really only see it if you’re already following that person or it gets suggested to you by an ad.
I have Spotify blindness; I don’t know. I like 21 Savage; I walk around and listen to that “Sneaky” track. John Glacier, Dean Blunt, Florence Sinclair. I listen to a lot of Future. I want to say Drake.
That makes sense actually, because I do really, really love PartyNextDoor. I think it all comes from me loving all the mixed emotions on 808s & Heartbreak.
A lot of the music I listened to growing up had all these phone sounds—Usher’s Confessions, the Ginuwine and Aaliyah song that went like, “Your telephone’s awful busy,” [“Final Warning”]—and I always liked how the music videos were so fixated on them. But there’s something so intimate about a phone call, just two people having some sort of connection that nobody else is supposed to hear.
No, because I feel like it happens naturally. I’m in awe of great rappers, so I’m not trying to be one of the best. Like, I know I can’t freestyle.
I think it’s just about feeling connected to the person finding the best way they can to express their feelings and not trying to prove some sort of skill to you. It’s authentic.
They’re all quite personal, but probably “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Lifetime” because that’s where I felt most vulnerable. Those are the tracks I wanted to remove.
I’m afraid of oversharing. It’s one of those things when you say it out loud it feels silly because when my friends who make music say they can’t say something, I’m like “Why?” But it’s a thing I have with myself, maybe it’s a Danish thing, we like to keep to ourselves.
A little. And it’s kind of messed up that I just have songs out there about personal relationships that people can just, like, listen to [laughs]. But I’m aware of all that; people can listen and say this sounds honest, or this doesn’t. It’s just my personality, I’m not the kind of person that when you first meet me I’m going to open up.
I know that more than half of my music doesn’t come out anyway, so I don’t worry at first about if something can be misinterpreted or not. It’s not until the song is finished that I feel like taking stuff out, but if I do, that could ruin the song. So I have to figure out a compromise, either just leave the whole song or don’t release it. I’ll play it for my friends and ask them, “Am I being too much?” and they always say, “No, when you think you’re over the line, you’re not even close to the line.”
Yes, very.
It’s never bad, but I’m also never like I did it. I can hear every little sound in the production that’s a little off, every little breath I didn’t mean to make, every mistake. I liked that about other people’s music and had to learn to live with that about mine. It’s never perfect, but also that’s a good thing, I guess. But as long as it’s a nice vibe I can stand behind it. Or else I would never release anything and just hide.
