Bikôkô

I’m very good, thank you! How about yourself?

So much. Every few months, I feel like I just change skin and morph into a new person. I would say the biggest change in the past few years has probably been confidence — I feel way more confident than I used to. I’m a lot more in the path that I should be in and I’m not scared to speak up or even work in a team and be a leader because I'm more confident in myself and my capability.

I find my music hard to define; every time people ask me I’m just like, where do I start? I have staples that have always stayed: obviously my voice but also the piano, African percussion, and bass. Those are my core instruments. From there, I just build up depending on whatever I feel like. Some projects are a bit more electronic, others are more sampler based, and others more acoustic based. Now, for example, I’m at a period where I’m going to a more acoustic side again.

Thank you! It's different because as you grow up, your taste changes. Weirdly enough, I’d say the one that I just released. That happens always, though — when I’ve just released something, I feel so different from the person that I was before. Since I’m doing more piano-based music now, I listen to Aura Aura and I’m impressed. I'm going back to that. But I love all my music — they're all my babies, they're all part of me.

I want to do a project that is just piano and voice based. Then have some bass and percussion, but mainly my voice and the piano — just like when I started making music. That’s the vibe that I’m on right now.

It wasn’t. It was the first time that I collaborated on production for an EP of mine. I was travelling a lot so I met people, did some sessions here and there, and then put it together over a period of time. There's bits and bobs of people that had sent me material, or a little demo that I had done at a session ended up being a song.
I have multiple songs produced by my friend who lives here in London — his studio is twenty minutes away. Then I have my friend, Laura Groves — one of the tracks was inspired by her song. And then my friend, Sega Bodega as well. We started the track together and then I finished it on my own. It’s different people — a collage of things.

Nothing has come out yet, but I'm starting to. I don't know the exact date, but my friend Talulah Ruby (she’s Canarian but lives in London) asked me to do a remix of her song and it's probably going to come out soon. That's entirely produced by me. But I don't consider myself a producer. I know how to produce my stuff because it's what's in my head. But for other artists, sometimes I find it hard because I don't know what they want. I don't know how to use autotune because I don't use it, for example.

It was between London and Barcelona. I have a studio that I go to in Barcelona as well as my home studio and my parents’ house. Since I was going back and forth between both cities, I recorded in both. Wherever I was, I recorded there.

It was something that I had thought about in the beginning – even before I started working on the music – because I wanted this project to be quite international. For a few years, I’ve been living between here, Spain, and also France, collaborating, and I wanted that essence to be in the project. I thought it would be cool to extend it by doing collaborations with DJs or producers from different countries — my friends.
Same with other collaborations, like Amore, Irenegarry, Crystal Murray — they’re all friends. I just asked them, do you want to hop on this song? And they did. It was the same with the remixes. I sent the EP to people and everyone said yes. There are some that didn’t make it into the EP because they clashed with other album releases. But I'm very happy with how they came out. At the beginning I was going to publish it on Spotify, but in the end I felt like doing something more low key, for whoever wants to listen. There they are and they have a space to live in.

I first do everything that I need to do on my own, and only when I have it all, I send it to possible collaborators. So all the songs in the record were completely finished except for the feature part. I would send them to these friends and explain: this is what the song is about and I want you here, is this something that resonates with you? Do you want to write about it? Amore and Irenegarry, for example, jumped in right away and said they’d write something. I find this the way to make it feel personal — I plant the seed and then other people embellish it and help me out.

Yeah! Although they’re just sessions, you know what I mean? It’s too early to say, but sessions for me have become sort of play dates. You know how when you’re little, your parents just set up a date with another kid and say, ‘go and play in the park’? It's the same thing. In the first session nothing really happens but the connection is made. That’s important — making a face-to-face connection with people. You play each other music and understand who you are; it’s a way to get to know each other without pressure. Coming back to Amore and Irene, the first session that we did, nothing happened. But from that connection, I sent them the songs.

It has really helped. I don’t know where I heard or read that, but the moment you stop being nervous is the moment you stop caring. I still get nervous because I care about what I do. Even if I'm more used to doing it than before, the five minutes before getting on stage I’m like, ‘oh my God, am I going to fuck up?’ The more you do it, the more you get used to it, and then you're not so scared of it anymore.
Looking back in my career and where I am right now, I'm so grateful that I started doing concerts early because I've learned so much from how to coordinate a band, learning what is important (like warming up before a show). All these things that after you do them for a while, you realise they’re helpful.

(Laughs) Maybe one day.

I have a festival tour this summer that I’m announcing soon where I'll be playing the EP, so it’s a way to continue it. Then there’s this one remix of a song that didn’t come out on Bandcamp that might see the light of day — I'm pondering it because it has another artist on it whose album is releasing soon. We'll see where that goes. But I’ll keep promoting the songs, maybe dropping some acoustic versions, just me on the piano. But yeah, it's going to continue to live on because even though I already started working on whatever is next, that's going to take time. In the meantime, I'm still going to engage with what I just released.

Oh, most people’s favourite.

I am. I mean, that's what the song is about (laughs). I always write from personal experience. I feel less and less jealous, fortunately, but the thing about it is, we all compare ourselves to people in day-to-day life. When your job is so much about existing within a world and a sea of artists, it invites to do it more. Social media as well. You see everyone doing their thing, releasing their albums and doing their tours, and it's normal to compare yourself to other people.
I think also, going back to my first answer, the more confident I become in what I do and my identity and the things that I know I can defend, the less jealous I am. When I was younger, I used to look at people that did other types of music, but now, I can look at them and admire them, but know it's not going to be the same thing for me. That's cool, but I have my thing that is just equally cool.

Yeah, exactly. Especially because it gets ugly and like, babes, no one cares. Just because someone is making it, it doesn't mean that you're not going to make it. It’s so beautiful to exist within a community of artists — if one wins, we all win. Internationally as well. The fact that Madrid’s music scene now is more globalised, it helps everyone — it helps me, it helps young people who want to make a name for themselves in the industry, etc. It shows that you don’t need to be American or British, or speak English to make it. You can make it literally in your bedroom.

I get inspired by everything and I listen to anything, but I when I was younger, I didn’t feel there was a space for me in the Spanish music scene because I didn’t relate to what was going on. I didn’t see any people of colour in the mainstream singing about anything that I wanted to sing about. I remember listening to Afro American music and being like, oh, that's where my people are. Let me go there. But the more I grow up, I'm feeling so inspired by everything that's going on in Madrid now, hence why I'm also going to move. After years of travelling, being in the States, being here, I've never felt more Spanish in my life.

I feel like getting close to my family, I’m talking to my dad a lot. I haven’t been back to Cameroon in a while, but I'm hopefully going to this year or the next one. I want to make some music out there too. When I was younger, growing up in Spain, I didn't see most of my dad’s side of the family because they live in France or Cameroon, but now that I'm older, we all have a huge family group chat and we talk a lot. All my cousins are having babies now. I’m an auntie, so I have to be there. I’m the cool auntie, I get them free Nike stuff, you know.

I speak four — Spanish, English, Catalan, and French.

(Laughs) Three is already super impressive.

They’re all very different. At the moment, I'm finding a lot of inspiration writing in Spanish because I never thought that I was a good writer. I'm realising I wasn’t writing in my mother tongue. I started to write in Spanish and I'm like, this is actually good! We'll see, but maybe in the future I’ll do a project in French. You never know.

I'm very private. I like to do my things and have my space. I have my little rotation: my boyfriend, my mom, my dad, my three best friends — that’s everyone I see (laughs). I rarely, rarely go out because I don’t enjoy it that much.

Oh, that's a really, really good question. A big inspiration, especially for this EP, was Tomay, a Belgian artist. I love that his concerts are also interactive. I saw him in New York two years ago or so and I loved how it was so universal — the crowd had parents with their children, young people, older people. Everyone was invited to dance and interact. He really inspires me.
I'm also inspired by so many of my friends. I saw and played at my friend Obongjayar’s party. He does it at such an intimate venue. The energy and music are always really good and you can always discover cool artists. Then next month I have two concerts that I am dying to see. I want to see Saya Gray live, she’s coming next month. And then, Luigi, a French artist that I love. He's really good, you should check him out.

Saya Gray and Luigi both were in my top 2024 wrapped. If you don't know them, definitely check them out. But lately, I've been going back to listening to older, more classical, singer-songwriter music like Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra. They’re an inspiration for what I'm writing right now.

My tour is mainly in Spain, but yeah, I'm going to tease that. I'm doing a little festival tour and then I'm going to be dropping new music. I have a song that probably will come out mid-May, and it's a more acoustic vibe in Spanish. So, you can look out for that. It's going to be cute. Thank you for this interview, it was really nice!