"Since I was young, I've dealt with addiction. It's like, 'Who are you, really?' He appears at first to be an angel, but then he turns into someone that is not." He also represents the devil disguised as an angel, because he keeps offering me these drugs. "It's a double/triple entendre: The male voice that you hear throughout the album is the love interest or my conscience. It felt like the sun saved me, which, in itself, is : the Son of God or the sun in our solar system. Then I looked up through the trees and I saw the sun. But in real life I was on a hike in Big Sur and I was getting emotional. It's not super obvious in the song, but I say how my feet keep touching the ground it's not working for me. I know that sounds morbid, but it was true.
"It's definitely a place I've been in my mind: 'Hmm, if I were to decide to do that, how would I do it?' So we started with a guitar and I wanted to write a song about that place and go there in my mind. Of course, everyone has different reasons for making that decision. Maybe people go there and they just feel at peace. I was watching that and it was such a beautiful forest. Not afraid of it, but interested and intrigued. After my brother passed - actually, my whole life - I've been very interested in death.
My great-grandmother was born in Hawaii, but she's actually Japanese. "One night I was in with the Fisticuffs and we were partaking in marijuana and we were watching a documentary about Aokigahara, the suicide forest in Japan. She's a brave soul - equal parts vulnerable and visionary - for taking us along for the ride. As she explains, track-by-track, it's the confessional story of her grappling with the nature of desire rooted in all human experience as she measures her mistakes and awakens to her own power. But Trip is about more than chasing love or a temporary high. intermittently released over the course of the first week, along with an audio mission statement that spells out her sweeping vision.Īt 29, Aiko has experienced the pain of divorce and death. More than the 22-song LP, the overarching title encompasses a movie, album and poetry book - or M.A.P. Chill and the "love of her life" and TWENTY88 collaborator Big Sean. Beyond collaborations with Mali Music and Brandy, the new album features her daughter Namiko Love, Aiko's father Dr. That's what I turn to."Īiko recorded Trip over the span of three years, largely in the Hollywood studio of producer No I.D., who signed her to his ARTium Recordings label in 2012, before self-releasing her Sail Out EP and Souled Out debut LP via Def Jam. So that keeps happening to me, but the older I get I feel like I'm finding a way to not let it completely disable me. "Something little can stretch you all the way back to that moment and you're starting all over and reliving everything. "Often, when you're dealing with grief, it's kind of like you relapse," Aiko says.
The youngest of five siblings, each born two years apart, Aiko was closest in age and kinship to Miyagi before his death. The autobiographical soundscape of Aiko's healing journey follows the loss of her brother, Miyagi Chilombo, to cancer in 2012, and her futile quest to replace that love with romantic relationships and vices that failed to fill the void. Several years in the making, Trip is totally unexpected. I just want to share it without it being something people are expecting." It's not something contrived or something I want to turn into this big deal. "I don't like hyping stuff up," she says. So when we talk one week prior to the unannounced release of her epic new album, it comes as no surprise that she's much more interested in easing into the big reveal rather than making a huge splash. Somewhere between pop-oriented R&B and traditional soul, the singer-songwriter floats like an ethereal voice disembodied from typical format and genre distinctions. "Oblivion is kind of like nirvana, where you become nothing and you don't have to suffer over and over again," Jhené Aiko says.
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