When you're best known for lyrics like, “Big dick will get me wet/Drippin’ through my panties”, it’s only natural to start deep in conversation about sexual freedom. Rapper, singer, songwriter, DJ and record label co-owner Shygirl (who privately goes by the name Blane Muise) is mindful of the disempowering nature of not speaking freely: “Shame really held me back,” says the 29-year-old, as we sit drinking tall glasses of pressed juice in Shoreditch House. “So I’m always hoping to eradicate that.” After all, the name “Shygirl” was never really about “shyness” so much as an unwillingness to bother herself with small talk.
Dressed in simple black athleisure (“I dress pretty casual most of the time”) with her long wavy hair flowing over her shoulders, she’s readily talking about sex, punctuating it with consistent ripples of laughter. Shygirl is openly queer and her sound has typically been topped with glorious lyrics that pull you to party and, well... fuck. “There’s this idea that the more people you sleep with, the less of a person you are. But it’s not that deep... I’m way better at sex than if I’d just slept with three people.” She’s frank on the subject, but has her limits, too; she definitely does not want her grandmother listening to her lyrics. “She knows about my dating life, but not the TMI stuff that my mum knows.”
Born and raised in the green of London’s Blackheath, Shygirl was studying photography at the University of Bristol, before her friend, Irish-Scottish music producer Sega Bodega, guided her to her trippy first single, 2016’s “Want More”. Since then she’s been putting out bold, sexy rap bars over strange, brash club sounds, all packaged with off-kilter aesthetics. She’s since collaborated with FKA twigs, Slowthai, Arca and Lady Gaga, and worked with Burberry, Mugler and Fenty. Her work has started to chime with big cultural moments. During the lockdown, her 2020 EP, ALIAS, symbolised people’s longing for the union, ecstasy and depravity of the club. A year later came her breakthrough to the masses, when the shriek from her song “Uckers” became a viral TikTok trend, largely soundtracking makeup transformations, but more generally as a reaction track for anything shocking. And at Glastonbury’s 50th-anniversary festival, hers was the cult set for the young queer crowd.
Now with her debut full-length album, Nymph, Shygirl wants to set some misconceptions straight. She’s wary of the ways she’s been flattened into a one-dimensional character by the media and fans alike – she can see it in the way she’s often written about, feel it in the way people approach her and clock it in the way prospective partners are intimidated by her. “I realised people had this perception of me as a strong, confident, unflinchingly earnest woman,” she explains, “But obviously that’s not always true. There are also ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing’ parts to me, so I wanted to treat myself to the same space and humanity that I want to be given back to me.”
Shygirl is aware that as a woman in music – not least a Black woman in music – she will be sexualised, scrutinised and objectified. People expect her to dress in ways that fit their perception of her (she sees comments online begging her to dress more revealingly). “Even if I wasn’t talking about sex, that would have happened... It’s not up to me on my own to change it, I just need to be in touch with myself and whether I’m enjoying it... because I know people listening are enjoying it.” She’s started going to therapy, but was already doing a lot of introspection and is putting it into the music. “I wanna try to be more open, experimenting with what I’m speaking about, being candid – I do feel like when you’re honest with yourself and other people, you really get an opportunity for something. This isn’t just about putting out a record for me, it’s about developing as a person... trying to be a better person.”
All this is driving the emergence of a new Shygirl persona. While her debut album pulsed with sex and experimental sonics, Nymph peels back some of the bravado: by embodying the mythical woodland creature that the album takes its name from, Shygirl is revealing a softer side. She talks about her love of Thomas Hardy books, notably Tess of the D’Urbervilles (in which the title character “gets so fucked over” by patriarchal framings of sex). These days she’s more mindful of
things like this that inspire her, “like romanticism in general – I really love the brutal reality in those books, where it’s futile, but beautiful; it’s hard, but worth it.”
Her love for romance and nature might feel at odds with the perception of her as provocative and hardcore, as well as with the metallic, industrial heat of her production. But she’s always escaped into those worlds: “When I’m being introspective, I do tend to go sit in nature, but I haven’t really presented that in my work before, even though it’s an important part of my process,” she says. “In every write-up, it’s like, ‘Southeast London artist’, always affirming that I’m inner-city, but I spent loads of time in Wales growing up.” She’s laying claim to a word that’s all too often associated with an ethereal white woman floating through a mystical glade: “When I think of a nymph, I feel an affinity to the ethos of that character – I have felt beguiling, fascinating, mysterious, supernatural and also part of nature. You don’t see people like me in these stories, and I have as much right as anyone else.”
She shows me stills of her riding horseback in a Tolkienesque video she’s just shot – all part of a shrewd reworking of a fairytale world that looks to escape a reality where Black artists are often reduced to categories like “urban” and Black women are often framed only as “strong” or “brave”, rather than given the grace of delicateness. As Shygirl points out, “I’m not any less of a fragile woman just because I talk about sex.”
Back in 2015, late pop auteur and icon SOPHIE (who was a friend and collaborator of Shygirl) gave an interview to Rolling Stone. In conversation with PC Music founder AG Cook, she said, “I think all pop music should be about who can make the loudest, brightest thing. That, to me, is an interesting challenge, musically and artistically. And I think it’s a very valid challenge – just as valid as who can be the most raw emotionally. I don’t know why that is prioritised by a lot of people as something that’s more valuable. The challenge I’m interested in being part of is who can use current technology, current images and people, to make the brightest, most intense, engaging thing.”
As we dip our spoons into thick slices of vanilla cheesecake, I put it to Shygirl that on Nymph, she’s leaning into both of the challenges SOPHIE identified: making music that shines, plays and offers levity, but also reveals more rawness and inner-self than we’ve previously heard from her. This is largely what she’s trying to do, she says. “In performing, I got a sense of the thrill of being vulnerable on stage, and pushing myself to do different things that I never expected of myself – and then I wanted to inject that again into the music-making process. How do I amplify that thrill I’m getting? How do I face myself?”
We discuss one of the album’s singles, “Coochie (a bedtime story)”, a gleaming pop song that waxes lyrical on women’s genitalia like it’s a magical entity in a fantasy novel. It’s funny and bright and more thoughtful than the title might suggest. “Some people could pass that song off as vapid, just objectification,” she says, “And that’s fine – music should be enjoyed on all levels, and sometimes I enjoy being objectified – but for me, there is another level. I’ve been surrounded by women who don’t feel comfortable talking about their bodies, who don’t seem comfortable when I talk about my adoration of other women – straight women who are like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t imagine going down on a woman!’ So for me this is about battling with this idea that women’s bodies are weird.”
Shygirl had always possessed a degree of confidence, but often questioned her sexuality. “My sister is 13, she’s queer,” Shygirl muses. “But I think most people are in her generation, to be honest. They have a literacy around queer identity, and they’re having conversations we didn’t have. I couldn’t identify with a ‘gay’ experience back then; I was attracted to women but couldn’t relate to the images I saw of lesbians. Now, I don’t seek labels at all, but back then I was really questioning myself and why I was attracted to women – I couldn’t tell if it was just because it was a taboo.” Since then she’s grown into her sense of self and started to feel her desires: “I’m comfortable with who I am right now, I’m confident in what I’m doing.”
Lately, she’s been craving a relationship with more intimacy – though it’s difficult given the time-consuming nature of her work. She didn’t have her first romantic relationships until she hit her 20s (mainly with women…“with men I was figuring my shit out”). She’s had lots of situationships (“like a lot of our generation,” she deadpans) and one “serious” relationship (a lot of her lyrics are actually in reference to one person). A lot of Shygirl’s earliest music flipped the script on how a previous partner treated her, helping her take back control of her own body and its narrative. You can hear it in commanding, forthright lyrics like, “I can keep you up, put you down if I want to” on 2018’s “Nasty”. But by reappropriating certain experiences, she unintentionally revisited some negative energy – something she wants to get away from. “Now I don’t feel like I need to do that so much, but it was what I needed at the time,” she says.
Now she’s on Hinge and people have started to ask if she’s catfishing, pretending to be Shygirl. She’s also seen the profiles of a few old hook-ups who she’s no longer interested in. “No regrets!” she hollers. “These days I would never go there – but I had to have those experiences. I don’t think I would have got to the headspace and emotional depth that I’ve got to now if I hadn’t been so carefree. Which is why I think it’s so important to talk about it!” By talking openly about both her good and bad experiences in her music, Shygirl offers listeners an alt-anthemic way to reclaim their power and frame their relationships however they want.
One minute she’s receiving bedroom commands via the Nike slogan (“Just do it!”), the next she’s trying to mask the fact she misses her ex by fantasising about the promise of bawdy sex with someone better. Where once she demanded things of her lovers, there are points on this record where it feels sweeter – more raw and exposed – like she’s tenderly asking. It’s vulnerability on Shygirl’s terms, all via breezy downtempo electronics that recall Imogen Heap, singsong dissonance that wouldn’t sound amiss on an M.I.A. record and even some sweltering Eurodance. It’s the result of an artist disinterested in repeating her past work, exploring all the things their art is capable of.
Nymph is also rooted in the comfort of being known both by those in her inner circle and, most importantly, by herself. The record is a family affair, seeing her work with frequent collaborators like Sega Bodega, Mura Masa, Arca and Cosha, as well as the likes of BloodPop, Danny L Harle and Vegyn. You can hear the breadth of Shygirl’s upbringing in the sounds she touches on – raised by young Grenadian-origin parents and close to both sets of grandparents, she grew up listening to reggae via her grandfather, Missy Elliott, Moloko and Björk (now a fan) via her dad and Ultrabeat via her local Woolworths. The resulting sound is serene, breathy delivery on top of soft, whirring beats that glitch and glimmer, bringing to mind the frisson of locking eyes with someone in the dark of a humid nightclub.
Shygirl says she might look back and change her mind about it, but Nymph is how she’s feeling right now: confident in herself and give-a-fuck about putting her emotions on the line. “I sometimes say to my friends that I’m a witch – actually, I think anyone can have that power,” she says. “My vision of the world is one where I have the power: I have power to affect and rearrange the world for me.”
Tara Joshi is a style journalist.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Photographs by Jeff Hahn
Stylist by Justin Hamilton
Makeup by Luz Giraldo
Movement direction by Simon Donnellon and Lydia Buckler
Set design by Maxwell Randall
Hair by Zateesha Barbour @ LMC Agency
Nails by Tyler Phoenix
Tailoring by Eleanor Williams @ Karen Avenell
