2017’s Cardrive EP saw Ghanian-born, Canberra, Australia-based, 20-something artist Genesis Owusu — born Kofi Owusu-Anash — quickly establishing himself as a perpetually restless, genre-blurring chameleon with an ability to conjure powerful and deeply personal storytelling in diverse forms. Cardrive EP eventually garnered an ARIA Award nomination for Best R&B/Soul Release and praise from Sir Elton John (!), NME, i-D, mixmag and others. Adding to a growing profile across Australia, Owusu has opened for Dead Prez, Col3trane, Sampa The Great, Cosmo’s Midnight, Noname, Animé, Ruel and others.
Back in 2020, Owusu-Anash released a handful of highly-celebrated singles including the fiery mosh-pit friendly banger “Whip Cracker” and the ARIA Award-nominated smash hit “Don’t Need You,” which quickly became the #1 most played song on triple J radio — and since then has received airplay in the UK on both BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 and here in the States on KCRW, KUTX, The Current and Alt98. Those singles prominently appear on Owusu-Anash’s critically applauded full-length debut Smiling With No Teeth.
“Smiling With No Teeth is performing what the world wants to see, even if you don’t have the capacity to do so honestly,” Owusu explains in press notes. “Slathering honey on your demons to make them palatable to people who only want to know if you’re okay, if the answer is yes. That’s the idea, turned into beautiful, youthful, ugly, timeless and strange music.” Each of the album’s 15 tracks can trace their origins back to studio jam sessions with a backing band that features Kirin J. Callinan, Touch Sensitive’s Michael DiFrancesco, World Champion‘s Julian Sudek and the album’s producer Andrew Klippel.
In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about three of Smiling With No Teeth‘s singles:
- “The Other Black Dog,” a mind-bending production that meshed alternative hip-hop, industrial clang, clatter, rattle and stomp, off-kilter stuttering beats and wobbling synth arpeggios that was roomy enough for Owusu-Anash’s breathless, rapid-fire and dense flow. Managing to balance club friendliness with sweaty, mosh pit energy, the song is a full-throttled nosedive into madness that reminds me of the drug and booze fueled chaos of ODB, and the menace of DMX.
- “Gold Chains,” a brooding yet seamless synthesis of old school soul, G Funk and Massive Attack-like trip hop centered around shimmering and atmospheric synths, stuttering boom bap beats, squiggling blasts of guitar and the rising Ghanian-born, Canberra-based artist’s Mos Def/Yasiin Bey-like delivery, alternating between spitting dense and dexterous bars and crooning with an achingly tender falsetto. “‘Gold Chains’ got me thinking about the flaws of being in a profession where, more and more, you have to be the product, rather than just the provider of the product, and public misconceptions about how luxurious that is,” Owusu-Anash explains in press notes. “Lyrically, it set the tone for the rest of the album.”
- “Same Thing,” a jolting and uneasy future funk banger centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, skittering beats, bursts of Nile Rodgers-like guitar, a propulsive bass line and infectious hook serving as a silky bed for Owusu’s alternating dexterous and densely worded bars and soulful crooning. But at its core is an unflinchingly honest — and necessary — view of mental health struggles.
Owusu-Anash capped off an enormous 2021 with the Missing Molars EP, a five-track accompaniment to his critically applauded full-length debut. Recorded during the Smiling With No Teeth sessions, the Missing Molars EP material didn’t make the album — but further continue the soul-baring narrative of his debut. “Missing Molars is an extension of Smiling With No Teeth,” Owusu-Anash explains. “A small collection of tracks from the SWNT sessions that take the already established world-building groundwork of the album, and expand that universe into new and unexplored places. These are all tracks that I felt were special in their own right and needed to be shared. This is music without boundaries.”
Recently, Owusu-Anash made his Stateside, late night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he performed SWNT standout single “Gold Chains” along with his backing band.
And as you may recall, the Ghanian-Aussie JOVM mainstay had to reschedule his January Stateside tour to March-April as a result of the Omicron variant. The rescheduled tour includes an April 2, 2022 stop at Bowery Ballroom. (As always, you can check out the tour dates below. And check out the following for tickets and more information: https://www.genesisowusu.com/tour)
in the lead up to his Stateside headlining tour, the acclaimed Ghanian-Aussie JOVM mainstay shared Smiling With No Teeth‘s sixth and latest single, “Black Dogs!” may arguably be the most post-punk/punk rock leaning song on the entire album. Centered around a propulsive and angular bass line, a relentless and forceful four on the four, twinkling and fluttering synths, bursts of angular guitar paired with Owusu-Anash’s angry snarls, “Black Dogs!” is a mosh pit friendly stomp, fueled by simmering rage. It’s a rage that’s deeply familiar to me as a Black man frequently in era white spaces: Maybe you don’t get abused by the police at all, but the constant microagression, the backhanded compliments, the outright insults get deep into your soul. For me, it often feels like life is a series of insults, of someone always saying “you ain’t shit.”
Directed by Daniela Federici, the accompanying visual for “Black Dogs!” is split between a sumptuous and cinematic black and white and vivid color and captures Owusu-Anash’s frenetic, captivating energy.
“I really wanted to capture the tension and the rising chaos of the song in video form, and Daniela Federici knew how to bring that energy in spades, but also in a really artful way,” Owusu-Anash says in press notes. Of “Black Dogs!,” he adds, ” “It’s a straight-to-the-point song encompassing a day in the life of me, or just any Black person in Australia. It’s not that I’m getting abused by police every day, but it’s all the little micro-aggressions. Sonically speaking, it plays into how I feel every day, going into white spaces and feeling a bit paranoid.”
GENESIS OWUSU RESCHEDULED U.S.TOUR DATES
3/20 – The Independent – San Francisco, CA
3/21 – The Roxy – Los Angeles, CA
3/25 – Neumos – Seattle, WA
3/28 – Turf Club – St. Paul, MN
3/29 – Schubas – Chicago, IL
3/31 – Underground Arts – Philadelphia, PA
4/2 – Bowery Ballroom – New York City, NY
4/10 – Terminal West – Atlanta, GA4/12 – Basement East – Nashville, TN
4/14 – Antone’s – Austin, TX