Racy Macy

“I don’t like people staring at me. I wish they’d say something. Some people do, but most people just stare.” Responding to a question about whether she’s recognised more in London or America, it’s uncomfortably apparent that Macy Gray has had to overcome an innate shyness to achieve her celebrity status. Her reputation as a party animal precedes her, but, as worse for wear as she appears, curled up on the sofa in a London hotel, cocooned in scarf and shades, Macy gradually begins to sit up and relax as the interview progresses. In fact, she’s refreshingly forthright in her answers, much to the relief of the group of journalists conducting round after round of interviews to promote her new album, The Id.

The Id is the follow up to 1999’s phenomenally successful debut, On How Life Is, which went triple-platinum, selling over seven million copies and earning Gray a Grammy. Whereas a lot of second albums tend to be ‘difficult’ or earnest and considered, The Id is a funky, feel-good, upbeat party album – surprising, given the intense pressure she must be facing in the wake of her high-achieving debut. But it sounds to me like Macy Gray’s been having a fabulous time over the past two years. “I’ve been partying a lot,” she says with an extra husk in her famously cracked voice to show for it. “You get access to a lot of things and a lot of places and people – there are drugs, men and late nights. It all depends on how much you want to indulge. If you choose to look on the downside of that, that’s cool, but I’ve been having a really good time.”

Her life is very different now than before she “got famous,” but is the showbiz lifestyle a stimulating subject matter for a songwriter?

“There are a lot of subtle references to my showbiz life, but the things that move me emotionally are more what I do. On How Life Is was a picture of where my head was at then and this one is where my head is at two years later. It’s night and day.”

“The last two years have been really inspiring,” she continues. “I’ve travelled the world and your love life changes, your sex life changes and your body changes. The people in your life change. When every artist writes their sophomore album, it’s about all those changes.”

The title of the album came about when a friend described Macy as being “all Id.” The Id, according to Freud, is all about “the pleasure principle,” that dark, hidden part of the personality concerned with satisfying instinctual needs. Macy gives full vent to the notion in songs like ‘Give Me All Your Lovin’ Or I Will Kill You’ (in which she threatens the object of her affections with an AK-47), and songs such as ‘Freak Like Me’ and ‘Sexual Revolution’, where she exhorts people, women especially, to explore their sexuality to the fullest.

“Everybody has their freaky side,” she explains. “It don’t have to be a sexual thing but everybody has that little thing that they save for people they really get to know, and ‘Sexual Revolution’ is about how natural that is and how beautiful you would be if you let people see that side of you. People are really intrigued and turned on by things that are different, but we’re conditioned to want to be accepted and do what everyone else does. People shouldn’t suppress what makes them who they are.”

I ask about ‘Relating To A Psychopath’, on which she sings “Love is a desert and I need it to rain/You’re so good at keeping me company.” It’s a song which I interpret as being about a romantic relationship (whatever that says about the kind of guys I date), but apparently it’s not. “It’s about my relationship with my fans,” Macy replies. “People come up to me all the time and say I love you and I really relate to your lyrics, but they’ve got to know how bizarre I am. It’s a tongue in cheek song, but I think my fans appreciate something a little to the left. It’s not Backstreet Boys.”

Macy produced the new album herself, with Rick Rubin overseeing as a mentor and featuring collaborators such as Erykah Badu, Slick Rick, Mos Def and Angie Stone. She was determined to incorporate a diverse mixture of sounds, culminating in some bizarre numbers, including her favourite track ‘Oblivion’, a weird and wonderful amalgamation of rock opera, country and R’n’B. The album also has a techno sound, which is influenced by what Macy witnessed on her adventures in European cities. “The past few years I’ve been all around the world and learned a lot, so naturally my music has expanded. I did my first E in Europe. When you do E everything sounds good. You connect. One night I was at a rave club and they played ‘God Is A DJ’ for like 45 minutes. As a musician you learn from that – you can do anything. You go into the studio and don’t have boundaries anymore. Coming over here definitely affected this record. I wasn’t hip to E in the ’80s. It’s taking off in US, but the big thing there now are these painkillers, which are real powerful. You’re not hungry on them and you’re high. You get creative and you lose weight!” she laughs.

They’re making a Macy Gray cartoon, she tells us. “It’s about Macy Gray as a kid. It’s me growing up and I have four friends, like a coming of age thing, It’s real cute. I’m gonna do the voice, but I’m not writing the story.”

Given her background in film-making, would Macy consider getting involved in a film project? With her fame, it wouldn’t be a struggle to get backers to sign on the dotted line. “I’ve been working on a script for a while, but I don’t know,” she shrugs and looks suddenly uncertain. “If I did do it, I’d probably do it under a different name.”

Born Natalie McIntyre in Canton, Ohio, Macy listened to soul music in the family home, but was exposed to rock music at a predominantly white boarding school. Teased about her squeaky voice as a child, she took to staying quiet, but began singing on the LA circuit to earn money while studying film at the University Of Southern California. The ensuing years were eventful – she got married and had three kids, was signed to Atlantic, recorded an album that was never released, got dropped by the label and got a divorce. She returned home to Ohio with her children and, recovering from her disappointment, began recording under a new name, eventually releasing her album on Epic and becoming the superstar we see before us.

Macy says she enjoys taking the kids, aged six, five and three, on tour with her in the summer when school’s out. Does the life she leads make it difficult to touch base with her friends and family? “My family is still my family, but we talk about different stuff. They’re interested in what I do, but they don’t completely understand it. So it’s not all that much fun to talk about it, because we’re not relating like we used to. A couple of my old friends from New York were around last week and they’re interested in what I do, but only up to a point, because their lives are completely different. They don’t really understand.”

She describes a tendency to gravitate towards people in a similar position, but says it’s hard to maintain real friendships. “You make friends, but everyone is so busy. It’s not like friends you grew up with. But I do meet people I like.”

People like Prince, one of her musical heroes. “I sat down and talked with Prince for four hours and he never talks! That was shocking. He really dresses like he does on television when he’s chillin’, with the heels and the coat. I’ve never met anyone like that who is such a consummate performer. He’s one person who really loves music. We saw him in Detroit and he played for two hours and afterwards he went to a club and jammed for four hours. We talked and all he wanted to talk about was music. He really has been consumed by everything he does. I would never have thought he’d be like he was.”

Although, with her first album Macy became the darling of the white music press, her music was snubbed by a lot of the black music community due to her experimentation with a variety of musical forms. Does this bother her? “The black media really limits the black culture,” she asserts. “Lenny Kravitz doesn’t get any airplay. All you hear is hip-hop or R’n’B and if you’re a little kid and you don’t know anything, you’d think that’s all black people do. When I was first starting out it was really important to me and I couldn’t understand why radio wasn’t playing my songs. I really fight that, but once y’all on stage, it don’t really matter.”

As for being a black woman in the music business, she states: “Being black has never kept me from anything. It’s easy to get around that. As a woman, it’s just a really tight conditioning we’re under. In my band, I’m the boss, so they take me seriously. For a while,” she giggles. “And then the drummer speaks up and it’s like God has spoken, and he didn’t say anything different from what I just said. Ha ha ha! The upside is that you get to be around a lot of men in the music industry, a lot of powerful men,” she smiles enigmatically.

“Bye Sweetie,” Macy croaks when our interview time is up, and gives me a little wave before settling back among the cushions for a well-earned rest.

The new album by Macy Gray, The Id, is out on Sony in September