Tahliah Debrett Barnett (aka FKA twigs) is a British singer and songwriter who has been touted by The New York Times as one of the most important new female artists of 2019, describing her music as “tolling piano notes open[ing] a world of loneliness, cavernous and barren, around [her] voice as she copes with self-doubt, jealousy and aching need.” Her songs have been described as “genre-bending,” drawing on electronica, trip hop, R&B, choral, industrial and avant-garde.
Twigs was featured on the “Fukk Sleep” track of A$AP Rocky’s 2018 album, “Testing.” In April 2019, she released her single, “Cellophane,” and announced that her second album would be entitled “Magdalene.” A second single, “Holy Terrain,” debuted in September. A third single, “Home with You” was released in October. She also acted in the 2019 movie, “Honey Boy.”
FKA has spoken eloquently in her rejection of the “alternative R&B” tag branded on her by critics. “It’s just because I’m mixed race. When I first released music and no one knew what I looked like, I would read comments like, ‘I’ve never heard anything like this before, it’s not in a genre.’ And then my picture came out six months later, now she’s an R&B singer. I share certain threads with classic music; my song ‘Preface’ is like a hymn. So let’s talk about that. If I was white and blonde and said I went to church all the time, you’d be talking about the ‘choral aspect.’ But you’re not talking about that because I’m a mixed-race girl from south London.”