When people meet in the most unlikely of places, a magical relationship is on the cards. For Anae and MsFu however, considering the magic they both have, and are still capable of creating together, their existence jointly as Blac Cousins would almost last forever.
Explaining to us how they both met, Ms Fu eclaimed excitedly “Twitter!”
“Harmattan Rain did a feature on Anae and her productions and I reached out to her in the DMs”
Anae confirms Fu’s story; “Yep, just as Fu explained – that was in 2018 I believe. I listened to her music, loved it and we’ve been building since then”
Although both artistes met and established a personal and working relationship in 2018, that was not the beginning of Balc cousins. Apparently Blac cousins is a concept that came to life this year, 2020.
“That was something we decided just this year while were working on the tape” explains Ms Fu.
“One of our FT sessions where we were brainstorming on song names and more, we kinda decided it would be cool to extend the vibe.”
Blac Cousins’ debut project as a group (more like a duo) was released mid-2020, but the project had been in the works since December 2019 according to them. Pillow Talk houses five songs, all of which are lo-fi mid-tempo sound, all of which were produced by Anae, all of which carry vocals from both Anae and Ms Fu.
Speaking on her own inspiration behind the project, Mss Fu says “The entire project didn’t even start as a project. She (Anae) came to Ghana for some time and it was December so I put in weekends with her at her studio. I think by the second or third song it hit us that we could make this a proper project.
Really most of the influences came from us being in the same space and working, you know? Because we were just getting to know each other and shit, and talking about stuff, and you know, the conversations just reflected in the songs we ende up making. We definitely connect peroperly with the music, and share love for similar artistes.
Overall feeling, it feels good! It also feels dope that even though it wasn’t our first/main intention to create a project on a theme of any kind, it just subconsciously manifested because really, for every song on the album is a conversation we had in the studio or before”
Anae happens to have produced every single track on the project, and that isn’t coincidence.
She says “That was always part of the plan in my head, like I was to produce a project for her. But it became more than me just giving her beats”
Anae, who is known solely for her production works surprisingly came out of her shell to record some verses on some songs too.
“I didn’t think I would (record my own vocals) but we were together and Fu wanted me to tap into my rapping side as well and who am I to refuse that request? I’m glad she did that though, kind of opened me up again to writing and rapping because it had been a while since I last did that much rapping and writing.”
Bearing behind our minds that Ms Fu and Anae aren’t related by blood, we were curious to know why they chose the name “Blac Cousins” for their coming together as a collective and, Fu explains;
“So we had two names in mind basically – Distant Relatives and Nelombus (the lotus flower) and we couldn’t pick one so we had the people we engaged in our litening sesh to vote for one (laughs)
Then we got a comment from a mutual who kind of opened our eyes to something.
Between us, we were both leaning towards Distant Relatives because it made a lot of sense… but obviously there’s a lot going on with that name (shout out to Nas and Damian Marley).
So this mutual, (Ama Asantewa) kinda suggested something similar to Distant Relatives – Black Cousins. We took the K out and here we are.”
This story is quite fascinating and just shows the stress artistes experience in trying to pick a name for anything – literally anything.
Moving forward, Blac Cousins needed to let us know if they would still co-exist musically, or if they would now be looking to improve on their individual careers. Anae had an expository response:
“We had a brief chat about that and we’ve both expressed that we have individual projects we’d like to release, so we’ll be there to support one another for that. However, we are going to continue working on Blac Cousins, just keep it going. A little bit of both you know…
We have so much to offer individually and collectively at this point, so why not do what we can?
I’m also trying to get myself to put out a solo project soon so fingers crossed”
Speaking of personal projects, it’s actually been a long while since Anae last put out music. Asked why, she says “I would really like to put out something, trust me. I’m going to really try. I just feel like getting into production has just made me want to take a back seat and be more behind the scenes… but maybe that’s just an excuse”
Fu backs her Blac Cousin up by adding that “creating a project is something that hits close to home, so we just really want to be able to create the right and necessary art for our soul – art that reflects our innermost, and that’s usually a processsssss”.
With time ahead of them, the Blac cousins look prospectively into the future for what it holds for them both collectively and individually, and we think you should look forward to that too.
Listen to Pillow Talk HERE.
