Buy the limited-edition cover featuring FKA twigs online now.
written by BEN DANDRIDGE-LEMCO
photography ARNAUD LAJEUNIE
styling GEORGIA PENDLEBURY
When FKA twigs first graced the cover of i-D, in the summer of 2012, she had yet to release a song. Coming home from the club one morning, she caught the eye of photographer Matthew Stone, who cast her in his fashion spread about London’s young creative scene. By that time, twigs had already appeared as a backup dancer in music videos for Kylie Minogue and Ed Sheeran, and had honed a seductive character she would inhabit during cabaret performances at London’s storied club The Box, all the while writing songs for what would be her debut project. She was, like many of i-D’s cover stars before her, a multitalented artist with big dreams and little exposure. In the cover photo, the then-23-year-old winks stoically at the camera, her baby hair drawn down across her forehead to spell out the word “love.” Even at the dawn of the project that would become FKA twigs, she already looked every bit the subversive star she would become.
More than a decade later—and after three albums, over 30 music videos, a Grammy nomination, and a recent acting star turn in The Crow—twigs has continued to evolve with each new creative endeavour. From her beginnings as a dancer to her consistently innovative self-directed music videos, the musical project of FKA twigs—which weaves together R&B, pop, and various strains of electronic music—has always been multidisciplinary. All of these practises coalesce in her new album Eusexua, its accompanying music videos, and the raves she’s thrown around the world as part of the album’s rollout. Eusexua, inspired by twigs’ own experiences at raves in Prague while filming The Crow in 2022, is an ode to the distinct feelings of freedom and connection that can only be experienced on the dance floor. On the album’s opening hook, she asks and answers:
“Do you feel alone? You’re not alone.”
On the heels of Eusexua’s release, twigs connected with an old friend, the renegade Atlanta rapper Playboi Carti, to discuss the story behind her first i-D cover, the orgasmic energy behind the album, and her sword-swinging martial arts technique.
Playboi Carti: I was just with [the production duo who worked on Eusexua] Ojivolta. They love you. I was like, “I was freestyling with twigs back in the day with [A$AP] Rocky in New York when I was 18.” I was telling him like, “[twigs] always supported me since day one.” People don’t even know that.
FKA twigs: We’ve always had a good vibe.
Carti: When I was coming up with Rocky, he always used to tell me, “Yo, twigs is the one. I got to introduce you to twigs.” And when I met you, everything he said about you was true. Shorty from the other side of the world. She got me off the bat.
twigs: You’re so sweet. You always had it. You know Rocky and I used to live together? I think it was 2012 or 2013. I used to live with A$AP Yams and Rocky in LA, and we had an apartment together. I would always cook for them because they would never eat. They were boys—they would never be able to cook for themselves. So they’d come back from the studio—
Carti: —coming in, got the munchies. twigs over there going crazy. I’ve never met Yams a day in my life. I always just hear so many cool stories. You and Rocky and Yams in the crib? That’s fire.
twigs: Yams was the best, and he was such a gentleman. He’d always let me sleep in his room. He’d sleep on the sofa, and I would take his bed.
Carti: We got to treat you like an angel. Is this your first i-D cover shoot?
twigs: No, i-D made me famous.
Carti: i-D made you famous?
twigs: I want to say I was 23, and I was coming back from a night out clubbing and it was about 9 o’clock in the morning. I was wearing the outfit from the night before, waiting at a train station, and a photographer called Matthew Stone saw me. I had an amazing outfit on. I had my hair done, my makeup still from the night before. I had all my baby hairs then and long braids——
Carti: Basically, you had that shit on. He’s seeing you like you’re a star.
twigs: He managed to find me through Facebook, and he invited me to come as an extra down to do a photoshoot for i-D. I was making music, but I’d never released any music. I was supposed to be in the background as an extra, but when I was there on the day, they were like, “You look really good. You should do a cover try.” So I went very, very quickly in front of the camera. The next thing I knew——two, three months later——I was on the cover of i-D. But this was before the internet fully blew up.
Carti: You broke that barrier without the internet. It’s just in you.
twigs: Everyone was like, “Who’s that girl?” I remember I had to delete my Facebook. I deactivated my Myspace. It was like overnight. I’d be going to parties and people would be like, “Are you the girl from i-D?” But I wasn’t ready. I was like, “Whoa.”
Carti: Anything that you were going to do——movies, acting, being a model——it was going to pop in any direction. When it comes to you, it’s not just the music. It’s the other shit——you playing with the swords, like that’s hard. I wanted to tell you I saw you in The Crow. You finna be a superhero. You got five different careers. You gonna die with that money, girl. Has the relationship between your visuals and your music changed?
twigs: When I first came out, it was all about the visuals. I grew up watching MTV and watching my favourite artists’ videos, like Michael Jackson or Prince. When I wanted to be an artist, I just assumed that you had to be able to perform, that you had to be able to dance, that you had to be able to have an amazing fit. The whole thing is a 360 experience.
Carti: No shade to no one, nobody’s having crazy videos like you. You can tell without even looking into credits, twigs did every single thing with this.
twigs: I’ve leaned in even further in this era. With my album concept, Eusexua, it helps when it’s explained with visuals and the emotion and the dancing——all of that stuff.
Carti: What’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever done for one of your music videos? The sword shit look easy. You whipping that. I don’t mean to keep asking you, but how long have you been doing the sword thing?
twigs: On and off since 2019. But I pick up things quite quickly. Once I get locked in on a movement thing, I have to go and do it every day. I wake up at 9 o’clock every morning, I’ll go and train for two or three hours. If I don’t get my training in, I feel like a waste, man. I hate it.
Carti: Where does that word “Eusexua” come from?
twigs: It’s a feeling. I always say there’s not a word in English that describes it. You know when you’re in the studio and you get the best idea? Or maybe you have it when you’re in front of the mic and you’re just flowing. That moment of pure presence and it’s egoless and you’re just downloading creativity—that’s Eusexua. I say it’s the moment before an orgasm. It’s like when your mind is completely clear and then anything can download into your body or anything can download into your head. Or when I go out dancing all night, that’s the feeling of Eusexua. It’s like love, but it’s not love, because I think love involves ego, but this feeling has no ego.
Carti: It’s like a moment before a big release, right?
twigs: But to get to that moment before, you need to be in a state itself. You can’t orgasm if you’re thinking of anything.
Carti: What was different about recording this album?
twigs: I felt like I was being exactly who I am right now. I found that hard to do in Covid, I’m not going to lie. I need to be in culture. I need to be going out. I need to be seeing people. I need to be dancing. After three years of everything shut down, it was amazing to go and immerse myself in the community around techno music and dance culture and feel like I was alive again. So this album was very authentic. Not to say it didn’t take time, because all albums are very intense to make, but it felt like it was constantly flowing out of me. Whenever I write a lyric or do a melody or hear a sound, if I know it’s true, sometimes my body tingles. I just was constantly following that feeling. Anytime I felt like my body was tingling, I’d be like, “Yep, that’s the right lyric. That’s the right melody. That’s the right idea.” And whenever I was in the studio and I felt like I was losing my way, I would just go out to a rave and then just think about what I was doing in relation to the rave.
Carti: What’s a memorable rave story you can give me? Because I don’t think I’ve been to a rave before. Everybody be saying, “Oh, it’s a rave. It’s a rave.” It’s not a rave. I know for sure you’ve been to a rave.
twigs: I’ll take you to a rave.
Carti: We got to check that out.
twigs: So I was shooting The Crow in Prague and there’s no Black people there. I remember the first time I left my hotel room, everyone was staring at me. I was going to go meet my co-star Bill Skarsgård for the first time. I put on a nice little dress, and I was like, “Okay, I look cute.” I left the hotel and everyone was staring at me so much. I was like, “Maybe it’s because I look cute.” Then I was like, “Maybe because they’ve never seen a brown girl out here just doing her thing.” So it was three months there and no one really looked like me. But one night, I went to this rave, and I was raving so hard. The music was so crazy and it was cavernous and it was the hardest techno like, thud, thud, thud. It was crazy. I want to take you so bad. You’d love it. It’s like a movie. And all of a sudden, through the crowd, I just saw these four Black boys and they didn’t look like anyone else in the rave. We locked eyes, like, “What are you doing here?” So we started literally fighting through the crowd to get to each other, but I didn’t know them. They looked so cool, they had the best style, amazing hair. We go to the bar and they’re these French boys and they were like, “We basically love raving, so every weekend we pick a place that we’re going to go to in Eastern Europe.” We’re still friends.
Carti: That’s beautiful. I feel like both of us, we came up in a different time of the internet. What’s your relationship with the internet now?
twigs: It used to feel like you could put your art forward and culture would do the rest. Whereas now, some people are just really good at promoting themselves and really good at doing the Instagrams and the TikToks. Especially if you’re a girl, there’s a lot of pressure on you to put everything about yourself forward other than your art and your craft. I still navigate it. You’ll do this amazing thing: You’ll produce a song, you’ll write the song, you have this amazing dance routine, you’ve trained the whole year for this thing. But then it’s like, “But what’s in your bag?” But I feel like the world wants something different now. Culture is leaning towards more authentic artistry and artists that know themselves and have a deeper understanding of their fan base and who they are. It feels good at the moment. But definitely a couple years ago I found myself at a loss in terms of not wanting to do TikTok dances.
Carti: Do you feel like you had to really fight for your respect?
twigs: I feel that things go in phases. When you first come out, everyone wants you to do well because you’re a new artist and you’re presenting something different. Then you do really well, and everyone’s really happy. And then, at least for me, I feel like people can feel that I’m different, and they feel that it’s intimidating. So they want to naysay it, and they want to cut it down a little bit.
Carti: Intimidating is good, too.
twigs: It is good, but you feel people being intimidated by you, and you feel people not wanting it to work. Once you get past that, then it gets into a level where people are back loving you again and back appreciating the craft and appreciating the work. I think Madonna once said the most outrageous thing she ever did was not stopping. I feel like that now.
Carti: You got to keep going. You can’t look back. You step in that Maybach, you ain’t trying to get out of it.
twigs: I like the challenge.
Carti: Pressure makes diamonds. This album—I mean, every album you’ve done has been crazy—but I feel like this one got everyone’s attention. I just want you to keep your foot on the gas and keep setting the tone for everyone in music, period.
twigs: When are you and me getting in?
Carti: We can get in anytime. I’m just glad you getting your flowers. And when you got some time, superstar, come fuck with me.
hair LOUIS SOULVESTRE
makeup TILDA
nails CAM TRAN USING MILKY WHITE GEL AT ARTLIST PARIS
set design CÉSAR SEBASTIEN AT BRYANT ARTISTS
mouvement director MESHACH HENRY
photography assistants CLÉMENT DAUVENT, CHLOÉ MAY TRUONG, JEANNE LELOUARN
digital operator DANIELE SEDDA
styling assistants MICHIEL HEEMSKERK, ALEXANDRA LEFEVRE
set design assistants ILAN AKSOUL, ANTOINE-EMMANUEL PICOT
post production THOMAS GEOFFRAY
production CINQ ÉTOILES PRODUCTIONS
production manager JULIEN DABADIE
production coordinator EMMA VEIGA
production assistants JADE ISOART, BRIEUC COTTEN, ALIÉNOR SAVATTIER
location LITTLE GRAND STUDIO