The Stateless Moses Sumney

It definitely feels better now. It feels like I’m a real person. It feels like I’m doing a thing that I was placed on this Earth to do. I find myself connecting more with my own kind of idiosyncratic nature. And that’s what I love about people like Grace Jones and Nina Simone. Or Björk, you know. People who are just weirdos. I see what they’re doing and it feels like both beyond the boundaries of what we know of human nature to be able to produce, but also honest, and natural, and innate at the same time. Which feels undefinable.

Yeah, statelessness, definitely. Just kind of being in the state of constantly moving or traveling, whether that’s physical or emotional. But not having a center.

It’s really hard in this day and age to get people to focus on your music. There are so many distractions, and so many things to talk about, especially when it comes to presenting an image of yourself. Obviously with social media and the internet, I felt from early on really pushed to be a character, or just to think of my image. It’s ironic I’m telling you this at a photoshoot, which matters to me, but the most important thing to me is the music.

I want people to connect to the music, and take from it whatever meaning stands out to them. I want people to listen to the songs and say, “This is what it means to me.” I think if people have too much context on my personal life or being, it becomes all about that. It becomes about the cult of personality as opposed to the meaning of the music.

They don’t, I know. But you’re constantly kinda, like, riding the wave. You’re always walking that tightrope—and you can fall either way at any moment.

Fall off and break your neck.

It’s so funny, because I think the record makes it seem like it’s been a deep interest of mine, but it only really emerged towards the end of making the record. I wanted to contextualize it in a way that reached beyond modern times.

We’re in such a place where people are [self-]identifying more than ever before, and that feels so modern to people, especially to the old guard. I wanted to contextualize identification as something that has always happened. We’ve always been looking for ways to define and describe ourselves, or ways to give cultural significance to our personal feelings. And so I needed to reach beyond when any of us were born to say, like, these concepts I’m thinking about have been around forever.

I do, I think it’s hilaaaarious. The first song on the album is called “Don’t Bother Calling,” and it’s basically being really over-dramatic, and just saying, “Oh, don’t call me, I’ll call you,” and, “I’d love to be in love with you but I’m too busy thinking of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the alignment of our galaxy.” It’s just so over the top and over-dramatic that in a lot of ways, I feel like I was playing a character while I was writing it, and trying to be as dramatic as possible—which is inherently funny.

They have to coexist. Exactly. Anything that is inherently tragic is inherent comedic. That’s one thing I really like about this generation: we’ve got dark humor on lock.

That sucks, whatever he donates to. And it also feels bigger than him. For me to be there as an artist of color, looking at all the artists of color on the line-up, looking at the female and non-binary artists that end up playing, that’s also money going into their pockets, you know what I mean? And I feel like the biggest marker of oppression is money, right? So, the biggest way to combat that is to put money in the pockets of minorities. To me, still playing it was really important. I needed to stake my claim, and be like, “Yo, I’m here. You can do this, too, if you look like me, if you’re a left-of-center, weird black kid.”

But also, I think that that conversation in liberal circles is really unfortunate, because when an artist is playing a festival that is in proximity to something oppressive, the first people we question are the minorities. Like, I got the question, “Why are you playing this?”

Exactly. It’s like, honestly: this is not my fault. And I’m gonna try to help solve it in any way I can, because a lot of my resources—emotional, physical, and financial—go to trying to fix those problems. But I think the first people that we need to turn to are the white dudebros on the line-up. Which is not to say don’t ask me—it’s to say that accountability needs to go to the people with privilege. Accountability needs to also extend to the people who are enjoying the fruits of oppression. Not to the people who are getting a little cut and trying to shine a light on the others. I’m always like, “That’s cool, but, why don’t y’all ask Eminem?” He seems to be woke now.

Exactly. I have to work, you know what I mean? And, also, I’m not making any money from playing Coachella, to be honest. It costs so much money to put a show together on that level. Let’s not assume that we are lining our pockets. Cardi B didn’t make any money from Coachella, which I’m sure you’ve heard.

Huge production. Putting money in those people’s pockets. Let’s talk about that, you know? It’s complicated.