Experimental pop artist Grimes has opened up about her new album, TV show and how gaming culture is “less toxic” than stan culture in a new interview.
The artist sat down with Billboard to chat about her recently launched Discord server, Grimes Metaverse Super Beta, following the release of a promo video for the community-messaging platform – which also features Danny DeVito, Awkwafina, and J Balvin. Watch it below.
Speaking of her relationship with Discord and the gaming community who often use the platform, Grimes said: “the more I get into the gaming community, it’s a lot less toxic than the indie music stan community.”
“Everyone’s going to laugh at me saying that gaming culture is less toxic than indie stan culture, but it’s kind of true, frankly, having lived in both extensively.”
Grimes went on to reveal details about her forthcoming record, saying “it’s pretty different” to her 2020 drop, ‘Miss Anthropocene’.
“It’s sort of a concept album, so it does have a narrative,” she said of the LP, which she previously described as a “space opera” centred around a lesbian AI being.
“With my last album, I had a lot of big ideas, but I just let it be more impressionistic. With this album, I think I have a lot more to say. I feel very strongly about the material.
“I think we’re going to start dropping singles this summer and then just keep dropping singles and then put the album out four, five, six singles in or something. I am a big album person, but I also like to get music out,” she added.
She’s already teased some of this new music, and will be previewing more new cuts tomorrow (July 25) when she hosts the afterparty for Australian festival Splendour In The Grass‘ virtual iteration, Splendour XR.
The singer also spoke about the FOX reality show Alter Ego that she’s hosting alongside Alanis Morissette, will.i.am, Nick Lachey and Rocsi Diaz. It follows a similar premise to The Masked Singer, in which performers are masked, but with CGI to create avatars.
“I’ve been really enjoying that, because we’ve lived in a society for so long where you’re stuck in the shell that you’re in, and you just have to deal with it,” she said. “We might be about to enter a new reality where we can all live to the potential of our brains.”
“As a woman in the industry, I don’t give a fuck about how I look. I hate thinking about that. I literally don’t care, and it takes so much time, and it’s expensive. We could really democratize things. All of these things give me a lot of optimism about the future.”