FKA Twigs returned with her first new music and shows in three years earlier this year, and her recent single Cellophane left us all holding out for more new material.
Now, the R&B artist has finally detailed the highly anticipated follow-up to LP1; it will be called Magdalene and is set to be released in the next few months via Young Turks.
FKA Twigs has detailed her next album Magdalene, set to be released this Spring, featuring collaborations with Nicholas Jaar, Future, and more.
The new album came together over the course of three years in London, New York, and Los Angeles, with Nicholas Jaar serving as the co-producer. Magdalene was being created largely while FKA Twigs was recovering from a surgery that removed six large fibroid tumors from her uterus, this was something that affected her physically and emotionally. In an interview with i-D, she describes the album as “really fragile. I made it at a time when I was in recovery – physically and emotionally – and I think that comes through.”
While recording in NYC, she cut herself off from her friends and family, indulging in solitude, because she “was in a sad place, mentally, and I didn’t want to come out of it. I don’t have many friends there, and wasn’t communicating with my friends or family [in England]. I just went and locked myself off.”
“The record is about every lover that I’ve ever had, and every lover that I’m going to have,” she says. Musically, there’s a graceful strength that shines through her vulnerability on the tracks. “Just when you think it’s really fragile and about to fall apart, there’s an absolute defiance and strength in a way that my work’s never had before,” she explains.
As the title suggests, the new album is influenced by the biblical character Mary Magdalene. “I used to laugh to myself about how, as a woman, your story is often attached to the narrative of a man,” she explains. “No matter what you’re doing or how great your work is, sometimes it’s as though you have to be attached to a man to be validated.”
“I’d felt like that at times. And then I started to read about Mary Magdalene and how amazing she was; how she was likely to have been Jesus’s best friend, his confidante. She was a herbalist and a healer, but, you know, her story is written out of the bible and she was ‘a prostitute’. I found a lot of power in the story of Mary Magdalene; a lot of dignity, a lot of grace, a lot of inspiration.”
In addition to the previously released track Cellophane, the new album features tracks called Daybed, Home With You and Sad Day. Another of the tracks, Holy Terrain, which has been described as “a dark, sexy, witchy trap tune,” features a guest verse from Future “talking about his downfalls as a man; how he’s how he’s sorry and asking for healing,” as FKA twigs explained. “I love sad Future. I love when he gets emo, when he expresses himself. It’s just so beautiful when he opens up.”
Magdalene is set to be released this Spring.
