MUSICIANS TO KNOW: AMINDI
Photography: Nabila Wirakusumah
Creative Direction & Production: Bianca Jean-Pierre & Nabila Wirakusumah
The day of Amindi’s show at Baby’s All Right it was raining. Not terribly, but in between scattered showers the air remained damp and misty. Still, as soon as we were admitted into the venue and met Amindi, she gave us a hug, paying no mind to our wet coats and barely folded umbrellas. There was an immediate warmth in her that comes from a place of deep self-assurance.
“I’ve always been very comfortable in my skin and who I am,” she told us. “I want to be felt and if I can do that for five people, then I have succeeded.”
Of course, much more than five people showed up that night as she took the stage — the show had sold out weeks earlier. We got the chance to talk to the upcoming R&B artist about her first headlining tour, the first songs she ever wrote at the age of 4, and her mom’s inability to listen to her tracks with curse words.
Amindi in conversation with Bianca (SHEER Founder) and Nabila (SHEER Creative Director).
Bianca: Amindi, you just got back from tour. How are you feeling and how was it?
Amindi: So fun! It was my first headlining tour. I've opened for other amazing artists before like Saba and this was the first time that I was the headliner. It was such a crazy experience. I’ve never had that many people sing my songs back to me. It was a dopamine rush. And now that I’m back, I'm like how can I measure up to that happiness.
Bianca: Nice. We got to pop in and catch up with you right before your NY show at Baby's All Right. What was it like being in NY? I know you're a West Coast girl…
Amindi: Oh, yeah. So normally New York is over stimulating for me. LA is just not that fast paced. But the last couple times I went, like I was here in August for Afropunk and had a really good time with friends. This time it was my first sold out show in NY so any negative emotions I've had towards NY before is out the window.
Bianca: That's amazing and such a big deal. Selling out a New York show is not easy.
Amindi: Oh, yeah, The only ones I sold out were New York and LA. So pretty big cities.
Nabila: I love what you said about hearing people sing your songs back to you being a source of dopamine. What were some parts of the tour that you’re really missing right now?
Amindi: Meeting people after the show. I just love hugging people that love my music, you know what I mean? Getting to speak to them. And traveling definitely was a big part of it with the entire tour party, like full suite. The band and DJ, my manager, the tour manager, like everybody. It was just a good time, good vibes. And all of that combined definitely contributed to the dopamine rush.
Bianca: And where did you really start sharing a lot of your music? Are you more on TikTok? Or Instagram?
Amindi: Oh I'm not a TikTok girl and I'm trying to be now for the sake of my mixtape. I don't know what it is about me. I'm literally Gen Z and I was born in 99. I’m just not on that app like that. I don't open it and I'm not scrolling on it the way that I’m on Twitter and Instagram.
Nabila: What’s your relationship with social media? Is it generally a positive thing or is it just TikTok that you don't vibe with?
Amindi: I have a pretty positive relationship with social media. I don't like spending too much time on it and I think that is what contributes to that experience. I like to do fit checks and I love selfies. I love looking cute and I love sharing my work.
Bianca: Speaking of your fits, where do you get your inspiration? I love your style. And to be honest, like watching your transformation from your hair to your makeup, to the way you dress, it's very much a metamorphosis kind of vibe with you. You never know what you're gonna get next.
Amindi: I've always loved clothes. When I was younger, I would go to a mall with my friends and my mom would give me $20, I would make that $20 stretch. And I've always known how to have a lot of clothes on a low budget and knowing how to work with what I got. Sometimes I feel like being more like a boy, sometimes I feel like being more like a girl and I just honor that. I know that I’m me either way so I'm just honoring what I feel inside with the wardrobe I have at my disposal.
Bianca: As an artist, do you sometimes feel like a brand?
Amindi: I'm not a brand but I’m me. The art is connected to me as an artist. It's not the other way around.
Bianca: And how do you stay grounded and connected to yourself? You're definitely on the rise and very successful in this industry. And as a black woman, how do you navigate all of this?
Amindi: It’s definitely how I was raised. I had a very strong matriarch in my household, two women raising my mom and sister, and I'm a very family-oriented person. My whole family follows my Instagram. I have younger sisters now and they follow me and I try to present myself in a way that is honorable to both myself, obviously, because I am the person living this life, but also in a way that my parents and my family in general can be proud of.
I also have a really great community and a really great chosen family. That’s how I'm able to make great songs from my real life. I'm grounded for the art and the art makes me grounded.
Nabila: There's so much access to artists through social media and so much content being produced. Have there been times where you feel pressure to be a certain way or just this idea of being perceived all the time? How do you navigate that?
“I'm grounded for the art and the art makes me grounded.”
Amindi: Yeah, definitely. I go through long periods of time where I just don't want to post on social media or I just don't feel like being perceived. I was raised super Christian and my mom was raised super religious and something that is a constant floating thought in my brain is to try to not be sexualized in a way that I'm not comfortable with. I'm like okay if I post something, is this too much? What kind of attention will this bring? That's just a silly thing that I'm always worried about.
Bianca: That is so fascinating to me because I don't get that impression from you at all. On the outside looking in, the way you present yourself, especially on social media, is very empowered and confident and more progressive.
I find that interesting that you have that duality between your mom's more conservative nature versus you being Gen Z and in the music industry which is pretty sexualized. How do you balance the two? And how has your mom and your family in general responded to your career?
Amindi: To answer the first question, I know that I'm a hot young girl, you know?
Bianca: Haha for sure.
Amindi: So it's really just an internal battle. And I know that one side is more logical than the other. And when it comes to my mom, she wasn't always like this. She was also a hot girl.
Especially in this generation, being a black woman in music, a Gen Z black woman, there is this hypersexualization because sex sells. I'm so aware of that, but I'm also so stubborn. Like, what if I was able to do this a different way and still be super successful? Even if it takes longer, you know? And it's not to say that I'm not down to be sexy. Like I'm down to be sexy. I am sexy.
Nabila: I definitely relate to having a mom that's more religious, but who also was fully a hot girl in the 90s and pretends she wasn’t.
Bianca: We all have the same mom basically haha.
Nabila: And I feel like you see a difference between always being sexy but that doesn't mean you want to be sexualized.
Amindi: Not to say the woman that are showing more skin and being sexy that way aren't strong in their own way, but that’s just my little trait.
Nabila: Yeah, it's more obvious to me when a woman is unclothed because the male gaze wants to sexualize her versus when a woman is feeling herself and feels empowered to be sexy.
Bianca: Yeah, I feel like the onus isn't on women at all. I feel like what women do or don't do is totally irrelevant. It’s entirely how we're being perceived and the culture around what we do. So again, more power to you for just being yourself and doing what feels comfortable.
Nabila: Do you feel like you always knew where your boundaries were?
Amindi: I've always been pretty confident in how I want to present myself. I've always been very comfortable in my skin and who I am. And I think that as I metamorphosize, it’s an evolution and not so much a deviation. I'm still very much me to my core. I’m just getting older and learning myself more so any change is genuine and natural.
Bianca: Now digging into the music, your latest project is Take What You Need. First of all, I've had it on repeat and I love it because it's such a journey. There are so many songs just about being empowered, but then also dealing with heartbreak and love, and finding yourself. Tell us a little bit about what inspired the project and how it came together.
Amindi: So this project is all songs that I've made since the last project between 2021 and 2022. I didn't make these songs with the intention for a project. I was going back and forth and trying to figure out a theme and what message I was sending. I decided I wanted to show all of these different parts of me at once. And so I really just wanted to pick the very best songs and put them all out. As the title suggests, I’ll let the listeners “take what they need”. I don't expect everybody to like or resonate with every single song because it's such a vast range of everything.
Bianca: There are different parts of you which I really pick up on because sometimes there are songs where your voice sounds totally different and I'm like, is this the same person? Are you just kind of freestyling in the studio?
Amindi: How it works normally is we would build something from scratch or go through the beats and I pick my favorite one. And then we play it on loop and I write whatever comes out of me.
I do have musical influences from a wide range of genres. What comes out is just an amalgamation of those many different things. Sometimes it's more hip hop, sometimes it's more rock and sometimes it's more R&B. Regardless of genre, I still sound like me. It sounds like an Amindi song regardless, and that’s important.
Bianca: Who are you listening to on repeat right now? Or what genres are you gravitating towards?
Amindi: Currently I'm listening to a lot of Rap and R&B right now like Pink Sifuu.
Nabila: Is there someone that you think people would be surprised to hear had a big influence on you?
Amindi: I don't know that people will be surprised but I like Vampire Weekend a lot and Two Door Cinema Club when I was a kid.
Bianca: I can hear Vampire Weekend in your sound. On a totally different front, you're Jamaican right? I feel like in some of your earlier music, you had a lot of that influence. Is that something you don't necessarily do anymore?
Amindi: So I made one Dancehall song called “Pine & Ginger” and it happened to be my biggest song, like that song is bigger than me. And it probably will always be and I'm very happy about that as a major blessing. And it's not that I don't make music like that anymore but It's just that at the time that was made I was 17 years old and I hadn't had any music out. My major concern, even as a 17 year old, was being pigeonholed as an artist that makes one sound. They really wanted me to do a follow up to “Pine & Ginger” but I wanted to get the opportunity that I've had with Take What You Need and show that I'm multiple things before being pegged as one thing.
I'm totally open to making more songs with that influence, absolutely. I just wanted to, at least for my inner child, seize the opportunity to really show more parts of me.
Nabila: Is “Pine & Ginger” your family's favorite song? Because of the Dancehall influence?
Amindi: My mom doesn't listen to my music. I think the only song that she does know is “Pine & Ginger” because it is the biggest one and I was under 18.
Bianca: Wow. Does she go to your shows?
Amindi: She came when I was on tour with Saba last year, it was my first tour ever and she came to the LA show. But no, my dad comes to most of my shows.
My mom is super Christian, so when Nice came out, she heard one of the songs on YouTube and I said the F word. We had a whole conversation about how I was cursing in my music and I had to explain how semantics mattered to me in a different way than they mattered to her. And she was like okay, you're my daughter and I love you, but I just can't listen to your music. And I was like, that's totally fine, you weren't listening before. I've always kind of hidden my music from my mom and it doesn't bother me at all.
Bianca: At what age did you start making music and hiding this from your mom?
Amindi: I've been writing songs since I was like four. My dad writes songs as well so I get most of it from him. But in the eighth grade, she got me a ukulele because I went to a new school and they had me take lessons there. And then in the ninth grade, I started uploading onto SoundCloud. This was like 2013. So I've been hiding from her fr fr but I'm not hiding now.
Bianca: Yeah, you can't. You're big now. And you're still writing most of your songs, right?
Amindi: Oh, yeah, I write all my songs. I'm pretty precious about that.
Bianca: I love that because your songs, to me, sound like journal entries.
Amindi: That's the whole intention.
Bianca: And with TikTok’s influence on the industry, does the pressure of trending sounds or streams ever get in the way of your process?
Amindi: Oh, no. I have no interest or desire to be viral or go viral.
Nabila: I'm loving all of this. You just feel very genuine.
Amindi: I'm more intentional. And I'd rather put out music that feels true to me than chase a trend. I want to be felt and if I can do that for five people, then I have succeeded.
Bianca: We need more of that. And it shows in selling out major cities where people are out there singing your songs back to you. No TikTok viral sound can recreate that same feeling. It’s unmatched.
Going back to your mom, I'm also Caribbean and it's not easy to venture out and take on career paths that your parents don't necessarily agree with.
Amindi: Yeah my mom was like, if you want to go to nursing school, and I’m like mom why would I go to nursing school… ? haha
Bianca: Yes nursing is a big one. I think there are a lot of creatives that feel stuck to take that more traditional path or give in to what their parents want for them. How did you push past that?
Amindi: You know, something that helped me a lot, because my mother raised me so Christian, is I’m a very spiritual person. I've always had my own literal relationship with God.
For example, when I was in high school, I really didn't want to go to college. I was already making music and I was getting tens of thousands of plays on SoundCloud. My prayer all of high school was I just want something to happen in music where I don't have to go to college, because I know that once I graduate high school I’m gonna have to go to college. When I was 17, a senior in high school, “Pine & Ginger” happened and I didn't have to go to college, you know what I mean?
My mom taught me how to pray and if I prayed for what I wanted and I'm getting what I wanted, she's gonna have to accept that this is just God's will.
Bianca: There's so much irony there. Like she's trying to protect you from this path that is ultimately your divine path.
Nabila: I really enjoyed that story. Your mom gave you the tools to cultivate your own relationship with God. And then God's giving you advice that she’s maybe not so comfortable with. Love when life does that.
I did want to know about the rituals or traditions you have before and after performing?
Amindi: Well like you guys saw, I'm pretty chill. I'm just hanging out. I say a prayer. I do drink. But I’ve stopped drinking since tour.
Bianca: What made you stop?
Amindi: I started working out and I'm just trying to be a healthier person. Yeah I was drinking too much especially on tour because I have alcohol on my rider. But I'm really trying to buckle down and drink less. I like to have my little Paloma on stage with me so that's probably ritualistic.
I listen to a lot of anxiety reducing frequencies during the day, everyday. So I just be on a chill little vibe all day and then when it's time to go out I'm feeding off of the energy of the crowd and trying to bring my best energy.
Bianca: Do you put Ting in your Paloma? I feel like that would be so good.
Amdini: Yeah, I did! Ting and tequila that shit’s funny.
Bianca: What is bringing you the most joy right now in life? Like what's really lifting you up?
Amindi: Recently I've been loving hiking and my besties. I've been watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That show is so fucking ignorant but it's been making me laugh. I’ve been loving myself and treating myself nicely. I've been heavy on self care lately and I like it.
