Internet and social media have offered a platform for a more diverse chorus of voices to discuss sex and sexual identity, and has enabled people to find like-minded friends, whether you may seek sexual liberation or celibacy. However, the discussion is increasingly polarized, with the debate being dominated by one corner that preaches abstinence and another proclaiming for sexual liberation. Here, 27-year old Maja Malou Lyse emerges as an invigorating voice. Describing herself as “sex-critical/sex-neutral” she applies a broad spectrum of practices – including video, performance, columns and sculpture – to make us question and break with societally instilled ideas about sex, gender and identity. Her work encourages us to talk honestly about what we want from sex, pleasure and desire, and highlights the topics’ complexities. Because one thing is sure: The one-size-fits-all model never worked. 

Slowthai is relaxed. For now, anyway. He’s tired, too. He’s been up half the night systematically tidying all his clothes and couldn’t bring himself to stop. Now, he’s in his basement studio drinking a cup of tea and drawing idly on a cigarette. It’s where he made most of his recent album Tyron, and it’s as solid an incarnation of the sophomore rapper as you’re likely to get. 

The space is stacked with gear, analogue mostly, and the whole joint is somehow chaotic, somehow careful, but very much his own. “Nah, nah, nah,” he says quickly, wagging his cigarette in denial, “It wasn’t like this at the beginning, but fuck it, if I’m gonna spend money on something, I might as well invest in my craft.”

He’s in the middle of explaining exactly how it got to the way it is now when, all of a sudden, he shouts up to a friend, “I beg you, bring me a snack.” It’s a chocolate bar of some kind, and it’s graciously received if not yet devoured when he jumps straight back in. The almost minute-long silence seeming to pass him by completely.

Tyron Frampton does this a lot. His mind and his body slip in and out of sync with one another. When he’s got an idea in his head, he’s electric. His whole aura pops with vibrant color for just a little while before spooling back out into hazy shades of gauzy, stoner sepia. In any instant, you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s got his head so far in the clouds (he does, he says) because sometimes he buffers for a second or two, only to return, a moment later, all the more engaged. All the while dropping sharply chiseled insights in regular conversation as deftly as he would a bar on a verse, punctuating the excited interludes with sharp, animated drags.

For all the caricature in slowthai’s music, Tyron’s character is remarkably mellow. He smiles when he talks. He beams, really. And the way he dives headlong into his memories to weave some tall tale or other is enchanting to watch. 

By “out there,” he’s referring to his life as an artist. But whether he’s on a stage or in his basement, you get the feeling that both sides of his life have felt the weight of expectation more keenly than most.  

“I love what I’m doing, but it’s just everything that comes with it… I signed up for this, I could never expect to just live a normal life.” 

It’s not just his stage presence, though; expectations, both positive and negative, have dogged him for as long as he can remember. And when you’re the kid that nobody ever believed in, there’s a little bit of added spice. 

“I’ve always been the black sheep of the family who has always been the one who wouldn’t do nothing or couldn’t do nothing because of who you are and where you’re from,” he says, his smile still plastered all over his face. His brazen honesty elicits empathy and you can’t help but relate as he tells you just how much he enjoys proving people wrong. “It’s always nice. If people tell me I can’t do something, I’m going to do it, because that’s just what’s in me. I’ve never been someone to go with everything and follow the rules. I want to live how I want to live.”

His is an overwhelmingly present tense mentality and it’s one that has gotten him into trouble on numerous occasions. Most publicly, in the odious spat at last year’s NME awards. Anyone could tell you that Katherine Ryan came out on top, but the fact is, that win or lose, no one should have to play the game at all. An ugly joke, an obnoxious energy, an all-too-easy swing, rightly followed by a dismal miss. 

Unarguably his most controversial moment as an artist and the inspiration behind Cancelled, the most contentious track on his new album. Cancelled is a big track. A single, proper. But anyone listening can tell that it’s one where Skepta shines, not slowthai. Honestly, he’s always playing catch-up, reflecting as much as he can muster, the energy of another artist bristling with confidence. 

Reflecting, deflecting, redrawing the lines in his own image. It’s a process that he has been through time and time again this past year while recording Tyron. “I’ve always been cancelled,” he says, smoking methodically now. “It was the same thing that night, or the night before at the Mercurys [awards], or anything I’ve said or done that people want to analyze and make me out to be the bad guy.

He checks himself immediately. “Maybe I shouldn’t say that. You might just like the intrigue, you know, that’s how it was made.”

It’s as present and yet as distant as he gets. An unusually tempered moment that smacks of the kind of battle-hardened mentality that many people might expect from a proudly working-class rapper with a back catalogue stuffed with abrasive, high-energy bangers. 

Still, it seems unlike him. And, conversely, yet perhaps crucially, it only has the effect of bringing him, Tyron Frampton, into what feels like sharper focus and blurring out the contemplative surroundings of his unassuming basement studio, his artistic retreat.

It’s one moment where we get what we expect from both slowthai and Tyron Frampton. One moment where two intertwined but independent lives are smashed together in the public eye. It’s what some people want, he thinks. 

“It’s like everyone needs someone to laugh at. They did that one thing, and that’s what makes their life more exciting. I suppose if you just look for one thing in life, you can; you will have a negative mindset, but you can. When you see someone fall over, very few people’s first instinct is to help them out. It’s kind of like we bond together over bitterness, but I always laugh.”

For all his boundless positivity, his sprawling grin and languorous drawl, it’s hard not to notice a fatalistic streak in him when he talks. It’s not just that he’s aware of some creeping, malevolent presence waiting to take him down. It’s that he accepts it. That’s just the way it is. It’s part of growing up how he grew up, part of managing expectations to be one thing or another, part of acting up, part of acting out, part of him, inextricably. 

There’s a line on NHS, a down-tempo, call and response tune, and one of the album’s most affecting moments where slowthai asks, “What’s a rapper without jewelry?” Then, as if left between one beat and the next, all alone on the track, the reply: real person.

“That thing about the jewelry is that everyone’s always going to look at it, take that as gospel, and think that’s you. But, behind everybody, there’s the person, and it’s behind every silver lining, too.”

It’s one of the things that you notice quickly about slowthai, the way he talks. He’s just got one of those voices, it’s undeniable. But lean a little closer and you’ll hear the way he speaks – his honesty, his openness, his intelligence. Everything is always expressed in the plural, very rarely does he keep any of it for himself, and when he does, he thinks, he supposes, he guesses. The very moment that he is sure of something, he gladly gives it out to anyone and everyone, whether they resonate with it or not. After a long year of reflection, Tyron is evidence to that fact.

Tyron isn’t really about himself so much as it is for himself. What makes the amplified caricatures of slowthai’s music so relatable is that they offer an intermediary with which people can interact with intense themes and feelings at arm’s reach.

“I feel like a lot of us have been in the same place or predicament,” he explains, “being pissed off or an angry teenager and growing up. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. So, in some way, you’ve got to make it so that people can take it in.” 

Often, when he’s looking for a metaphor for personal growth, he leans heavily into his past, his childhood. It’s a somewhat unusual mindset for a young man of 26, let alone one with two critically acclaimed albums and a bonafide rags-to-riches story under their belt. But, it’s indicative of his character, and regardless of the fact that it is often self-inflicted, it is one that has burned. So, wisely, when he is in need of a salve, he looks closer to home. In here, not out there. 

“I just want to be a better artist. Every day I’m trying to be better. I’m trying to be better as a human being. I’m trying to take more care of the people I love. 

“If I’m going to speak to people and leave an impression on them, I have to live by and lead by example. Obviously, I’m human and we all make mistakes, but I feel like I’ve learnt my fair few lessons now.”

As a young man caught between aggression and vulnerability, Tyron Frampton is not alone. While these are repeated themes on both his debut album Nothing Great About Britain and now on Tyron, you do get the feeling that he is growing. 

“We all have our things that we disagree with in life. When you get older, things change, your perspective changes and I suppose being that angry kid that no one believed in, to then being not as angry as some people believe, there’s always going to be some kind of animosity.”

Conflict is painful. In most cases it’s unnecessary, but in some it’s unavoidable. On the one hand, there’s the knowledge that you’re more than good enough to succeed, and on the other, there’s coming from a place where people don’t just expect you not to, it feels like they actively don’t want you to. 

“There’ll be people that didn’t believe in you that now believe in you. Then there’s people that just want to see you fail. It’s a constant in life, no matter where you are. If everyone loved you and everyone was on your side from the day you were born, your life would be pretty fucking shit. And you wouldn’t have grown or got stronger or moved in any direction because everything’s great.”

Finding resolution through conflict takes time and balance, moving slowly on occasion and forcefully on others, to develop a masculinity that is a little bit more palatable.

Still, it’s not in his nature to be guarded. He would rather be burned, time and time again, than board himself up. 

“I remember when I was younger and I got into some dumb shit. For so long, I didn’t feel nothing; literally, I was cold, inside and outside, I couldn’t cry. After a while, it all came out, and I felt better for feeling that way than I did when I was feeling nothing.”

That’s evident in his music. Over the course of a mere 35 minutes, Tyron moves through a lot of emotions and his million miles an hour approach doesn’t so much patch over old wounds as it does tear them anew. As if inviting fresh conflict, fresh resolution. While that might not make sense to some, for many, it’s the only way they know how to deal with things. Time and time again, he’s said that Tyron was recorded at a dark, dark point in his life. Judging solely by the pacing of his art, you can sense deep rifts in his mood, and times where he has not been able to separate himself or find distance.

“When it’s going shit, time slows down and you feel like you’re stuck in a void of fuckin’ depression. Life moves so slow and it seems like the days never end. Then, when you’re on top of the world and everything’s great, and you’re here, there, and everywhere, you don’t know whether you’re coming or going. You don’t know what day it is and you don’t care to be honest.”

Yet, that time on the outside has slowly granted him perspective. It’s shown him how to analyze things in his own way, not to throw all his cards in at once. In the last year, he’s learned a lot about life, but mostly he’s learned to accept the times when he doesn’t understand it at all. 

“I know sometimes I shouldn’t drink and I shouldn’t act on impulse as much or aggression.”

He’s learned how to think one thing and perform another, it’s maybe how he learned to flex his body and his mind independently of another and how to have his head in the sky and still stay sharp.

Now he’s looking to the future, looking to his next project and he already knows what he wants it to be.

“I want it to be like the thing that ties us all together.”

Slowly learning from his own mistakes, he won’t let that thing be bitterness, but it won’t be happy-clappy either. Tyron Frampton leans on his past when he is unsure; it’s a natural response to a life that moves so fast and it also keeps him in tune with his upbringing. It’s not cynicism, it’s not being jaded, either. It’s one part chip on the shoulder and one part winking acceptance that comes part and parcel with growing up with heaps of potential in places where you’re not supposed to have much.   

“We’ve all got more than meets the eye. You keep pulling back layers until you get to see it and that is a painful process. Even though we’re all so different, we all suffer this irony of everyday life. Whether you’re an office worker or you’re a builder or a billionaire at the top of a corporation, what are the things that tie us together now? You’ve got no money, you’ve got problems; you’ve got money, you’ve got problems. The only thing that is the ultimate currency that we can’t waste is time. That’s my perspective, that’s the change in it.” 

Some things change fast, some things change slowly, and some things never change at all. As always, his next project will focus on what he knows for sure. What he knows is fast, sometimes painful, but always smiling. Smoking slowly now, he reckons that at the end of the day, you just have to know yourself. Know yourself 100% and nobody can ever tell you anything.  

Since Tommy Genesis does not subscribe to (or seem to care much about) what people want to label her under, this sex-themed issue presented a chance to get better acquainted with how she feels about the sexy magnetism attributed to her music and herself as an artist. 

Tommy Genesis is hailed for owning her sexual indulgences or desires, which she emphasizes happens spontaneously – a way for her to tell the world that she is comfortable with who she is and in her own skin. Regarded throughout her career as explicit, this, for her, just originates from a place of sincerity. Being considered a fearless rapper is the result of relishing in all the most honest pieces of herself – which aren’t necessarily rooted in any specific sexual awakening, nor is she trying to establish some sort of political platform around sex.

“If I want to write about something, there are no rules, I never have any rules for myself,” she tells me from her home in LA over a phone call. Devising her risqué persona exposed her natural habit of being all-encompassing and genuine. Between provocative verses or heartfelt lyrics about crushing on an anonymous somebody, Tommy Genesis dips into intimate parts of herself as the integral means for making her art. It wasn’t until her songs started to gain recognition that she realized her music could be perceived as shocking. That’s because she navigates these conversations with no holds barred – nothing concerning sex or being sexy shocks her.

“I don’t even want to say I am a sexual archetype in the music industry because people always put that on me,” she double backs, “people will always say: ‘Oh, you make fetish rap’ or ‘You’re really sexy.’ You know what? I guess I am!” 

After learning that the world wanted her to deal with the sensual power in her lyrics, she now acknowledges that she has the capability to steer these conversations. What’s most important, for Tommy Genesis, is being relaxed and candid with it, “I kind of don’t really give it much thought. I just live, you know? And just write about whatever I’m feeling,” she adds. 

“It’s also tied to certain ways to feel powerful as a woman when you are writing, rapping and making things. I always felt powerful when I owned it – when I owned my sexuality and my identity. I talked about it and named it for what it was,” she says, “I took the power back for myself, instead of just ignoring it.”

Especially in a time of extreme shifts to general attitudes towards sex and desire, much of what is expected from sexuality has to do with a desire for connecting with others – owning this for yourself, plainly feeling yourself, might be a difficult feat for many right now. But Tommy Genesis personally hasn’t “been thinking about desire, like for real, what do I actually care about? It’s so simple, what I care about is my relationships with the people I love, my health.” She has done what a lot of people have done during this pandemic: hibernate and go inside her own world, spending all her time in LA. 

“I’m learning how to live in a city that I’ve always lived in. Before, I could always move [around] whenever I wanted. Even though I lived in LA, I would never stay in LA. I would be going to Paris, London,” she rattles off, “or back to Canada,” where she’s originally from. During this past year, she says, “My life changed drastically, I got a dog. I’m a dog mom in LA.” Introducing: Rumi, the Chiweenie.

Despite the public persona crafted from her music, she sees herself as an introvert. “I can easily spend all my time alone,” she admits. There appear to be very few people that she lets into her life but, she says, “I miss my fans. It’s been a minute since I’ve toured or put out an album.”

This moment of hiatus from releasing new music has also given her time to develop her upcoming project, she enthusiastically tells me, “The project is 99.9% done! It’s something that took up so much space in my head. Now, it’s heading towards its final destination.” Tommy Genesis sees her new project as the strongest body of work that she has ever made: “I fucking love it. I’m personally so excited for it to come out because I love it.” 

She proudly boasts that her fans will be quite satisfied because of what they want from Tommy Genesis. Her fans connect to her on so many levels, and embracing her duality is a big part of it. While a lot of her music may relate to sexual empowerment, Tommy Genesis, as an artist, dwells somewhere between sexy femme and, at times, exhibits a much more laid-back approach to sensuality – in this dual self, she has been giving fans incremental doses of herself. But for this latest project and this recent commitment to her fans, Tommy Genesis wants to open up more to them: “Fuck it, I’m going to give my fans what they want.”

Surprisingly, throughout her career, she’s felt that she has been somewhat closed off – not wanting to reveal all the parts of herself to the public. “And I know it,” she admits, “When I see myself on Instagram, I will think: No, this is not me, this is a very manicured version of myself.” As she scrolls through her selfies or images from a modeling shoot, Tommy Genesis says, “The one thing that I want to do as an artist, especially with this album, is just be a bit more real and open.” 

It’s not just about trying to appear as sexual. For Tommy Genesis, it’s mostly just about all the things that constitute sexy: “I really hope that by being myself in that way, that other people can really see, ‘Oh, I can do that, too, because we are all sexual beings,’” which she equates to the emotional self as well. “It’s not that I am [superficially sexual],” she says that she simply chooses to put that small part of herself out there publicly, “And that’s another thing that I really connect with my fans for and how they can connect with me.” As to how she aspires to relate to people, “I hope that they’re like: ‘Oh, she’s feeling herself and I’m going to go feel myself too.’”

She tells me about how she would fully disappear on social media because “either I’m making shit, or literally just sometimes being on social media doesn’t feel conducive to my life. But I’m just excited to come back.” 

Her comeback single Peppermint has her embracing all the tags previously used to classify Tommy Genesis – sexual, fetish rapper and so on. With this encouraging new work, she’s reviving her unique lure and influence, perhaps coming to terms with her variant of a sex symbol. When I asked her to describe what she feels matters most to be a sex symbol, she says, “Anyone can be a sex symbol – it just takes figuring out how to be brave.” 

It has no size, no creed, no social standing. It has no time or place or reason. 

It just is, in all its glory. You either are or you’re not. Once you are, you always are. I don’t make the rules. That’s just how it goes. A law of physics. Sexiness is a centralizing force. You know it when you see it, and they’re probably a Scorpio.

Female sexuality is liberation. Female sexuality is passionate ideal. Female sexiness is the expression of obsessive enrapture and desire in the here and the now, what we can take from it and how we can add to it. When analyzing both contemporary and historical texts of what sexiness is over the course of centuries, of eons, we see sexiness as the embodiment of the refusal of societal restraints. Sexuality does what it wants. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t dwell in the realm of passivity. 

A prime example of sexiness is our cover star Caroline Vreeland: the musician, the model, the actress, and the icon. The great granddaughter of legendary fashion editor Diane Vreeland. The genetics of goodness flow freely and they favor us all. The image of Caroline in a bath of spaghetti is engraved in my mind. The unabashed glamour of this woman… the shameless sexuality… It would be hovering on appalling if it weren’t so damn good. One quick Google search will yield hundreds of photos of her in string bikinis – mostly cascading out of them – holding a glass of wine, with her hair slicked back. You quickly get an idea of what is so special: It is her proclivity toward total enjoyment of her own self in her surroundings, regardless of who is watching, no matter who is blessed enough to be taking her photo.

Caroline is approachable and untouchable. A total dichotomy of the casual girl-next-door with the screen starlet from days of yore. The theme of this issue was fun to play around with and conceptualize. All of our ideas on ‘what sexy is’ varied. The people we found sexy were far and wide, they all varied pretty drastically. There were drag queens and villains and heroines, nymphs and MILFs and athletes. There were the brazen, the cheeky, the fit and the fat. The waifs and the models. Politicians and comedians. Every single name mentioned? Unapologetic about their sexuality and the space they claim. The one person we kept collectively coming back to as a modern-day sex symbol, was Caroline Vreeland. She spoke to us in different ways: “I like her because she is an Amazon… one of those powerful giantesses… have you seen that Lana del Rey video?” “An Amazon? What are you talking about? I like her because she is a total Miami tomboy, her tits be damned.” “A tomboy?! She is a total Los Angeles glamor puss. Have you even seen her?” We battled this out. Things got personal. And we were all right. She is all of that and more. I think what we personally find sexy can be even more telling about ourselves than it is of the person we think embodies it.

How many of us are walking around sexy, and not know it? How many of us are the thing of fleeting fantasies, a remembrance of sweet things past, a nod to reverie, deserving of fanfare? Should we not walk around like this? Why would we ever choose not to live like this if we have the chance? 

I will say: If you decidedly think you are not sexy, you are not sexy. Not with that kind of attitude. It’s as simple as that. But we need not all be sexy. The sirens need their sailors; the goddesses, their devotees. 

I call on the Daughters of Blasphemy to rise up… to delight in your own routines and to have fun with your sexuality! I call on the Women clothed with the Sun to embrace your body and how it is right now (not then, not later). Let me remind the Women of the Apocalypse to realize that your flaws are your strengths and to highlight them accordingly.