Grimes is the subject of a new Interview Magazine feature. In conversation with science-fiction author Nnedi Okorafor, the singer discussed a new album titled Psy Opera that’s apparently close to finished. Several track titles from the project are also mentioned, including “The Light Ages” and “Eve Is Online.”
While she never made a public announcement to the effect, Grimes told Okorafor that she “totally quit music a couple years ago.” It was being asked to write a rap for a K-pop artist, she said, that creatively reinvigorated her: “I was like, ‘This is too good. I’m keeping this because it’s crazy.’ But then we had a problem for eight months where I was just a white rapper.”
Grimes told Okorafor that a music video for Psy Opera’s lead single originally incorporated AI dancers, but those elements won’t be present in the final version. At one point, Grimes said that she doesn’t employ generative AI in her own music, then, later in the interview, clarified that one song on Psy Opera, “DeepSeek,” features lyrics written by the Chinese open-source AI model of the same name. “Did it feel like you crossed the line when you did that or did it feel logical?”, Okorafor asked, to which Grimes answered “It felt awesome.” She also diagnosed herself with what she calls “AI psychosis.”
The tail end of Grimes’ conversation with Okorafor turned to her early career. She described playing her first shows in parking lots outside of concerts by acts including Radiohead and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, even poking fun at her own moniker. “It sounds like a slime that attacks the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something,” Grimes said. “It sounds like a villain. But now I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s kind of cool. Why not?’”
Grimes shared her last album to date, Miss Anthropocene, in 2020. She signed to Columbia Records the following year, but dropped only a couple of one-off singles before parting ways with the label. In 2023, Grimes sued Elon Musk over her parental rights to the three children she shares with the tech billionaire. Last year, she released “idgaf,” a demo from the Miss Anthropocene sessions, and a new song titled “Artificial Angels.” Both came out on Grimes’ own label, Nazgul Recording LLC.
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