The newest issue of the UK’s Q Magazine features a profile of ANOHNI, whose album Hopelessness will be released on May 6. In the piece, ANOHNI talks about the evolution of her name (“I felt I was asking too much to ask people honor me by calling me she or using a more feminine name”), the decision to change musical direction and work with producers like Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never (“If I’d done these songs as ballads it would probably have been a real yawn”), her early life in Manhattan during the height of AIDS (“It was an apocalyptic time for a large swathe of the community”), and her recent controversy surrounding the Academy Awards. Most explosively, though, she talks about the dangerous future forecast by our current politics.
The discussion about Donald Trump is a tangential comment based on ANOHNI’s fear regarding the release of a Hopelessness track called “Obama,” in which she not only criticizes Obama’s presidency, but also the naïveté of those who supported him — including herself. She does say, though, that the legacy of Obama’s presidency is preferable to Trump, whom she calls “a Putin-style character: a megalomaniac, completely volatile money baron.” She goes on to warn of disaster, should Trump be elected. “I think if you elect him there’s a good chance we’ll have a nuclear bomb sent to Syria within six months of his becoming President.”
The article isn’t yet available online, but it’s worth a full read. ANOHNI lets loose a vulnerability not often seen in celebrity profiles, though it’s not exactly unusual for her to exceed expectations.
Hopelessness is, again, out May 6. Watch the video for “Drone Bomb Me” below.