Roy Jurgens on January 14th, 2019

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Farah Shea is hard to miss. If you’ve ever come across her clubbing, she’s tall, charismatic, captivating and in perpetual motion, much like her music. The self-proclaimed avant-garde hip-hop artist has a glammy new video to go along with her bouncing new single, “Back to the Basics,” from her forthcoming EP, “Year of the Goddess.”

Produced by Australian musician/producer Andy “Clockwise” Kelly, “Back to the Basics” moves away from Shea’s earlier hip hop-oriented material and into Euro house of the ’90s. Pulsing beats, vintage synths and a sultry devil-may-care lyrical delivery plant this song firmly into an era when house was king across the pond. This track would not have sounded out of place alongside tracks by 808 State or A Guy called Gerald at Madchester’s Hacienda in 1989. The genesis of the track was Clockwise sending Shea a beat that was unlike her usual material. She took the challenge and created something celebrating a recent past remarkably different from the present, while educating those who will never know life without wi-fi: “I’m talking way before Twitter, body covered in glitter / And you didn’t need a sitter, cause you got no kid / Feeling like a tweeker, standing by the speaker / Bass so loud you lost your shit, basement jams / When the rave began, and you didn’t need a cell / No one gave a damn, so you wouldn’t text, and you couldn’t rest/ So you planned on X, and random sex.”

Born to a hippie mother and Arabic father and raised in Salt Lake City’s conservative Mormon community, Shea was well-versed in being an outsider. She took that rebel attitude to USC, where she majored in theater and began to dabble in music. But it wasn’t until she met Clockwise that she started taking herself seriously. “I met Andy at a BBQ in Hollywood where I got into a playful rap battle with one of his friends,” she says. “I guess that made an impression on him because as we became friends he would invite me to come and rap on some of his DJ nights. After knowing each other for a few years he eventually kind of took me under his wing, teaching me the basics of music production and promotion and helped me produce an EP. Andy is one of my best friends and an amazing mentor. He is the first person to really understand me as an artist and let me fulfill my potential.”

Shea spent 2018 making some waves, notably at Sundance, where she held her own in a rap battle with the likes of KRS-One, Rakim and will.i.am. She also landed on Spotify’s “Viral 50,” charted in the top 10 for 10 weeks on Australia’s Aria club tracks, and was included in the prestigious Ministry of Sound compilation.

||| Watch: The video for “Back to the Basics”

||| Live: Farah Shea will be opening for Jen Awad’s residency at the Echo tonight. Also opening are Santoros, DMTina & the Bumps, the War Toys and NK Riot. The show is free.