For CLASH, the Watford-raised artist explores the complexities of her dual heritage and the challenges she faced navigating life in London’s suburbs. She ruminates on the obstacles she encountered breaking into the music industry, where her mixed-race background often added another layer of difficulty to her journey.
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I’m a proud product of dual heritage: my father’s side is Jamaican and my mother’s side is Russian and Hasidic Jewish. That dual heritage, with such a rich and diverse background, has shaped my life both personally and professionally in so many positive ways I’m still learning and understanding. But it’s also been a journey and a source of confusion and struggle.
I grew up in Watford, a melting pot of different races and cultures. Primary school felt totally normal, there were so many people from different backgrounds around me. It was only when I transitioned to secondary school in a far more rural area (and far from the diversity I was used to) that I found myself asking more questions. I was already going through puberty and questioning everything about myself (as any teenager would do), but now I had that added layer of trying to navigate a school where no one looked like me. It made me feel isolated in terms of my identity. I didn’t understand where I fit in.
At home, my parents didn’t fully realise the internal struggle I was going through. My incredible white mother was the only woman that I had to look up to on a daily basis (she still is the woman I look up to). I of course had other family members, but as a young girl, your mother’s image is the one you measure yourself against. I couldn’t understand why my hair didn’t brush as easily as hers. I even remember asking her ‘Why am I brown?’. To be clear, it wasn’t because I hated being brown, I was just confused. Beauty standards didn’t include people who looked like me and I internalised that from young. I would straighten my hair, bleach it, perm it or do anything to help me fit in. That’s not to say I’ve never been attracted to my black side: I have always been super aligned with my blackness. It’s just that the world made me feel like I shouldn’t have been like that.
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Having said of all this, it’s all of the above that has shaped me into the young woman I am today. My dual heritage, as much as it was something I struggled with, has become my biggest inspiration. I never fit neatly into one group. For me, I felt like I was too white for my Black friends and too Black for my white friends, and that was an issue because I felt like I had to either pretend to be something that I’m not or pick a side. But why should I have to choose? I am both. When people look at me, they see brown skin, so they presume I’m black. My skin’s brown, but I’m equally as proud of my white side as I am of my black side. I can attribute that to partly travelling to London. Growing up around London played a big part in shaping who I am. My grandparents came directly from Jamaica and settled in Wood Green and Tottenham, and their influence was a huge part of my life. Even though I didn’t live in London, I was there all the time, visiting family and friends. London is such a melting pot of cultures, and that diversity opened my mind in ways that my rural school environment couldn’t. I just felt more comfortable. I’d be able to put on a dancehall track for example and people weren’t like ‘oh, what’s this rubbish, get this off.’ I love the celebration of different cultures and the sense of toasting to each other’s differences.
My upbringing influences the music I create. The beauty of music is that it transcends race, and I want my music to reflect that inclusivity. By the time I entered the music industry I knew who I was. When A&Rs would question the various genres I make, and make comments on whether the music was too white or too black, it was just noise to me. Nobody forces me to make the music I make. I make the music I make because I genuinely have a love for all types of music. I’m not subject to any one genre because I’ve grown up with so many different influences. Black music has shaped the world, and I’m proud to contribute to that legacy, but my music is also a reflection of everything I am; my mixed heritage, my Jamaican roots, and my experiences growing up in a multicultural environment. I also think there’s a problem in the industry that they categorise genres of music with races of people. Of course there are races of people that would prefer certain genres, but there’s also black people that like house and there’s white people that love reggae. We can’t make a genre subject to a race. That doesn’t work for me. I don’t feel like we need to be separating ourselves the way that the world has forced us to separate ourselves.
My new EP ‘Emotional Gangster’ is partly a reflection on all of the above, a nod to this idea of freedom of expression. It’s unapologetically me. It’s an ode to my Jamaican roots and the influence of Jamaican music in music culture as a whole. But it’s also a musical journey from start to finish; by the time you’ve ended you will have gone through several ‘genres’ of music and every single type of emotion. My music is a by-product of my upbringing. I want everyone to feel included and for people to embrace every part of themselves; be it race, religion, sexuality or gender. That’s what matters to me as an artist.
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MORGAN’s new EP ‘Emotional Gangster’ is out today. Listen here.
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