Originally from New York, exciting sultry pop-R&B singer and songwriter ANISE moved to London in 2018 to hone her artistic craft further – it was here that she developed her sensuous soulful sound and poetic songwriting. Over the past year, ANISE has been working on her debut EP Black Eve, which arrives in September, exploring themes of independence, womanhood and empowerment, and taking inspiration from her new life in the UK, like legendary Black American artists Eartha Kitt and Josephine Baker before her, who found their music home in Europe. ANISE teased us with a preview of her Black Eve EP at the start of the year by way of the glorious ‘Toulouse’ and she returns with the exquisite new video for her latest single ‘Obey’, as featured by ASBO Magazine.
Written and produced by ANISE, Alex Dopierala and Terell ‘Tee’ Farrell, ‘Obey’ is all about surrender and turning the concept of submission on its head, as ANISE extols the virtues of intimacy and freedom throughout the song, which is driven by her sensory lyrics laden with religious metaphor, soulful intoxicating melodies, lush vocal harmonies and soothing warm tones. For the accompanying music video, ANISE is firmly in the driver’s seat as the director, as she delivers an artistic expression of the physical and mental bliss that comes with intimacy, whether that is intimacy with oneself or intimacy with another.
Speaking about the inspiration behind ‘Obey’, ANISE says, “the song is all about the trust that comes with the deepest levels of intimacy – both physical and emotional/mental. When you fully trust, there’s so much power in surrender, and submission doesn’t at all have to mean subjugation. I was raised Catholic and there are a lot of Christian values I still subscribe to, but as I got older, my spirituality expanded past the parameters of religion, so I really like playing with religious metaphor in my songwriting. The chorus, for example, is an allusion to Moses’s parting of the RedSea: a moment of climax but also a moment of complete surrender. The song is obviously about sex, but it’s about much more than that too”.
As for the music video for ‘Obey’, which she stepped into the director’s chair for, ANISE adds that, “this is my first music video and it was really important to me that I was as much of myself as possible in the visuals, so you’re getting to see a few sides of ANISE – the storyteller ANISE (who does a good deal of the lyrical narration in the purple scene), introspective ANISE (the red scene represents intimacy with oneself, which is why it takes place behind a veil), playful ANISE (who loves performing and entertaining an audience in the negligée scene), dancer ANISE (the blue scene is full of movement; movement is healing after all) and fierce ANISE (the catsuit scene represents inner-knowing; life is a jungle but I'm the Queen of this one life I got)”.
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MEDIA & PRESS: Please direct all inquiries to Ayo Adepoju: [email protected]