Mabel has spoken to NME about her new single ‘Stupid Dumb’, working with Ty Dolla $ign and her upcoming third studio album.
Earlier this year, the chart-topping sensation returned to music after a two-year hiatus. Her next LP will serve as a follow-up for her 2022 UK Top Three album ‘About Last Night…’ and will see her “return to her R&B roots,” according to Mabel.
Today (October 7), the British pop star shared her newest release, ‘Stupid Dumb’ – featuring LA singer-songwriter Ty Dolla $ign. The atmospheric duet was created while Mabel was working on music in LA with producer-songwriter Tommy Brown – who is known for his work with Victoria Monét and Ariana Grande. The two were brainstorming potential collaborators for the album and the 28-year-old suggested Dolla $ign, who swiftly accepted.
“[For this album], it’s been really important that all the collaborations are authentic and organic and that we’ve actually been in the room together and made things,” Mabel told NME. She also praised Dolla $ign, saying that she loved “what he means to her as an artist” as well as what he has done in R&B.
“I was like, ‘Well, let’s do something [singing] back to back rather than you just like putting a verse on a song,” she continued. “The chords we both decided on were very euphoric. I just came up with that [line]: ‘I’ve been going all stupid for you, I’ve been going stupid dumb’. And we were like, ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ because sometimes when you love someone so much, you do go a bit stupid.”
Mabel revealed that she and Dolla $ign “wrote quite effortlessly” together, with the experience feeling like “one of those very pure, magical writing sessions where we must have been in the room for five, six hours and there was the song”, adding: “It was literally a dream come true.”
With her third album, Mabel admitted she was “trying to be more intentional but also not overthinking releases”
“It’s all good and well to have a strategy but everything’s changed so much in the business,” she said. “All I can do is regularly put out records that mean something to me that I love.”
When not working on her upcoming LP, Mabel has been doing some non-musical work, including being a guest judge on the next season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. She told NME that she took the role “seriously” not only because she “absolutely” loved the show, but because “it’s a responsibility to critique somebody on their art.”
She also teamed up with her mother, 2022 NME Icon Award winner Neneh Cherry, to work with the youth affected by the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy with the Grenfell Foundation.
“We made a t-shirt where the proceeds are going to the youth and they are going to decide how to put that back into the community to make sure their community is still getting fed,” she said, noting how important this is to her as a resident of the area.
Mabel has already dropped four singles from the as-yet-untitled record: back in April, she dropped the record’s soulful lead single ‘Vitamins’, before dropping the club-friendly ‘Look At My Body’ with ShyGirl, the empowering ‘Female Intuition’ and ambient ‘Chat’ throughout the summer.
‘Female Intuition’ was sentimental to Mabel, having changed a lot based on “gut feelings”, which “led her to a beautiful place”.
“A lot of that had to do with the strong women around me,” she continued, “so I wanted to make a song that was dedicated to the sisters and the aunties and the mothers and the grandmothers.”
Mabel went on to explain how the music industry’s standards are “definitely different” now compared to when she started.
“I think, now, nobody can say what defines a hit, people who are authentic seem to be the ones that are winning now. As an artist, that is such a relief,” she said. “At times, I felt like someone else knew best [about my musical career] whereas, now, I really can be in the driver’s seat. I actually know best, I know my fans best, I know what makes me happy and that’s going to help me win.”
Initially, having this autonomy was “scary” for the London-raised star because she has “been signed for 10 years” and “always looked to people to tell [her] what to do.”
However, she argued that right now “nobody had the answers to anything” due to the unpredictability of pop music in the current climate. She used Steve Lacy‘s 2022 viral hit ‘Bad Habits’ as an example to prove that pop music is “not actually a genre” with specific rules.
In this time of self-discovery, Mabel went “back to R&B” because she had “lost the love for making music.”
“I was really happy making music in the beginning, and lots of that had to do with me making music for myself and what my friends wanted to listen to,” she explained. “There’s not a formula anymore [to my music and,] for me, the chains are being taken off. I am good enough as I am and don’t need the bells and whistles and all of that stuff.”
She emphasised that she hasn’t had any “malicious, bad people around” her, but her newfound freedom is about her revealing her true self.
The artist revealed how her third album is more about having fun and doing what she wants.
“There is especially a pressure on female artists that, with every album, you recreate yourself, right? ‘Oh, what’s the new era?’ [This time,] it’s just me being myself and stripping back layers rather than building a narrative,” she admitted. “That’s why there’s an R&B section, a pop section and an Afrobeats section that were all made in the places I am from.
“I made pop music here [in Britain] and then I spent a lot of time in Sweden. Then I went to West Africa and made Afrobeats, so [my third album] was kind of like a homecoming for me. I am so many different things and maybe I felt like I had to pick one thing for people to understand who I am when, actually, how do I mix all of that into one record? It is unapologetically me, like, I am organised chaos.”
Earlier this year, Mabel shared a new remix by Jaydon Lewis of her first UK Top 20 single, 2017’s ‘Finder’s Keepers’. Despite the seminal Afro-swing song being so successful, the singer remembered: “Somebody said to me after I’d made a couple of Afro-swing records, ‘Oh, well, you’ve made it to a certain point now, but if you want to go bigger than this, this kind of music just really isn’t going to work’.”
Being “young and impressionable,” Mabel admitted that she went along with the advice “even though, R&B and Afro-swing were very much where her heart was.”
This led her to experiment with more Afro-pop sounds such as amapiano, while working on her upcoming record in “the LA of Africa,” Lagos.
She cited her late Sierra Leonean grandfather, a well-known percussionist, and her Nigerian boyfriend as influences that made her wonder: “What happens if I write my R&B top lines over Afro-swing, afrobeats and even Afro-piano?” – prompting her to explore the musical side of her West African heritage.
Admitting that she found the experience “so inspiring” and “really nostalgic”, she added that she learned so much from the producer Magicsticks – a frequent collaborator on her third album.
“We created a special partnership where I learned some stuff from him and he learned some stuff from me. I probably write differently to the artist that he writes with and he produces differently to the way that I’ve worked with producers before. But, something about it just works and we hit that sweet spot.”
She noted that, while navigating this new era, she’s “definitely seen a drop-off in followers” on her social media channels – which she finds “affirming in a way”. “This is not a rebrand,” she told us. “I’m being myself for the first time and, if you don’t want to be here, then go, because I’m not going to be something else tomorrow. If you’re not vibing with it, exit.”
Mabel said she hoped her fans could take away the same sentiment from her new album and “feel good about themselves” too. “That’s so much more important to me than my numbers or my awards,” she added.
The singer has yet to confirm the release date for her highly-anticipated third album, but it will be released via Polydor Records.
‘Stupid Dumb’ featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out now – listen to the single here.
