‘Super Pretty Naughty’, the lead single from Buck 65’s brand new LP, ‘Neverlove’, is probably the most vanilla thing the Canadian alt-rapper’s ever released.
The music video finds Buck (aka Richard Terfry) feigning cool, wearing shiny bling and obnoxious sunglasses, while hoards of women cavort around him. Meanwhile, the song’s chorus features the refrain: “I wanna get messed up and get laid and cake on my birthday,” spoken over a pedestrian pop/ EDM arrangement. It’s an oddly embarrassing move from an artist whose reputation rests on abstract lyricism and 20 years of continual musical evolution.
But the thing is, the song’s so blatantly garish that Buck 65 fans should know better than to take it at face value. “I guess it’s pretty obvious to anyone that it’s not meant to be taken seriously, which is great,” Richard says.
“It was really just a way to kill an afternoon and get my mind off some heavy things. So it was meant primarily as something to make myself and my producer laugh.”
Ever since Buck 65’s low-key career beginnings in Canada’s Nova Scotia precinct back in the mid-‘90s, he’s never been inclined towards what’s in fashion. It’s thus interesting to note that ‘Super Pretty Naughty’ wasn’t simply issued as a joke. Rather, it’s an official single, which sits bang in the centre of ‘Neverlove’s track sequence. “There wasn’t the intent to include it on the album at all when it was first made,” Richard says. “But then a few people heard it and the reaction to it was quite strong, so it took on a life of its own pretty quickly.
“To be honest I was really bracing myself for people to say how much they hate it,” he adds. “I put a post up on Facebook sort of apologising for the song and waiting for the backlash, but it didn’t really come.”
“To be honest, it made me feel quite vulnerable.”
Similar to ‘Super Pretty Naughty’, the remainder of the record was conceived as way of fending off encroaching mental demons. However, the single’s 2D hedonism is completely at odds with the thematic concerns that define ‘Neverlove’. “It’s a divorce record; it’s pretty gloomy,” Richard explains. “I was in a really dark, rough spot and I was just trying to get through it the only way I knew how.”
Due to its intimate personal nature, ‘Neverlove’ has more in common with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ than the Katy Perry teen pop channelled on the lead single. “There was no filter at all,” Richard says.
“The first song that I wrote for the record was ‘Baby Blanket’. It’s an unbelievably heavy song that even I have a hard time listening to myself right now. One day I played it to the president of my record label and he said: ‘That makes me extremely uncomfortable to listen to, but I think that’s exactly why we should include it on the record’. To be honest, it made me feel quite vulnerable.”
By now we’ve established that, despite the mid-life crisis alarm bells set off by ‘Super Pretty Naughty’, ‘Neverlove’ is propelled by an explicitly personal and fiercely independent spirit.
But, even though it’s not the cloying campaign for superstardom that some fans might’ve feared, Richard isn’t completely oblivious to the fact he’s running a commercial enterprise. “I am delivering something that they [Warner music] need to turn around and try to sell. That doesn’t mean that I go overboard making all sorts of decisions that really corrupt my own vision and creative process, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it at all.
“The thought occurred to me after I had the record in the can, ‘There might be some people who’ll relate to this because just about everyone has gone through a breakup and maybe a divorce’.”
While Richard acknowledges it’s imperative to produce work with viable marketability, this notion doesn’t interfere with his songwriting ambitions. “When it comes time to offer these things up, you come to those realisations that not only will people hear this material, but I’ll also have to answer to it. I have a hard time understanding why, [but] I don’t really think about that at the time while I’m writing or while I’m recording. At that time it just feels like it’s something that I have to do.”
As a result of this unfettered creative approach, many of ‘Neverlove’s lyric-loaded compositions are a showcase of Richard’s innermost thoughts and feelings. While there are times when our narrator sounds obstinately crestfallen, Richard says putting his heart and soul into the album provided redemption for some of the darkest moments of his life. “When I wrote the song ‘Baby Blanket’, it was so heavy it felt like I was holding my own head underwater. But I woke up the next day feeling great for the first time in months.
"I felt like I took all the negative things I was going through and I turned it into currency with which I bought back something good in my life. I was able to step back and say ‘I made something really strong there’. It felt extra good knowing that the price I had to pay to create something like that was an awful one.”
‘Neverlove’ is available now.
