The real McKay

By REBECCA BARRY

In a 1960s-style New York apartment, down a hallway lined with hand-painted song lyrics and CDs stacked from floor to ceiling, lies a collection of musical instruments, a record player, a mixer, two computers and some dauntingly thick manuals, proof of the owner's introduction to audio equipment.

In fact, until this year Stephanie McKay didn't own a cellphone.

But given her outstanding debut album, McKay, an unusual Bronx-meets-Bristol collaboration with Portishead's Geoff Barrow, even that's become a necessary evil.

"The album is kind of like a mix tape," she says, her soft speaking voice a stark contrast to her Aretha-led vocals.

"It's representative of the different artists I've grown up listening to - Michael Jackson, Sly Stone, Etta James, Nina Simone, Dionne Warwick, all the Motown stuff."

Add to that Barrow's spine-chilling fusion of hip-hop, reggae and grainy vintage samples (think Portishead's 1994 release, Dummy), and McKay becomes more than just an edgy collision of old and new styles.

"When I first listened to the record I noticed there's not a lot going on," she says.

"It's very sparse, stripped down, in your face but not glossy.

"That gives the songs a chance to breathe, room for the listener to really get in touch with the singer, the voice. There's a lot of space in the tracks."

At 35, McKay can't quite believe she has wound up in a career she hadn't seriously considered.

She worked as a successful session musician for the past 10 years - touring Europe as Kelis' guitarist, and as a backing vocalist for hip-hop guru Talib Kweli, recording with prominent house figures Lil' Louis Vega and Barbara Tucker and adding her honeyed vocals to Tricky's Blowback album - but it had never occurred to her she could make it as a solo artist.

"I was dead intent on being a dancer and I kept auditioning for dance jobs and getting rejected," she explains. "And then I auditioned for a singing thing and I got it straight away. That's what changed the course of my focus."

Her unlikely pairing with Barrow came when her friend brought back an instrumental from Europe and wanted lyrics for it.

At the time, she was on tour with Kweli, but after she added her bit, the recording ended up with a suitably impressed Barrow.

McKay admits she had never heard Portishead but as soon as she did she quit the tour to work with him, took up music and singing lessons, bought herself equipment and plunged into a solo career with "full force", which meant skipping between her beloved hometown and Bristol.

"At first it was hard to be away from home," she says. "I felt isolated. There's definitely culture differences, the language, slang that I didn't understand, jokes that I didn't understand.

"The first half of the record was getting to know one another, getting the tracks to build. The second half was a much more pleasant experience because I'd made friends in Bristol and had found my way a little more."

She admits she wasn't prepared for the pressures of the industry.

"I turn on the TV and I have to turn it off because of the strong message saying, 'You're not good enough, this is not what we're going to put our money behind'. I don't let that define who I am. It's really toxic, it's really poisonous to keep seeing women objectified on TV.

"I separate myself from it and nurture myself in other ways by being around musical people, creative people, mentors, whose main advice to me is to study the craft, get better at what you do.

"That will sustain you because there are true music fans out there who don't pay attention to the latest thing and they'll stick by you.

"I'm not Ashanti or Beyonce or Moni, Mon, ah yeah, the other one," she giggles. "It's kind of overwhelming when you think of all the others out there."

McKay's lyrics paint a colourful tale of life not just within the confines of the Bronx, a place of which she is fiercely proud, of love gone wrong, and the harsh realities of poverty and oppression.

The last track on the album is a cover of Bernice Johnson Reagan's plaintive freedom song Echo.

"There are a lot of things that have changed for black people in America but there are some things [that stay the] same as far as portrayal in the media goes," she says.

"As a person watching Hollywood movies, there are still biases and stereotypes that you just get so tired of seeing. My music is hopefully a reflection of some of those frustrations as far as my identity, how it's portrayed in the media, what responsibility I have as an individual to try to uphold what is reflected from the young people who see me.

"I'm a person of integrity. I value what is sincere and honest. I won't, for money's sake, compromise what I'm about.

"My politics and my music are closely intertwined."

* McKay is out now.