Genesis Owusu’s Struggler inspired by Kafka’s giant bug story Metamorphosis
ARIA Award-winner Genesis Owusu was so tickled by a Franz Kafka story that he has shaped his public image into a new cockroach-like character, complete with insect-style eyewear.
There’s a dilemma common among recording artists: they have their whole lives to write their first album, and a much shorter span in which to pen their second.
For Genesis Owusu, this creative quandary was complicated by the unexpected success of his genre-hopping debut, 2021’s Smiling With No Teeth, which became a breakout global hit for the Canberra-based hip-hop artist.
It won four ARIA awards including album of the year, and further accolades including the Australian Music Prize and the Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition for one of its singles, Gold Chains – which former US president Barack Obama added to his annual playlist.
“On the first album, I put all of my life experiences up to that point that I wanted to talk about – then we had Covid, and then I did some touring, and then it was time for album two,” said the Ghanaian-Australian artist born Kofi Owusu-Ansah, whose Spotify monthly listener count now exceeds 739,000 fans.
“I had to find something that I genuinely felt like I wanted to talk about, and for it to not feel contrived and just a product to churn out and give to the masses,” he said.
His soul-searching led him down unusual research rabbit holes, including the philosophy of absurdism and Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella Metamorphosis.
Kafka’s protagonist awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a giant bug, but his first concerns are practical: how will he get to work today, and what will his boss think?
“I remember opening up that book, reading through the first few pages, and laughing so hard at how hilariously and darkly on-point it was with the world that we’ve been living in today,” said Owusu, 25.
“The album became an exploration and a study of that absurdity of life, but also, about the inspiring stubbornness of the human will to persevere through all of that absurdity, and just keep going: keep struggling, keep running to the next day.”
As well, he was so tickled by the story that he has refreshed his public image into a cockroach-like character, complete with oversized, insect-style eyewear.
His new look calls to mind The Fly, an “uber rock star” stage persona created by U2 frontman Bono in response to the disorienting success of the Irish band’s 1987 album The Joshua Tree.
Owusu’s hotly anticipated second album, titled Struggler, was released on Friday, ahead of an extensive global touring schedule that includes a run of Australian shows starting in Perth (December 1) and ending in Adelaide (December 16).
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