After winning multiple awards, Genesis has gone on his first-ever holiday

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Genesis Owusu. The 25-year-old musician has won multiple ARIA Awards and J Awards, an APRA Award and the Australian Music Prize. His albums are Smiling with No Teeth (2021) and Struggler (2023).

“When I was growing up, the only black people that the kids around me knew were Eddie Murphy and 50 Cent. So it was like: be a comedian or be a gangsta [rapper].”

SEX

Did you feel attractive in your teens? Yeah, I was very confident. [Grins] Maybe too much.

Where did that confidence come from? Kanye? [Laughs and shrugs] It was kind of like, “If you don’t think I’m hot, you just don’t get it.” I thought I had it and I was waiting for everyone else to catch up. But in retrospect, I had traits of being very arrogant – I really knew that I was going to do big shit – but I can see from the outside looking in now. It’s like, “You’re a 15-year-old who hasn’t done anything! Why are you talking like this?!”

What’s sexy about the work you do? I get to make a lot of unsexy things sexy. On my new album, the main character is a roach. Let’s make the Kafka-esque sensual.

What’s unsexy about the work you do? It can be very self-centred. If there’s something that will raise your status or benefit you – but won’t benefit other people in the process – a lot of people will just go and do it anyway. I like it when everyone is winning, having fun on an equal plane.

How do you navigate the sexual attention you get from being Genesis Owusu? I’m completely oblivious to it: I’m in a happy, long-term relationship. My partner is the only one I have eyes for. So with any flirtatious advances, I just smile …

MONEY

Your parents migrated here from Ghana when you were two. Your dad stacked shelves at Woolworths; your mum worked as a cleaner. Growing up, were you aware they were starting from such a humble base? Not really. Even though we were coming from a place with not a lot of money, they did a great job of not making that super obvious. I would go to my mum’s cleaning jobs and watch Chicken Run on repeat. I had no concept of why I was in all of these random houses every day. Recently, I drove past the first ever apartment we rented in Canberra. It was so much smaller than I remember it. But it was all the space I needed.

Looking back, what did you never go without? I never went hungry. Even though there was a lack of variety, it was always tasty.

What did you miss out on? A lot of the mysticism of childhood. There wasn’t Santa Claus; there wasn’t an Easter Bunny or tooth fairies. My parents were like, “We work so hard, so you’re going to know exactly where this came from and what you have to do to get it.”

In 2021, you won the Australian Music Prize. What did you do with the $30,000 cash component? Put it straight back into music. I really only started making money in Australia in 2022. Now that I’m trying to break out internationally, a lot of it goes into funding the overseas tour. I make enough to live, then everything that comes from music goes straight back into it.

Define “money well-spent”. Well, I went on my first-ever holiday this year. It was the first time in my life I travelled somewhere of my own accord, under my own autonomy, without someone handing me a schedule.

You’ve travelled, but it’s always been for work? Always for work. I’ll be lucky to be somewhere for two days; it’s usually in and out. This time, I went to Japan and it was honestly one of the best experiences of my life. I was there with a bunch of my close friends from Canberra – who I don’t get to see that often – and my girlfriend. I love experience-based things with people that matter, rather than objects or material goods.

BODIES

It sounds like you grew up pretty comfortable in your own skin. I did. But for the majority of my childhood, I was also essentially the only black kid in my school. It was very strange as a five-year-old to reconcile with the idea of being the only one of something. It didn’t make me want to necessarily change into something else, but it was more like, “What – and who – am I supposed to be?“

What helped change how you felt? Getting more role models. Not even necessarily being around more black bodies physically, but seeing and hearing more black people speak about things that they’d experienced, that I’ve also experienced. When I was growing up, the only black people that the kids around me knew were Eddie Murphy and 50 Cent. So it was like: be a comedian or be a gangsta [rapper]. I didn’t necessarily fit in either of those categories. So being able to see a wider array of black faces and black bodies kind of showed me the expanse of what blackness is and can be.

You look fit. What’s the workout regimen right now? Literally just touring! If you’ve ever seen one of my shows, you know it’s extremely physical. But I’d say there’s genetics to it as well, so God bless the fam.

Between your two albums, you decided to shave off all your hair. What motivated you? I’d just come back from Europe for the final leg of the Smiling Without Teeth tour. It felt like a chapter had closed, and I was making new music. I had to live differently; I had to breathe differently. And I had to look different. I wanted to freak out the people around me but also freak out myself, too. So I got up at 2am and shaved off all my hair. But I was a little disappointed: I looked more normal than with the locks!

If you could change one thing about your body, what would it be? I’d like to be a bit taller.

What’s something that you’re quite happy with? The rest. I like the rest.

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