Greentea Peng: Expression not Expectation

I first see Greentea Peng through the Boiler Room studio window, catching the charged final moments of her rehearsal for the latest edition of ENERGY. She’s working through new track “Sane,” her languid voice entreating – perhaps ‘challenging’ is a better word – a potential suitor to “come make me feel sane baby”. Even in the midst of rehearsal with a full band, she’s still an obvious focal point. Naturally striking, her face and body are thoroughly inked; Hindu symbols juxtaposed with Nike swooshes, information and meaning gleefully clashing in kind of self-crafted discordian alphabet. Lending a slightly trickster-ish air to whatever message the tattoos impart.

The chords of “Sane” fade, and she steps out of the room. We’re introduced and she hugs me hello – friendlier than the average artist. We head to the roof to talk.

GTP’s speedy rise is in marked contrast with the laidback nature of her music. After a childhood spent feeling like a perpetual outsider as her family moved around the country, she decamped to Mexico to embark on a voyage of self-discovery. Six months in, GTP returned to the UK and started singing again – a teenage passion that she’d abandon ed for years. Rediscovering music enabled her to make sense of the confusion she had been feeling in searching for her identity, something she’s quite open to talking about.

“Growing up I had so much distress,” she remembers, “I was so confused and displaced.” She grew up in South London, then moved to Hastings. “It was all white people, I was bare confused. I moved back to London to do secondary school, all the black people in the school hated me. Then I moved back to Hastings, then moved to Mexico. So much confusion!”

She admits singing offered the chance to change her mindset. “I’d come away from it for so many years, and as soon as I started again it helped me, everything just flipped, I had a way of expressing myself.” Expression is key for Greentea Peng. “None of us express ourselves. We think we do but we don’t.” Posting a selfie on instagram? That’s not expression for GTP. “I mean I love using Insta, but it ain’t real expression. Delving into the shit you don’t want to delve into, exploring it and working it out a bit... I think I’ve taken all the confusion and merged it into my own thing, and that’s what’s working for me in every sense of my life; music, spirituality, everything.”

The first fruit of this creative awakening was last year’s debut EP Sensi, a blurry 6-tracker that keyed into South London’s current leftfield vibe; jazzy, wrecked and loose. The tracks didn’t so much go from A to B as go from A to Aaaaaaaaa, GTPs soulful vocals unfurling in Badu-esque majesty over hazy, sauntering melodies. It turns out that this phase of Greentea Peng was an act of cleansing; the Sensi EP was about leaving bad energy behind and getting her set for a future.

"I’ve found my little space and I’m getting comfortable with it."

“Lots of the songs were about an ex,” she tells me, “but they were also about trying to break up with weed as well – I like to personify things, so you don’t know if I’m talking about my man or the bud.” Sensi was Greentea exploring her own vulnerability, attempting to go through the process of “coming out of a really long and intense relationship with my ex and with weed, with drugs in general to be honest.”

Both break ups have been managed as well as they could; she laughs and shakes her head when I ask if she’s given up weed completely. But if leaving her relationship gave her space to draw new perspectives on life, easing off bud gave her a refreshed energy to convey those perspectives.

“With this next EP, weed hasn’t been such an integral part, I’ve been trying to cut down, it’s been a lot less involved. I think you might even be able to hear that.” Whereas Sensi sounded kinda stoned in the music, she claims her new EP, Rising, has a “lifted vibe” and there’s more energy to it.

“Sensi was proper throwing myself out there, I was unsure. Rising, I’ve found my little space and I’m getting comfortable with it. This EP is more, I’m living life and these are the thoughts that are coming to me.”

This doesn’t mean she’s planning on dropping any cynical turns into formulaic RnB tracks. With production coming from two-thirds of the Earbuds trio who produced Sensi (now going under the on-brand weed referencing name of Gelato Boys), there’s still the sense of experimentation in the music, matched by GTP’s rejection of formal songwriting in her own creative approach.

“I never have expectations. I’d just like people to love it and vibe with it. I love my audience. I’m very grateful. I ain’t got the best voice or anything, it’s an energy."

“When I make music,” she agrees “it tends to lack in structure, I don’t think in verses or choruses, and I think that comes out in the tunes. I’m lucky that the boys make beats that are kinda off grid as well, so there’s not technically that much structure.”

So what expectations does Greentea Peng have for the new EP? She’s adamant with her response

“I never have expectations. I’d just like people to love it and vibe with it. I love my audience. I’m very grateful. I ain’t got the best voice or anything, it’s an energy. If you come to my shows it’s more about creating a vibe. I’m not really a performer. I don’t put on a show, I’m vibsing with you, I’m singing songs, talking to you like I am doing now.”

And here she’s hit on something. Unlike the majority of glossy, stage-managed and intensely media-trained artists operating in mainstream RnB - and make no mistake, her music is R&B, even if it falls at the more experimental end - there’s little apparent gap between Greentea Peng the brand and Greentea Peng the person. The two slide into one another so that what she sings and what she says are cut from the same cloth. Greentea Peng sings songs like she’s talking to you now, raw and personal and disarmingly honest. Our time up, she gets up and heads downstairs, ready to sing some more.

Interview by Ian McQuaid

A part of ENERGY, a series of live performances of signature tracks by the artists we’re excited about.