VICE Spotlight: Cherry Rype

Cherry Rype’s music feels like a violent, frustrated scream. It feels like a heartbroken sob into your pillow at night; like a mixture of salted tears and plum-flavoured lip gloss. A soft blend of drum and bass, R&B and trip-hop tell fragments of a past she’s no longer afraid to share. Her storytelling is earnest and raw, like you’re being let in on her deepest, darkest secrets.

The Cherry Rype world is full of unfiltered truth, refuge and connection through trauma. While it’s scary how honest and open someone can be about revealing the details of their suffering, the product of it is beautiful, liberating and healing.

Born Lucianne Palavi Swain, it’s clear that even so much as reciting her full name — a placard of her Tongan-Norwegian heritage — feels strange to Cherry Rype.

“I've always been very weird with my first name. But I feel like using the full name has really helped me find my identity a lot more, both as Cherry Rype and as Luci,” she told VICE.

“I've been a different person a lot of the time, but I feel like now I'm really starting to explore so much of who I really am…I've had different stage names, tried different genres and all of that. And I never really felt connected to them until I met Cherry Rype.”

The entity that is Cherry Rype was created through years of battling pain, a deep-rooted hurt summed up through the guttural yearning that surrounds her music. Fighting insecurities, and longing to be authentically and unapologetically herself, Cherry appeared from the depths of Luci’s psyche as the girl next door, a sister, and a best friend.

“I feel like it was derived a lot from me projecting who I wanted to be. I've been extremely insecure all my life, and I’ve been the biggest critic of myself. But as soon as I turned into her, things changed.” she said.

“A lot of my songs are actually first takes. It all starts just from me pouring everything out, then writing stuff down, then constructing the whole thing. From the start, I just want my emotions to dance around the song.”

“I want people to be able to paint a picture in their heads and put their own life into that scenario and be like, damn, someone knows exactly what I'm going through.”

Cherry Rype’s viciously stunning full-length debut project, “GOODGIRLSGETLUVBOMBED”, provides intimate glimpses into her world, unravelling the toxicity and manipulation of a relationship gone sour. Instead of name-dropping and using her music as a platform to expose, Cherry writes gut wrenchingly about her heartache, opening up a place of understanding and safety for anyone who can relate.

“When I was talking about my album to my friend, who watched me create a lot of the songs, they understood who I was talking about and how they were affecting me. But when I asked them ‘do you relate to this?’, they were like ‘hell yeah, my ex is in this song’. That’s exactly why I do this,” she said.

“I want a lot of artists to explore their vulnerability like that, because it can make you do some really interesting and different stuff. I never thought I'd make a sad love song in drum and bass format. But that’s just what my mind was feeling at the time.”

When asked to describe her music, she says “shattering”, “deconstructed", “brain noise”, and “confronting”. Her description is likened to her main inspirations, who are all outspoken trailblazers in music: Bjork, Marina & The Diamonds, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar. 

On the local front, close friends and collaborators LILPIXIE, AR The Eternal and emjaysoul are artists who Rype says are changing the game. While the scene has a long way to go, championing homegrown talent is what Cherry aims to do in every way possible.

“I feel like the support in the scene is why I do this and why I'm even capable of doing this. I want to keep seeing us all lift each other up, and stop the outsourcing from overseas. It’s amazing to be internationally renowned, but I really think we need to drive it all here first,” she said.

And one more thing: she “actually hates Cherry Ripe chocolate.”

“It's a symbolic representation of being from Australia,” she said.

“My stage name before was very Americanised, and I feel like a lot of people here kind of seek out that validation from another country when we have so much cool stuff here. We don't need to want to be in LA. We have this amazing city in Australia called Sydney. We have nationwide culture. It’s only going to get better.”

Adele is the Junior Writer & Producer for VICE AU/NZ. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter here.

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