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You can get hurt playing rock’n’roll or tripping over a decorative tree on a mini-golf course. Jennifer Ilover, also known as Spider, has just returned from a trip to the doctor after tearing her knee on a Christmas trip to Dublin.
“I’m not good at sports,” the 24-year-old says, shaking her head. “But after she got the hole-in-one she was celebrating. She played for another 30 minutes and then she realized she had a hole in her knee and thought, hmmm, maybe I should go to A&E. .”
Thankfully, Irabah’s music career has progressed more smoothly than his sports career, but it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Based in London, he has released an EP and several promising singles, and is a highly intelligent, cheerful and articulate musician who lives in a “very academic and down-to-earth” Nigerian Catholic suburb of Dublin. He grew up as the youngest child in a family of of Talat.
Her father is a Luas driver with a degree in sociology, her mother is a former teacher and her brother is a computer engineer. She said that apart from a few chart hits and Nigerian gospel music, music was not particularly prominent in the country. As a result, her strict parents did not allow her to go to concerts in her teenage years. Instead, she found her own community online. She laughs, scratching her cheek as she recalls her Twitter stun account that Pop ran for her band, 5 Seconds of Summer, aka 5SoS.
“I didn’t go out much except to go to school,” she says. “But I was an avid internet user, so all my music references came from sites like Tumblr and Twitter. I was drawn to alternative girls who had a large online fanbase and fandom culture. – Halsey, Lorde… and even though Taylor Swift wasn’t an alt-girl, there was a huge fan base out there that could easily plug in. And I read that she wrote all the songs. And then I was like, oh, obviously, that’s what I have to do.”
I Lover started writing her own songs at age 16, when her father bought her a “cheap Argos keyboard” and a friend taught her some basic chords. Her early endeavors were copying her favorite artists, but she soon became interested in learning how to produce her own music as well. She earned her university degree in a natural way, but convincing her parents to let her move to London to study at BIM, the College of Music, was an entirely different matter. When she was 18, she “dropped the bombshell” that she was moving.
“They were still surprised,” she says with a laugh. “I understand that, because I was the youngest and only daughter. Leaving a child alone and trying to become an artist in a foreign country is not something that happens in our culture. But I had a conversation with my father. I remember really feeling the same way because my dad knew that I really wanted to do music and he pushed me into singing contests and things like that. I was like, ‘Do you really think you can make it as an alternative black artist if you stay here, in this house?’ I love you all, but…” she laughed. “And I think he understood what I meant. They were immigrants themselves, and they understood me for wanting to leave home to chase something. I think she believed in me, but in the back of my mind I thought, “Maybe she’ll get an office job.”
Art should always reflect and advance the current population, and the current population is not all white cis men
I Lover moved to London and began releasing music under the name Jen, taking her sound in a more synthpop direction. She then went through a “really shitty music industry experience” that left her disillusioned and left her wondering if she really wanted to continue making her music. It was only in lockdown that her creative spark returned with vigor, heralding a new sound and name change for her in the process.
“I started seeing a lot of spiders in my room,” she says. “My parents are religious, but they’re also spiritual, so I grew up in a household where they always talked about the spiritual meaning of everything that was going to happen. So I Googled it and one of the meanings was, spiders are It was about something that could appear as a spirit guide to creatives who had stopped creating. That really resonated with me. It was like, “Okay, if I’m going to start making music again, I’m going to start completely from scratch.” And I was like, “I want to find a sound that’s really my own.” ”
As Spider, I Lover wants to push the boundaries of what is expected of black female artists. Her last year’s Hell or High Water EP (her third EP, An Object of Desire, is due out in the coming weeks) features grungy alt-rock, dark electropop undercurrents, and It saw her experiment with traces of emo and pop-punk. Being in the “alternative music” space as a black artist was important, she says, in terms of representation.
“I remember saying to my dad when I was a teenager, ‘The reason I want to be an alternative artist is because there aren’t enough black women,'” she recalls. “I love my favorite artists so much. But I remember thinking, ‘Why aren’t there any black girls here?’ Art should always reflect and move forward with the current population, and the current population is all white cis men. It’s people of color, it’s gender non-conforming people, and it’s important for young people to be able to see things like that and find things like that. [so they can think,] “Oh, I can do it too!”
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These days, anyway, she’s mainly influenced by female-fronted rock and alternative acts of the 1990s. She cites her Veruca Salt and Hole as her two big inspirations. She also features contemporary artists such as Wet Legs, pop artist Gus Dapperton and young American duo Mama, but says, “That rebellious 1990s feminine energy is really hitting my soul right now.” It nourishes me.”
Although her presence on set has irritated certain demographics on social media, she says she doesn’t mind the criticism. “I think it’s enraging a very specific group of people who are very territorial about the alternative space and perhaps the 1990s idol that we exist in,” she says. . “So there’s a lot of ‘Hold on tight, it’ll never be you.’ Yours sounds like any other. But if they’re so enraged that they want to comment, I feel there must be something there.”
Her upcoming appearance at the Borderline Festival in Dublin will be her second time performing in Ireland as Spider. She was popular with the local crowd, her parents (who then came up with the idea of giving birth to a rock star daughter), and her old classmates who knew her from the days when she ran her 5Sos stan account. I’m looking forward to performing in front of them. She says this is just the beginning.
“Am I ambitious?” she says. “I’m definitely ambitious because it’s stressful. I have to rewind myself and say, ‘Jennifer, you’re 24 years old. Take a nap, meet some friends, have some drinks, relax.’ ” she says with a laugh. “But I still want something big. To be honest, I want to be the biggest rock star in the world. I want to go as far as I can, I want to do it for as long as I can, and I want to inspire as many people as possible. , you want to play in as many places as possible. And do it as faithfully as possible. So all the way up,” she says. “Yes, everything. I want it all.”
Spider plays borderline festival in workman’s clubDublin, Thursday 15th February
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