How Tricky’s ‘Maxinquaye’ forged a new frontier for Black British music

However, Tricky’s artistic spirit was never static. Even as ‘Maxinquaye’ was being lauded as a genre-defining album, he was restless, already refuting the labels and structures that tried to soften him. In the aforementioned ’96 The Face interview, just before the release of ‘Nearly God’, Tricky’s disdain for the music industry’s limitations was clear: “[BBC] Radio 1 won’t play me because they think my stuff is too dark and slow and moody. That creates a temptation to compromise. Everyone’s pretending, trying to project images. You’ve got a lot of people from art college singing about things they’ve never experienced. I like to keep my music real.” By this point, Tricky had already mentally moved on from the LP’s success, shifting towards more experimental territory. “You’ve said before you have to fuck things up,” The Face journalist Andrew Smith asked. “Is this [‘Nearly God’] album the big fuck-off?” Tricky’s response? “Yeah, yeah. It’s me running away, really,” he added. “I’m like a naughty kid, always running away.” This constant push for reinvention and refusal to be defined by any one moment or sound encapsulates Tricky’s then, and ever-present modest masterminding over pop music. Despite Tricky’s psyche splintering away from ‘Maxinquaye’, selections...