Erica Cody: ‘With everything that happened last year... I felt I was a ticking timebomb’
Erica Cody. Photos: Nina Val shot on location at ‘Wilde Vintage Dublin’
Erica Cody didn’t know who she was last summer. The R&B singer was in such a dark place that she didn’t recognise herself. She was experiencing depression and anxiety and couldn’t find solace even in her beloved music.
“Music usually is my therapy and my outlet but because I was struggling so much, I just felt like I was incapable of writing any, so I really just had to sit on myself, go to therapy and work through whatever emotions that I was feeling at the time to become a better version of myself.”
Her latest EP, Love & Light, which will be released at the end of the month, reflects the evolution of her life over the last year.
“It’s kind of like an open diary of different things that I’ve experienced — from lockdown to my mental health — everything and anything in between, just life in 2020 to 2021.
“I think with everything that happened last year in total — politically and personally — I felt it was a ticking time bomb and it was going to take its toll on me in some way and I just cracked. But with that said, I didn’t realise how strong I was.”
As a creative, Erica says that you need to be your own biggest fan, but it’s hard when people start doubting you and your character.
“I had to really just surround myself with positive things, even though I was in a really negative headspace. For me, it was journaling, meditating, going to therapy, doing anything and everything just to get my head straight, surrounding myself with very few people.”
She experienced a lot of trolling last year.
“As a musician, I’m so open to people having opinions of my music and I’m cool with that because music is subjective. But when people start targeting you and your character, it’s a very depressing place to be because you know who you are as a person but when you have so many people telling you you’re something, it’s really hard to not believe it.”
The 25-year-old didn’t leave the house for two months last year.
“It was tough, picking up that pen and writing about probably the most vulnerable experiences in my life, but I knew I needed to start expressing how I feel because that’s so cathartic to me and that’s the reason I started writing in the first place.”
Erica was writing poetry from the age of seven. She still remembers the little jingles and songs she wrote as a child. She began keeping a journal when her mother was diagnosed with cancer when she was 10. Later, she got a guitar and dabbled with producing using her iPod Touch.
She was 15 when she got a taste of performing her own songs in public. “It was immense,” she says of her opening for the Nigerian singer Wizkid in Dublin’s CityWest. She sang three songs and had a ball.
“I remember feeling so at peace, so at home. Seeing people smile and having a good time was great but, it was like they weren’t even there at times. I felt like I was in my own world doing what I love and that’s when I definitely caught the bug, this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I wanted it to be my life.”
There was another love in Erica’s life though — basketball. Her dad, Gerald Kennedy who is originally from South Carolina, had been a professional player and she played the game since she was a child.
“Music and basketball are the two loves of my life, besides my dogs and my tortoise and my partner… basketball taught me a lot of discipline. The thoughts I have in my head are that I’m only as good as my last game, I’m only as good as my last gig or my last song or my last EP. I like to constantly grow and evolve.”
When she was 17 and studying for her Leaving Cert, she considered moving to America, possibly on a scholarship, to play basketball. Then it hit her that what she really wanted to do was stay in Ireland, play basketball and study music.
She thought she had the best of both worlds. “It was chaotic, but I didn’t see that at the time, I was excited and I was young and I was ready for the world.”
Then at 18, everything changed when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament, she couldn’t play basketball anymore. She was facing into nine months of intense rehabilitation to learn how to walk again, and she decided to go full throttle on her music.
“It was a big life lesson, where I was like, Erica, now it’s time to stick your big girl pants on and start making the most of what you have because you know where you want to go.”
Erica had already learned a big life lesson at the age of 10 when her mother, a former gymnast, was battling cancer.
“My mam definitely had that mother’s instinct of ‘no, she can’t see me in pain and suffering’, so I think she tried to make it as positive an experience as possible. I’d go in and sit with her, and we’d have Marks & Spencer onion rings and cookies because she loved them.
"She’d be getting chemo and I’d be reading a magazine and we’d be chatting about the magazine. I didn’t know it was as serious as it was. I’m just so grateful that she’s still here.”
Erica’s parents were fans of hip hop and ’90s R&B. She grew up listening to Queen Latifa, Foxy Brown, TLC, Aaliyah, Lil’ Kim, and loved these powerful females in a male-dominated industry.
“My palate was very broad, I had a taste for everything, but my deep roots are in ‘90s R&B and hip hop and a bit of gospel too.”
She thinks that things have gotten better for women in the music industry but says that it has its challenges.
“The main thing is to highlight that there is room for everyone and that’s something we set out to do with Irish Women in Harmony [last year she and singer Ruth-Anne recruited over 40 of Ireland’s most talented women to perform a cover of The Cranberries’ hit Dreams, raising over €200,000 for Safe Ireland], to inspire the next generation. Representation is absolutely everything,” says Erica.
When she was younger, she says that the only representation she had here was Samantha Mumba.
“She looked like me, she went to Billie Barry, she was making pop songs. The only way for people to make sense of me wanting to be a performer and a singer and a songwriter, was ‘oh yeah, you’re going to be just like Samantha Mumba. She did it, so Erica, a black, mixed-race girl from the north side of Dublin, can do it as well’.”
Other people’s assumptions are something that the singer has had to deal with all her life. In 2019, she embarked on the D.T.M.H. (Don’t Touch My Hair) project. It was about boundaries and was inspired by her song Where Are You Really From. The song’s genesis came when a customer in the shop where she was working asked Erica where she was from. Her reply? North Dublin. Then the woman asked ‘yeah, but where are you actually from’.
“I said ‘I was born in the Rotunda around the corner’. There’s just so much of that you put up with throughout your whole life, especially being black and especially being mixed race there’s already a complex of being mixed race, you know you’re not black enough and you’re not white enough, it’s exhausting. I’d have people zoom past me on their bikes and touch my hair. It’s been a lifetime of frustration I never felt I was able to express, so the minute I did that, I was this is who I am and this is something I’m not afraid to talk about.”
She attended the Black Lives Matter rally in Dublin last year but “I had this activist label sprung on me because I was easily accessible and people just turned to me to learn and that can carry a lot of weight on one’s shoulders, even though you want people to listen.
“It takes such a toll so I’m at a place now where people are aware, but there are other places they can go to get information and I’m not just the poster girl for activism for Black Lives Matter in Ireland. As much as I’m honoured for people to call me an activist, my thing that I do is music, and that’s always going to come first and foremost.”
Erica Cody’s EP Love & Light is released on October 28
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