Robyn in the hood

“Electric Picnic is gonna be awesome!” squeaks the unmistakable voice of Robyn Miriam Carlsson from somewhere on site at the quirky Flow Festival in Helsinki. “We have an acoustic show after our performance in the THISISPOPBABY tent, which is gonna be great! I haven’t been touring in a couple of years – the last tour was in 2008, so we’re just happy to be back on the road again. We’re having a lot of fun!”

But Swedish electro maven Robyn can’t be having too much fun these days. At least not until she completes her ambitious Body Talk trilogy, which she’s been recording throughout 2010 during her down-time between shows.
“It still feels like the beginning to me even though I’m working on the third part now. It’s only now that everything’s started to happen with touring and promo.”
For the last two months, Robyn’s been co-headlining her US All Hearts tour with dance diva Kelis, whose marvellous Flesh Tone album has been defibrillating me out of bed every morning since its release in May.
“She’s a very cool chick.” Robyn gushes of her electro-minded cohort. “I think we both try to make pop music that feels more unexpected and I know we both have an ambition to do something that feels authentic and real, so we connected on a lot of things. I think our fans really liked us doing the tour together too, so it was really, really nice.
In the last six months, Robyn’s covered Alicia Keys, recalled early Timbaland on new tune ‘Fembot’ and collaborated with the God-fizzle of rap himself, Snoop Dogg. Has hip-hop always been coursing so strongly through her veins?
“I’ve always listened to hip-hop and R’n’B,” she muses, “and I’ve always listened to club music as well. I’ve always listened to a lot of different things, I guess you could say, but I definitely know my R’n’B and I definitely know my hip hop. My song ‘Konichiwa Bitches’, even though it’s really funny and silly – I could never have written that song or I never could have thought about making it if I didn’t listen to Biggie or I didn’t grow up with (outrageous female Swedish rapper) Neneh Cherry. But I wouldn’t say that I’m a fan of R’n’B as a genre, I’m more a fan of certain artists.”
As for working with Snoop on cheeky “rap duel” ‘You Should Know Better’...
“It was great!” she beams, “he likes music and we talked about musiic a lot. He’s a legend to me. I grew up listening to him and meeting him makes you understand why he’s been around for long. He’s a very smart guy.”
I suggest the Swede did well not to let her own sound get dwarfed by His Pimp-ness’ larger-than-life flow.
“I don’t really know what the Robyn sound is!” she chuckles, “I just make music with people and I’m always involved in the process – if I don’t do one thing, I do the other. I don’t feel like I have to protect my sound or my space because it naturally happens when I work with people.”
We’ve still got a couple of months to wait before Body Talk: Part 3 hits our digital shelves, but while I was fully expecting the 31-year-old to be on the brink of burning out, the pint-sized Swede seems to have taken the project all in her stride.
“Actually I don’t feel stressed at all,” she chirps. “I get to spend time at home in my studio which I don’t usually get to do while I’m touring. For me, it works.”