Cover interview: Skunk Anansie's Skin

On 17 September, acclaimed UK rockers Skunk Anansie are set to release their fifth studio album, Black Traffic, marking their second release since reuniting in 2009 after an eight-year hiatus. The quartet rose to prominence during the early 90s, offering a riff-heavy, politicized "clit rock" alternative to the pervading Britpop scene, introducing the world to Brixton-raised Skin, a fierce, queer pin-up with inimitable vocals and an unashamedly confrontational approach to songwriting. DIVA caught up with Skin ahead of Skunk Anansie's forthcoming European tour (which ends on 1 December with their only London show, at Brixton Academy) to hear why, nearly two decades on, Skunk Anansie are still "f***ing political".

DIVA: How are you?

Skin: I'm in Ibiza. I've been lying on my veranda, eating melon.

It's grey and rainy back here in Blighty. 

I know; I was there last week. I've just moved back to England after three years of being in the US. I must be out of my mind [laughs]. 

Let's talk about Black Traffic. What inspired the title?

Black Traffic was our way of describing all the stuff we don't know about, the stuff we don't get to see. The Barclays bank scandal, for example. I remember when interest rates were rocketing, and now we find out years later it was because of Barclays and other banks. We were talking about all the trafficking we've seen while we've been touring and travelling. We were talking about the dark web [the encrypted, criminal underbelly of the internet]. Sometimes it feels like there's the real world and the real web, and then there's all the stuff that goes on behind it all - the forces that control everything. 

Skunk Anansie were a singular UK band during the 90s, staking out a style very much at odds with Britpop. Has being outsiders served you well?  

I think so. The best bands are always outsiders. We often have to remind people that Skunk Anansie were never Britpop; we were not allowed to be. But it spawned our independence, and it was to our advantage, because very quickly that whole Britpop thing got really annoying and lame and became a marketing tool to get bands popular in America.  We became an antidote to it. There's still no one like us, and there's still barely any black females fronting bands now, which is really depressing.  But we survived without a scene because we were an original band with our own unique sound.

To read the rest of our cover interview, get a copy of DIVA's September 2012 issue.

PHOTO Stuart Weston