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Sometimes, life offers up a second chance. This can be a good thing, particularly if you have unfinished business, like Frankie Beanie. The LA-via-Liverpool, Virginia-born artist thought he already had his shot. But this is the story of his redemption after that time. And how he became supermodel*.
Frankie first picked up a guitar after discovering Green Day as a child. It was in high school that this developed beyond the rock world when he found Kanye West and the Beastie Boys. After bouncing around bands, the introverted Frankie, who sat alone at lunch as a freshman, became a wild beast on stage. "They would come see my band play, and then on stage, I would just be fucking insane, screaming and running around and taking my shirt off. And then I would see them the next day, and they would be like, 'What is that? What's going on?'"
He's the kind of person who, he admits artistically speaking, is very much "look at me". Outside of that, including chatting to Dork, he's softly spoken with no aura of a frenzied artist beyond the tattoos adorning his face and hands. But that's the hidden talent of most artists, the ability to unlock that second self who lurks beneath. "Where it comes from is that thing inside of me wanting to be loud, and I use the music as the vessel for that," he says.
Inside Frankie Beanie, there are two wolves. One is a guitar-based rock kid, the other is a rap guy, and supermodel* is where the two coalesce. The result is light-footed indie with an electronic backswing that shimmers with Californian ease. But before discovering this, the fresh-faced 18-year-old headed to Liverpool.
After a stint as POLICE CAR COLLECTIVE, a band who signed a deal, released a string of singles and played Reading Festival, before Frankie discovered the harsh realities of being young and naive in the industry. "I literally got out of high school, moved to Liverpool, and someone said, 'Do you want money to make music?' And I was like, 'See! I told you I was great'." He laughs now at the thought.
Relocating back to the US, he settled on LA after deciding that yes, he still wanted to be involved in music. But first, he had to take a little time.
"I was in LA for a whole year before I figured out the supermodel* thing, and it was probably like a year and a half, two years of just trying to figure out did I even want to make music?"
Settling into life in California, he worked at Barnes & Noble and generally became used to being Frankie again.
Understandably, being put through the wringer, or as he puts it, "speed running all the bad shit that can happen," would get anyone to attempt to steer clear, but Frankie decided to overcome that. "It took me a while to build up the tolerance to be able to be like, all right, we're gonna venture back out there, and we're gonna try and give this a go, even though I sort of know what I'm walking into."
The first step in this was embracing his school days' love of rap. "When I first moved to LA, I was fully: I'm just gonna be a rapper." But eventually he discovered the glorious truth that if you want to create, there's no better place for that to come from than your childhood self.
supermodel* was born out of the idea of tapping into guitar-based music, the thing that made Frankie love music in the first place. "I think when you find yourself in that place in life where you feel really lost, eventually you come back around to, well, how did I get here?"
"I would just be fucking insane, screaming and running around and taking my shirt off"
Frankie's breakout as supermodel* came last year with 'i used to live in england'. The heavily LCD Soundsystem-influenced track reads as the story of Frankie's time on our shores. Over its syncopated beat, he filters the basis of British culture through his own experience of living here.
One of his pals called it a "Marmite" track, but it's always better to provoke one way or another rather than fade into the background, even if that means missing out on a certain radio station. "I have a screenshot somewhere of an email that somebody at Radio 1 sent saying, 'We don't know what this is, so we're not going to play this'. I was like, 'That's awesome!'"
With a self-titled EP following it up, he set his eyes upon his next project, his debut mixtape. 'cupid!' is a snapshot of a "condensed period of time" for Frankie, who, going through a breakup, channelled as much of that as possible into this full-length offering. Made over the period of a month, locked in a studio that felt more like a Beastie Boys clubhouse than a workplace, 'cupid!' carries a loose atmosphere throughout.
"It's really a collection of songs that are me working through all of that stuff, which is always what my music is but this definitely feels very much like a timestamp. I listen to it now, and I'm very proud of it, but I'm like, Oh yeah, I don't feel like that anymore," he says.
This push-and-pull runs through his debut mixtape. It opens with 'i'll be there', which kicks to life with a classic hip-hop beat before guitars come strumming to life, and throughout there's a melding of a hip-hop stylistic execution with an indie-rock pulse. However, he's not hyper-focused on sounds and pigeonholes.
Frankie believes that music that truly lasts is made when someone is trying to bottle an emotion rather than a specific aesthetic or genre. "One of the things we put on the wall in the studio when we were making it was 'Feeling is greater than genre'," he explains. "We're being hit with so much fucking stimulus all the time. It's so easy to be 'Oh, we're just trying to make some shit that feels cool', and I don't think that's how music that stands the test of time is made. I think it stands the test of time because it's someone trying to chase a feeling, and then hopefully when you listen to it, you get that feeling from it."
Capping off this busy 'cupid!' period for Frankie is a slot on one of Tyler, The Creator's days at this year's All Points East. Alongside the likes of Faye Webster and recent Dork cover star Danny Brown, he's taking supermodel* to the big stage, and it couldn't be more fitting since it'll be the last show of his tour. With his own headline show a couple of days before to boot, it's all celebrations. He's also hoping he'll get the chance to be a punter for a little while afterwards since he's not actually attended a fest without playing, except for Coachella this year. "I actually really don't like going to shows very much," he laughs. "I think it's a weird control thing. There's something about the chaos of it that it's like if I'm not in control of it, it kind of freaks me out a little bit."
Control is what supermodel* boils down to. Be it the aforementioned lack of it in over-crowded environments, or now being in charge of his own creativity, wrestling with those ideas and knowing how much to let go and how much to retain is the real battle. With supermodel*, and his debut mixtape, ready to meet the world, wherever they wind up taking him, Frankie's ready for it. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have grand ambition, which he winds up our chat with.
"I want supermodel* to be bigger than me," he admits. "All of the artists that I look up to and the things that I strive for, it's always movements; the artist is the catalyst for the community around it.
"That's what I looked for when I was in high school when I was sitting alone at lunch, and I got into Nirvana. It's like it's this community so that's something I've been thinking about a lot that I really want to kind of push forward, you know, with obviously 'cupid!' coming out, but especially with what's coming after that."
supermodel*'s mixtape 'cupid!' is out now. He'll play All Points East on 29th August; visit allpointseastfestival.com for more information.
