British party culture and clubland classics shaped the world of Babymorocco and his debut album, 'Amour'. Read our latest Dork Mixtape cover feature.
Words: Abigail Firth.
Photos: Iris Luz.
It's a rainy, freezing cold late-November evening, but inside London's Kentish Town Forum, things are heating up big time. In an opening slot for party mogul The Dare, the whole Babymorocco show is going down. This involves, on average, one litre of vodka (this evening, it's Grey Goose), two gossiping girlies welcoming him on stage, at least three strip teases, and a boat load of bangers. It's intense, divisive, campy, sexy, exactly how Babymorocco likes it.
"I don't have any clothes left because I always chuck them into the audience," he says, just to give you a flavour of what we're witnessing.
A week on from the show, and we're chatting over Zoom. We have to do this in the afternoon because Rocco's mornings are taken up by going to the gym; Rome may not have been built in a day but it did only take Morocco a year to achieve his impressive physique. It's something he's considering cutting down on this week, what with having too much to do in the run-up to the release of his debut album, 'Amour', but only considering.
"If I had my way, I would have dropped the whole thing as a project rather than singles, because I love that now, that that can exist, where you can make the world, and people can go into it themselves. I like bodies of work. There are songs that are really strong on their own, but I think it's kind of unrelenting, that whole existence together."
"Appreciate the trash and you'll feel better about yourself"
Unrelenting is accurate. 'Amour' is a sort-of concept album based around the character Babymorocco, a British party boy, going to Paris with two girls, where he meets the French boy Jean Paul, and the bisexual love affair that plays out between them all. It's a lot to take in at first, especially coupled with the intensity of Rocco's chosen soundscape, which merges fuzzy French electro with donk-heavy British club music.
Aesthetically, Babymorocco looks a bit like a WWE superstar if they were raised in a regional English comprehensive school, and is about a Dappy hat and a Paul's Boutique bag away from being a total pastiche of 2010s UK culture. For the uninitiated, it's easy to see why he's mistaken for doing 'all this' ironically, but trust us, it's (nearly) all sincere.
"I love the UK. For all its fucking awful shit, I love it. I love the culture of the UK, I do. Even when I see TikToks about British cities, and they're like, taking the piss, I love it. It actually offers me comfort. The reason why people shit on so much of the UK is because, and not to make it super deep, but we have a massive classism problem here. So there's this aspiration to shit on all of that stuff. But generally, that is, I think, where the strongest culture is born in terms of music and art. But also, on top of that, I appreciate everything about the country. Do you know what I mean? The luxury is only one facet of something that many people never reach. Appreciate the trash and you'll feel better about yourself, like for real. I like it. I was born to be trashy.
Babymorocco was born in – you'll never guess – Casablanca, Morocco, but moved to the UK as a child and grew up in the Bournemouth suburb Boscombe. He seems to have lived a thousand lives before reaching his ultimate pop star form, having already experienced a bout of viral fame in 2013, when he announced plans to have his virginity taken in front of a live audience as part of an art performance while studying at Central Saint Martins, and again in 2016 when he became Tumblr-famous for his hyper-sexualised webcam photos.
And although he's always loved performing (and being the centre of attention, obviously), it wasn't until he discovered PC Music in 2014 that he realised pop stardom was his destiny, finally taking the plunge and doing music seriously as recently as 2022.
"I always wanted to be a pop star. I just didn't know I could be with the skills that I had. I can't play an instrument, but I can write. When I was 13, I wrote a musical, with my friend who played piano, so I always knew I could write to melody and stuff like that. When I'd sing to music in my room, I would always imagine like, what if I could do this on stage? I started realising you can kind of do it in any way you want when PC music started becoming a thing. I loved the way that they were utilising whatever they could to make pop music.
It's easy to see the collective's influence on Babymorocco's own artistry, and he notes that people often compare him to GFOTY, in that they both portray a sort of caricature of their genders and perform very dry lyrics over electro beats. Behind all the novelty and artifice, though, are some very real stories pulled directly from Rocco's lived experience.
"I think sometimes people think I'm very ironic, but I'm not as ironic as people think," he explains, "because I actually live this shit. Like the shit I'm talking about, I'm not joking. This is the stuff I get up to.
