Forest Claudette, Photograph: Lissyelle
“If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then where do all the non-binary babies come from?” Forest Claudette posed this question in an Instagram caption in February. “I believe we come from Jupiter,” they answered, gesturing towards the title of their third EP – a four-song release centred on the artist’s non-binary identity.
Jupiter came out at the start of May and Forest – the nom de plume of Melbourne-via-Los Angeles pop and R&B artist Kobe Hamilton-Reeves – believes it’s their most honest and conceptually refined release to date. “I think that writing about being queer and capturing the experiences of what it is to be Black and queer in a body that’s assigned male at birth, I think there’s power in that and I think that it can touch people,” they tell Check Check.
Forest Claudette released their debut EP, The Year of February, in late 2022, a stylistically nimble set that injected much needed flair into Australia’s R&B scene. The follow-up, last year’s Everything Was Green, included “Mess Around,” a collaboration with EARTHGANG, as well as the politically salient “Violence,” which looked at the systemic persecution of Black people.
But Jupiter is the artist’s first release that works together as one thematically linked whole. “I set out to do something and then I did it,” Hamilton-Reeves says.
Forest Claudette will perform at Tumbalong Park on Thursday 30 May for Vivid Sydney. Check Check speaks to Hamilton-Reeves about the journey that brought them to Jupiter and their plans for the future of Forest Claudette.
Check Check: What was the first idea you had for Jupiter, the thing that planted the vision for the project?
Forest Claudette: The very beginning was that my best friend, one night when we were hanging out, just looked up and was like, “Woah, is that Jupiter behind the clouds?” And I was like, “Oh my god, say that again,” because I just thought that sounded magical.
But then, of course, my experience over the last two and a half years, since really making music, I’ve just been exposed to more and more of myself, I guess. Having to do photoshoots and having to do all this press stuff and talk about what I feel and what I’m thinking all the time, I think that has an effect of pushing me a little more inward more often. And it just led to me noticing all of these signs.
While I feel like the stories and the images of everything I’ve made before this definitely capture essence and parts of me, I don’t think I felt like that was necessarily the best representation of me.
What’s changed to make Jupiter feel like a truer representation of yourself?
Realising that I’m nonbinary and looking back over the past few years at all of these moments where I wanted to do things a little bit differently but didn’t know why. Like, I remember a photoshoot where I was like, “I think this is really cool,” and it was a bit more feminine or whatever, and people were like, “I don’t know if that’s the vibe,” and I was like, “OK, I’m new at this.”
Now it’s like, No, that’s a part of me, and I need those parts to be honest. Through this project, I found this relationship with what it means to me to be honest with my music. I find honesty to be a sort of protection in a weird way.
The whole thing of writing about all of these stories and trying to capture the essence of what it means to me to be genderqueer, nonbinary, gender nonconforming – whatever you want to call it – I had so much anxiety about doing it wrong and about this idea of, if I did it, then it would somehow take away from other people’s experiences.
How did you overcome the anxiety you felt about mishandling the delivery?
A lot of conversations with my friends and family, a lot of learning, a lot of reading, listening. And it dawned on me, it can’t be wrong if it’s true. Like, if it’s how I feel, then even if someone doesn’t like it or if someone doesn’t agree with that existence, then that’s OK, because it’s true. It was that and this idea I have of responsibility.
My process of coming out to my family and friends, relatively speaking, has been far and away a really positive experience compared to other people. I feel really lucky and privileged to have the community I have around me and I know that that’s not often the case. And so, I feel like, in having that space and having that safety and that community, to hold onto these things so tightly as to not share them through my art, it doesn’t make sense to me.
So, you feel like, given your relative privilege, you have a responsibility to lift up others?
I feel like I owe my communities as a Black person, as a queer person. And also, something I realised the other day, I felt such a weight lifted once I released “Violence.” I could be like, I made a song about Blackness. I have given to my culture. I’ve made my stance and my perspective clear: I care about my people.
It’s important to me that this project, that Forest, that I, stand for something. Just making music isn’t really enough. Like, it needs to have more purpose in the world. Even if it’s not overtly political, it’s next to it, and it gives people something to see.
Is that the biggest shift from The Year of February to Jupiter – that you’ve realised you want to offer something of greater substance than just fun pop songs?
I always have wanted to, but I haven’t known how. I want to stand for things, but I don’t want to tell people how to live. I also don’t want to tell people how to be or how to see the world. I want to tell an authentic view of what I see and trust that I’m doing my research and I’m always learning.
So with Jupiter, I was like, “I really want to write about this but I don’t know how – I don’t want to be preachy and I don’t want to be wrong.” I was talking about Jupiter behind the clouds and someone was like, “What if you’re from Jupiter? You know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus?” And that just made all the sense in the world. It gave me an angle, an opportunity to address it from a more magical place.
Listen to Jupiter here
