ALT BLK ERA INTERVIEW: MUSIC, MOBO’s, AND MAYHEM
INTERVIEW | ALT BLK ERA by Gracie Erskine
With the MOBO Awards fast approaching next week, Northern Exposure’s Gracie Erskine sat down with rising, genre curdling sibling duo, Alt Blk Era. The Nottingham sisters, Nairobi and Chaya, are facing their third nomination for Best Alternative Act. Despite taking home the crown last year, the pair are up against star studded competitors such as Blood Orange, Rachel Chinouriri and Michael Kiwanuka. With the gift of the gab, the girls shed light on their inspirations, beginnings and who they’re wanting to catch on the carpet next week…
How are you feeling about next week’s MOBO’s? Are you excited?
Nyrobi: Yeah, as excited as we can be with everything, I think it’s a little bit of nerves, a lot of nerves, but regulating those. I think it’s the… It’s the prep. The prep beforehand. I think it’s the same feeling as before we go on stage. It’s like, not that you want it to be over, but you’re like…Let’s just go, let’s just get to the red carpet and start the event. I guess just panic mode a little bit.
As far as the red carpet goes, who are you kind of wanting to be mingling with, networking, catching up with?
Nyrobi: I know that if I see like Pharrell Williams performing, if I see him just casually stood about, I’m gonna be like, ‘come here Pharrell, I’ve got some love to share with you about how much I love your music.’ And I’m excited to see Blood Orange as well, who’s in our category. Because I’ve never actually heard about him before the nomination, but then I’ve been like listening to his music and feeling like, how the hell haven’t I known about someone like this? So i want to go and say hi.
Chaya: Also I’m excited to see Jim Legxacy if we get to see him , I love his music so much.
It’s your third year being nominated for Best Alternative Act. You seem to be spearheading it a bit now, but who do you want to see coming into the space and taking a bit of recognition now?
Nyrobi: I think artists that haven’t been in the category before. I think this year it’s really opened up in terms of the likes of Rachel Chichinori, and how she’s in the alternative, r&b part of it. I’m just really happy that it’s opened up so much in different genres in that alternative category.
I guess a little bit more personal, but I think it’s good to see younger people in the category. Because from what we face in the industry is, ‘oh you’re too young to get things like this’ or ‘your music can’t be good until you’ve been around for 10 years’. That kind of pressure and ideology that we feel is really present in the industry, I think it’d be nice to see more people our age or even younger coming into the category and kind of taking up space in that way.
The way you hybrid and blend genres is so defiant, particularly in the space, do you feel like you’re wanting to purposefully push stereotypes, is there a conscious effort?
Nyrobi: Well, I’d say there’s almost no conscious effort. It’s a really crazy story how we found alternative music. It wasn’t in the traditional way through parents or friends at school, it was in one of our earliest studio sessions in 2022.
We were doing a more like a trappy, rap song, I was in the booth, I was going for it, and then when we came back and listened to the track, I was like, I’m giving 100% and the track’s only feeling 50%. Like, what’s going on? And then we see a stack of guitars next to the producer. And then we think, let’s just add a bit of guitar! Let’s be edgy. Guitar? Whoa! But that’s really how it was. It sounds so cringe, but it was really like, let’s be super edgy right now and let’s just get a bit of guitar going. It was the power chords, we were like we’re not sure what kind of music this is, or where it fits, or who even makes music like this but we’re gonna find out.
So we were hitting Rough Trade, playing music to the people at work asking them to tell us what genre we were becoming, what artists should we be listening to and things like that. And they said you guys should listen to Bring Me the Horizon or In This Moment. And we were like, hell, yeah, let’s go and learn about these people. And then it kind of blossomed from there.
I think with our music, it’s not like intentionally trying to be disruptive. We’re just trying to have fun and make sure that the songs sound as good as they can, whether it’s mixing rock with rap or with pop or with drum and bass. I think it’s just really we do whatever we want to do and if we like it, then we like it.
You can really tell that authenticity in your music. Your latest single ‘Tissues’, that really has quite a pop element. Do you find that your inspirations now are changing, who are your inspirations?
Nyrobi: I think that throughout our career you can hear what genres we were listening to most at that time. Starting off it was Billie Eilish, Melanie Martinez and then when we started getting introduced into heavier stuff it went into Ashniko, and then it was Bring Me The Horizon before we had a massive introduction to The Prodigy.
Chaya: I think that was the main influence for Rave Immortal (2025) We were thinking this is fun, we want to create something that sounds as fun and exciting as this but still has the rock element,
Nyrobi: The strong guitars are across all of our songs. It’s like rock is the parent and the sub-genres are all the children. Because it’s all about interest, isn’t it? Because we just listen to so much music, we don’t want to box ourselves and say that this is our genre. There is an Alt Blk Era sound, but I don’t think you can put a genre around it.
With your new EP ‘Our World’ coming out on the 22nd May, what teasers and information can you share with us?
Nyrobi: We just really wanted to get it out now. It’s a reflection of how we’re feeling about everything that’s going on in the world and it felt pretty urgent that we spoke our mind. ‘Tissues’ is about validating the emotion of being scared and angry and helpless. It’s okay to feel that way, and you’re not supposed to just pretend that everything is normal. It is the most important track as well as the title track, ‘Our World’, which is about, not wanting to be someone that just like stays in that negativity.
I think it’s important for us to have an emotional journey in our tracks. ‘Our World’ is about bringing people into our world. With a special highlight on young people, young artists, young creators, but anyone who’s stepping into a scene where they’re not feeling welcomed or feeling discriminated against in any form. Particularly to do with age, but kind of saying no this is our world. It’s a song of hope and encouragement.
I don’t think you need any kind of hope and encouragement yourself, you seem to be going from strength to strength. Your debut album, ‘Rave Immortal’ was released last year, you played Glastonbury and won a MOBO. What’s on your 2026 vision board, so to say?
Nyrobi: Well, we have got loads of international collaborations planned, which I think is really exciting. I think we’ve been planning this for years now.
Chaya: We’ve got a tour to look forward to! I’m so excited for tour, it feels like we haven’t been on tour in ages!
Nyrobi: There is definitely a different energy from when you do your own show to a festival or like support tour because the vibe’s different. When you do a festival half the crowd know you but then the other half you’re convincing that they should listen to you. When it’s your show, everyone knows all the words, everyone’s got the right energy and knows what we stand for in terms of like acceptance. There’s so much range in our crowds, with age with gender, with height, I mean the height thing you really see. It’s really important at our shows that it feels really homely and there’s a strong emphasis on community.
If you can’t share anything about your upcoming international collab, who would be your dream collab, who would you want to get in the studio with the most?
Chaya: It would be just cool to do a song with like everyone that we listen to.
Nyrobi: I think the main one for me would be Billie Eillish, because she was like a childhood artist. From when I was in my tween era and through growing up, she’s always been with me. She was my first introduction to alternative music because I grew up listening to mainstream music, so when Billie Eilish came out with the blue hair it just felt like whoa this is super edgy, this is super different.
If you could describe your sound and your ethos in one word, to someone who’s never listened to you before, what would it be?
Nyrobi: Our music itself, I think it’s exciting to listen to. We’re exciting.
Chaya: Mine is like three words… I would say like ying-and-yang. I feel like everything about us there’s always opposites.
Nyrobi: Our music, our styles, even our personalities, it’s perfectly balanced. It’s an exciting ying and yang.
You spoke your visuals there for a second, when you’re going into making song or an album how important is kind of balancing the aesthetic and the visuals against the music?
Nyrobi: I’ve got the confidence to wear a massive white dress casually to the local co-op after a show, because I’ve got to get my bits. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m a confident person. So I think that the aesthetic is like a natural extension on being confident-ish. But we are huge concept girlies. Whenever we write a project or just one song maybe, what’s the storyline of the song? I feel like we’re very precise in that manner, we like to start off with the the titles of our songs. We’ve been told that’s really odd. But we don’t start with a chorus or something normal, we start with a title and then we go into a verse which has nothing to do with the title, because we don’t mention the title in our verses. So I think everything’s a bit topsy-turvy, but it works for us.
Alt Blk Era’s ‘Our World’ tour kicks off 21st May at London’s O2 Academy Islington, before heading to Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol before a hometown closing show in Nottingham. Remaining tickets can be found here.
Manchester’s Co-Op Live hosts the MOBO Awards 30th Anniversary on the 26th March, and to see whether Alt Blk Era strike a consecutive win, grab one of the last few tickets here.
