SassyBlack

SassyBlack is always busy. Known off-stage as Catherine “Cat” Harris-White, the Seattle-based singer-songwriter-producer is also an event curator, a freelance writer, and an entrepreneur. (Not to mention, an actor—watch her playing Ruth Brown in the first episode of HBO’s Vinyl.) However, she first caught the world's ear as one half of the afrofuturistic hip-hop duo THEESatisfaction, who just this week announced that they'd split. “As growing artists, the members of THEESatisfaction reached a point that in order to continue growing each individual needed to move on to the next phase of their career," Harris-White told The FADER. "For me, as a classically trained jazz vocalist it felt like the right time." Alongside all her other endeavors, she's been baring her soul on her SassyBlack SoundCloud page for the past two years, cranking out beats and EPs as a solo act.

In fact, Harris-White embodies the kind of work ethic Baby Boomers like to believe is devoid amongst screen-obsessed Millennials. Facing obstacles common to young people living in America’s cities—dramatic rent increases, displacement of communities of color and people living on low incomes, pay rates that barely keep up with the rising cost of living—she has responded in turn by becoming her own one-woman management team, serving as her own producer, promoter, booker, and all-around advocate. As a result, she has emerged as one of the Pacific Northwest’s most promising and enterprising musicians.

Now, the assiduous young artist is bringing the world her futuristic-pop perspective on dating with her first full-length solo album, No More Weak Dates. Hopping from cheeky self-assurance to raw self-doubt and back again, Harris-White explores dating’s highs and lows with an emotional honesty that is instantly relatable. The titular opening song lays the groundwork. No more, no more weak dates, she croons over a stark beat until it becomes a mantra for the musical journey that follows. Singles “New Boo” and “Comicon” combine funk and electro-soul sensibilities, conveying the type of fun idealism that walks hand-in-hand with new relationships. But other songs capitalize on Harris-White’s penchant for minor tones, well-serving lyrics about insecurity, distrust, and waning romantic interest. On “Give it to God,” for example, she sings, Baby can you reach my standards?, repeating it like it’s a challenge. No More Weak Dates is just as mercurial as modern dating, infused throughout by the smoldering, jazzy quality that has become a hallmark of SassyBlack vocal and production stylings.

Harris-White talked to The FADER by phone as she hustled through the streets of Seattle, sharing her insights on her groove, her city, and the origins of her new album.

There are a lot of albums about dating in the pop music landscape. What’s different about the perspective you’re sharing with No More Weak Dates?

I think mine’s very cynical in a way. My album also doesn’t have a resolution. It doesn’t say, "Hey, we’re married!" or "Hey, I hate you for life!" It’s kind of a circular conversation about dating. Also, I mention that I date all kinds of people. It’s not just me singing about a woman or me singing about a man. It’s me being open to the possibilities. I do use “he” and “she” pronouns, I also use “they” and “them” in a couple songs. And some songs it doesn’t have any. I also go for some weirder sounds, in terms of soul music.

On the album, we kind of get to explore the different aspects of your identity through the lens of dating you—your identity as a grown, queer woman of color; as a young person still learning from past relationships and looking forward to future ones; as a sci-fi nerd. Why did you choose this concept?

I’m turning 30 this year and I think that’s been the pivotal thing. I kind of had an idea when I was younger that by the time I was 30 I’d be getting married. It was sort of freaking me out. I’m just realizing that I wasn’t at the point that I thought I would be at. Then it was like, well, what about dating? Dating is crazy. I’m not good at it. I wind up being someone’s friend or scaring them away or they really like me and then I’ll be like, "What is happening?" So I just was like, "What if I just approach that?" I guess No More Weak Dates is just a proclamation to myself—because I’ve also just been on a ton of whack dates—like, “Don’t do that anymore! Find self love and worth and understand that you have purpose and that you shouldn’t be treated poorly. You have options.” I thought it was important to approach that as a black queer woman. Also, the way the album is, it’s very universal at the same time.

You produced the album too. How did you get started producing?

I started when I was in college. I had GarageBand on my laptop, so I was like, "Cool, I’m gonna start playing with this." I’d make up songs and then I’d sing them and then I’d beatbox over them, which is something I did when I was a kid with like a tape player. I wasn’t really comfortable in doing it until like 2012 or '11. I would tinker around with Ableton, but I was super nervous about it because I just didn’t want people to tell me I was bad. And a lot of people told me I was bad or they didn’t like my beats. So it was just kind of nerve-wracking. I can’t remember when I [started] to feel super confident, but I started putting up stuff on my SoundCloud and I was making more and more beats and trying to get more comfortable with myself. And I haven’t stopped. I just started owning it like, “I am a producer.” And now I am more than ever.

You’ve been making music for a long time, but this is your first full-length solo album. How did that factor into what you decided to put on it?

I was just going with my intuition. It was originally an EP that I made. I started making some beats and then it grew into an album. I was really taking a strategic approach to these songs, sitting with them and letting them grow and morph, not just letting them sit in one stage. I wanted to put together an album that I thought would represent me.

And at first I was asking people for opinions on how to approach my album. I’d play them a couple songs and some people that were kind of in the industry were like, “Oh, you need to do it like this. You need to do it like that.” And I know they had good intentions, but it was super discouraging because I was like, I’m not that chick. I’m not that person. I want to have urban audiences, but I’m not assuming that urban audiences only have one sound that they listen to. I’m understanding that black folks and queer folks also like listening to Bilal and also Chaka Kahn. I’m inspired by the same things that I think my audience is whether it’s Earth, Wind and Fire or Bobby McFerrin or Miles Davis or Ella [Fitzgerald]. I grew up listening to similar things and I’m gonna let that, whatever that sound is, inspire what I do.

Do you feel like queer black artists and audiences get pigeonholed by the music industry?

Most definitely, like all the time. I mean, I feel like people want us to be more angry or more happy or more queer or more black—there’s always the extremes. It’s like, [they] can’t just let it be, you know? And even like, there’s some artists that are queer and black that I don’t relate to and probably don’t relate to me. So, we just kind of get grouped into this massive cluster of people, you know?

There have been experiences where that happened to you personally?
I mean, just in articles and stuff like that. And it’s an honor too to be recognized for who I am. I just think sometimes people are like, "Oh, we’re getting ready to do this and it’s like everything’s like queer rap or queer hip-hop or, you know?" It could be good and bad, I think. Those labels help to distinguish the sound and what you’re getting ready to experience. Sometimes I think the labels can be too much. I try to take the best of it so that more queer folks can find me. It is how I identify, so it’s not something I’m hiding or running from.

Anyone who follows you on social media knows you are always working on something. In addition to SassyBlack you write, you curate shows, you sell stuff that you knit. Where does this hustle come from?

I think it’s like a health thing for me. I like to be busy, otherwise I get really sad. I love creating, and it’s just like I need to be creative for my life. Also, I need money. Being an artist doesn’t bring me all the money that I need and so I was like, well, let’s just sell these other things. I haven’t had a quote unquote “real job” since 2009 and so that’s where a lot of the hustle comes from. I’m also listening to people like, "You’re good at this, you’re good at that." I’m like, "Oh word? I probably could make that work."

What in your view does it take for a young artist to survive and thrive in a city like Seattle?

I mean, I wouldn’t suggest doing it the exact way I’m doing it because I’m crazy, like, off top. I would say keep your job, save up, try and live with people that you can deal with or that inspire you. For musicians, diversify your options in terms of being an artist. If you are the kind of artist that can teach people, do workshops, do panels, speak. If you’re someone who’s more adept to writing, write. If you’re someone who can produce for people, produce. Try to get into songwriting, different things like that. That is it, figuring out what makes you the most money that also keeps your soul alive. You gotta remember your soul. Can’t forget about that. It’s hard, you know, even for me. I’m still working at being sustainable. So I think that’s that would be some of the tips I guess. Oh, apply for grants.

Do you like being based in Seattle?

I love it.

Tell me more about what you like about the scene there and how that feeds into your artistry.

When I think about why I live in Seattle it’s not really the music scene, which is kind of funny. There’s a lot of nature here. I need that. Like, if I need to just get away from somebody, I can—or energy or whatever it might be, myself even. That’s really the major thing that inspires me. In terms of the music scene, people are always saying the Seattle scene’s growing, but I’m actually at the shows, I’m on boards for stuff, I pay attention and the scene is growing. There’s some really heavy hitters coming from Seattle and I think with the proper support they can really bust out. The music community, in terms of the organizations, are really working to support the Seattle scene. And I think they’re working harder on both sides to communicate. And I’m working hard to make them all communicate, being involved in it all.

What's next after No More Weak Dates?

I’m already working on my next album, an EP, and just mixtapes and some other stuff and looking forward to seeing where that goes. Maybe I’m like, "Ah music, why? I’m just gonna stop all this and start acting." We’ll see what happens. Definitely some more music though. I’m my own booking agent right now so I’ll be out on tour in different cities starting in June. - The Fader

Cat Harris-White has just blown her college fund – and she couldn’t be happier. In her infinite thirst for solo success, the singing half of THEESatisfaction has made it her business not only to write and perform the 13 tracks that make up her debut LP, ‘No More Weak Dates,’ but to take each and every aspect of the album’s recording, release and promotion into her own deft hands, depleting her savings account in the name of her art. But what her passbook lacks in zeros, her CV has gained in skills. “I just want to learn and get better at production,” she says, taking a deep breath before rhyming off the strings she’s been busily working on adding to her ever-growing bow, “and PR and managing and marketing myself. This is kind of like my grad PhD program for myself; it’s going to cost me pretty much as much as that would!”

Having steadily released her own music in the background, Harris-White chose 2016 as the year to finally step out from the shadows of the duo that’s made her famous in underground hip-hop circles. After touring THEESatisfaction’s acclaimed second LP, ‘EarthEE,’ the timing felt right. And when the decision was made, it came together with lightning speed. “It’s been really interesting,” she says. “I work a lot faster by myself. With this album, I started in October and finished in January, and had it mastered by mid-February. Which I guess is kind of crazy but it just moved a lot faster.

“I think the difference is that, working with someone else, you’re like, ‘Hey, do you like that?’ and I kinda use them to balance what’s going on, but with this I had to be like, ‘This song is good enough. This beat is fine, let’s keep going.’ So I had to learn to trust myself, essentially, with the creative process. I learned a lot more about myself.”

Brought up in Hawaii before settling in Seattle at the age of ten, Harris-White has been working on her music’s blueprint for as long as she can remember. “I had goals, even at that age,” she declares, before channeling a ten-year-old SassyBlack: “‘I want to write, I want to act, I want to be on stage!’ My parents were very supportive and I’ve literally been doing it ever since I got off the plane.

“Before we get to a new place, we’re already planning,” she says, having moved around Hawaii and lived for a time in San Francisco. “Not everyone does that, and it took me a while to realise that. But we got here, to Seattle, on a Thursday and on Friday my mom took me to sign up for school and I started on Monday.”

It’s this enterprise and sheer, brute determination that was vital in forging the young artist in the early stages of her life. “It’s definitely what inspired me to be creative,” she says, gleaming with familial pride.

She also credits the freedom of the lifestyle in America’s 50th state and the home-schooling she received during that period as key in ushering her towards a life motivated by the romantic rather than the prosaic. “My parents were involved in the community in Hawaii so we were just in the scene taking African dance classes and learning different things like basket-weaving and stuff,” she recalls. “I just remember having the ability to be in my own world so when I came to Seattle it was definitely a culture shock in a lot of ways,” she exclaims, transported back to those uncomfortable initial steps. “And when you’re ten and eleven that’s when everything gets super harsh, so that was an intense experience for me in itself. But everywhere my family goes, we hit the ground running.”

That same sense of liberty has shaped her spectral sense of self. For Harris-White, notions of gender, sexuality, identity and culture are fluid. She resists being classified as exclusively female, and she identifies as neither straight nor gay, instead describing herself as queer. “I can’t control who I fall in love with,” she admits sheepishly, as though she’s tried her best but just can’t help it, “and I fall in love a lot. I’m not a binary person; I have many spirits and energies within me.” She says this without missing a beat, and I get the sense that this particular thesis has been gradually polished over time. “I’m not just masculine, I’m not just feminine. For me specifically, I don’t just date women, I don’t just date men. I date whoever I want and that’s why I feel queer works best for me. I’m a queer person in general; I’m a weird person. So it encompasses a lot of my dimensions. A lot of people are like, ‘You’re a lesbian, why are you with that guy?’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not a lesbian!’” She remembers how she would update online profiles as a teenager as she moved further and further away from societal norms. “I just remember that when I felt confident I changed my bio from ‘straight’ to ‘lesbian’ and then ‘queer.’ And then it was ‘unidentified,’” she giggles, “‘don’t care!’”

The roads of this rich biographical backdrop have led SassyBlack to her first full-length album, a record that draws on hip-hop, jazz, soul and electronica but which refuses to be pinned down. The fruit of her musical labour and the manifestation of that hard-earned would-be college cash is a concept album that takes the trials and tribulations of Generation Y courtship as the muse for its agile brushstrokes. While it may sound like a narrow framework – how much, you might be asking, can one possibly say about Tinder? – there is more to ‘No More Weak Dates’ than first meets the eye. With the dating game as its kernel, the narratives snake off in countless directions, each song becoming a separate scene in the overall play of Harris-White’s chequered love life. Consequently, it reveals more than just the musician’s growing exasperation at the quality of the ‘scene’. Rather, the collection becomes a platform from which she can declare her fluid sexuality, where she can confront the actualities of human sexual desire and skilfully explore the psychological complexities of human relationships with all their inherent political power plays.

Crucially, loneliness also lurks at every corner for the Millennial narrator; a reminder that all is not as well as it may seem for a generation characterised by its delaying of life’s traditional milestones. “I’m 29, I’m going to be 30 this year. When I was younger I thought I would be settled down by now and there have been a couple of relationships which I thought would be lifelong and it didn’t turn out that way.” She sighs and orders her thoughts. “So it’s kind of me being vulnerable and dealing with adulthood. I created all the beats and songs with those concepts in mind.”

Her take on what passes for love for a queer woman in the 2010s is also boldly idiosyncratic; the characters in her sketches of romance’s early fumblings won’t find their lips meeting at the end of the same strand of spaghetti. Instead Harris-White acts out disturbing stalker-ish phone calls from flirtations gone sour and imagines first dates at comic book conventions as she packs her songs dense with references, from Seattle suburbia to sci-fi. “You were chillin’ with a sexy Trekkie,” she teases on ‘Comicon,’ “I’ll be your second in command.” It’s these quirks that imbue the album with a personality that’s light-years ahead of the love-song landscape in 2016. “It might lose the listener,” she asserts, “but it also engages them. I like making references that they might not get but they might want to research afterwards and it can spark their interest.”

The wholehearted embrace of the quirks that make up Cat Harris-White is what sets her apart, but she’s quick to point out that self-assurance didn’t always come so easily. Science fiction, which has been a constant thread running through the music she makes with both THEESatisfaction and Shabazz Palaces, embarrassed her at first. “I was kind of a closeted sci-fi fan,” she laughs. “My family likes DC Comics and Marvel and stuff like that and I was always like, ‘Oh, I dunno,’ and felt uncomfortable about it.” Since then she has honed an aesthetic indebted to the space-age musical pioneers of the ’70s and ’80s. “Michael Jackson is a huge afro-futurism sci-fi artist, which I don’t think is truly acknowledged,” she says. “He had Moonwalker and Captain Eo for Disney, the one where he’s the captain of a spaceship. Those things also inspired me in terms of being an entertainer who can have the sci-fi effect.”

Parliament, Sun Ra, and Erykah Badu are also name-dropped and she waxes lyrical on the “fearlessness” of the likes of Herbie Hancock, Prince, Stevie Wonder and Stanley Clarke, who refused to be straitjacketed not only by genre, but also by time and space. “Knowing your boundaries but not being pushed into a box, that’s what really inspires me.” - Loud And Quiet

“You wanna know about my worst-ever date?” says Cat Harris-White, a.k.a. SassyBlack, formerly one half of R&B/hip-hop duo THEESatisfaction. “OK. Hmm. Right. I’m gonna have to keep it very vague.”

Here are the specifics she can share: Cat was traveling from her home in Seattle to an unspecified East Coast city to perform a show, and a long-time flirtation offered her a place to stay, with (ahem) benefits. But after texting her possible-beau the day of her trip, possible-beau replied: “Oh, uh, you were coming *this* week? I didn’t realize...”

“But I’d screenshot our chats,” cackles Cat. “Because I’m kind of petty. So I was like, [crank voice], ‘Here’s the receipts!’ So they were like, ‘Alright, alright…’”

The exchange set the tone for a long weekend wherein possible-beau stood Cat up at the airport, ignoring texts and calls, and then directed Cat to drag her suitcases and equipment to a nearby bar only to discover possible-beau tying-one-on with their ex and explaining they were off to Boston the next day “because there’s nothing happening in the city this weekend,” but that Cat could totally crash at their apartment. Only they didn’t give Cat their keys, and then they missed their train back from Boston, so Cat was stranded without her gear, without her suitcase, and without a change of clothes.

“When they finally got back from Boston, they invited me to spend the final night of my stay with them,” adds Cat. “But I grabbed my stuff and booked an Airbnb, because even though I had no money I would rather go broke than be about them. And then they started sending me angry text messages…”

It’s hard to be a single woman in the city, looking for love, or even just somewhere to stay for the night. That’s the subtext of No More Weak Dates, Cat’s debut solo full-length as SassyBlack. Cat’s best-known as THEESatisfaction, alongside ex-partner Stasia Irons, whose sublime 2015 LP EarthEE blended Blade Runner funk, Zora Neale Hurston references, identity politics, and environmental concerns with rare skill. No More Weak Dates, by contrast, focuses on a single theme. A semi-autobiographical concept-album tackling the dating game from the perspective of a queer black woman, the album ricochets from the heady hopefulness of new love (“New Boo”), through the uncertainty and paranoia that follow when shit gets messy (“Circle Of Love,” “Mysterious Calls”), to the bleakness and cynicism that descend when the wheels finally come off (“Forest Of Desire,” “Secret Dreams Of A Baller”). It’s smart, funny, often painfully honest stuff.

“I was really nervous when making music with THEESatisfaction because I was seeking approval a lot,” she says, via Skype from her Seattle home. “My whole thing was, ‘I hope I don’t fail. I hope I don’t disappoint you.’” Her SassyBlack alter-ego, meanwhile, has proven a freeing experience, allowing her to tap into stuff she might struggle to express under her own name. “SassyBlack is totally a part of me,” she nods. “She allows me to be super-free, to say slick things, to be witty, in different ways. In THEESatisfaction, I was in a relationship with Stas—first a friendship, and then an actual ‘relationship.’ So if I was going through some stuff, some of it would come out in the music, but not a lot. It was complicated.”

Born in San Francisco, Cat relocated to Seattle as a kid, and grew up obsessing over Michael Jackson’s Dangerous, Tony Toni Tone’s The Revival, “Sunshower” by Dr Buzzard’s Savannah Band and “pretty much every Chic song”. By the age of five, she was writing and performing her own songs, and went to college in Seattle to study Vocal Jazz. It was there that she bumped into Stasia Irons, and the pair bonded over a shared love for jazz, old school hip-hop and neo-soul. “A lot of our friends weren’t really on that, you know?” she told me, in 2015. “They were listening to Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys, 50 Cent, Lil Wayne… Which was cool! But we were trying to find some deeper sounding music. We connected on music first, and then developed a romance.”

The duo played around Seattle, and caught the ear of Shabazz Palaces’ Ishmael Butler, who had them appear on Shabazz Palaces’ 2011 debut full-length Black Up and their 2014 follow-up Lese Majesty, and introduced them to Sub Pop Records, who released THEESatisfaction’s two albums. A couple of weeks ago, however, the duo announced on their Tumblr page that the group was done, “after seven years of creating, touring, pushing boundaries and breaking through glass ceilings.”

“THEESatisfaction was a great learning experience,” says Cat now. “I was able to travel all over the world, get signed to Sub Pop and work with some amazingly talented people.” But, she says, the pair had “reached a point that, in order to continue growing, each individual needed to move on to the next phase in their career. For me, as a classically trained jazz vocalist, it felt like the right time. Being a solo artist and producer has always been something I wanted to explore.”

No More Weak Dates finds Cat putting her life “on blast, even if not everything on the album is entirely 100 percent my own personal story.” The process has been illuminating. “I realized, damn, I’ve been through a LOT,” she laughs. “Like, I’ve put myself out there a lot. And making this album has helped me date better. I have a hard time with it, and I hated dating for the longest time. Because of all the awful things that could happen, the nasty surprises.”

Those nasty surprises are the theme of one of the darker songs on the album. Set to eerie, mysterious synth-funk, “Circle Of Love” finds Cat wondering “How would you feel / If you found out new boo wasn’t so new to the crew?” and musing on the feelings of jealousy that can be provoked upon discovering a new lover’s sexual history. As Steve Malkmus once crooned, “You can never quarantine the past.”

“I’ve had some weird connections,” Cat says, of the inspiration for the song. “Like, I dated someone whose friend was my ex, and my ex used to tell her all about me when we were dating. You can’t escape this stuff. It’s a small world. We have this weird entitlement, this sense of ownership over our partners. But no, they own themselves, and they had lives before they met us. It’s hilarious, really.”

No More Weak Dates isn’t just a catalogue of romantic tribulations; the album also features romantic Tribbles (for non-nerds, tribbles are fluffy, purring, gentle creatures that feature in four episodes of Star Trek). “Comicon” is an erotic excursion wherein Cat develops a level of trust deep enough to take her new lover along to the Emerald City Comicon, where they’ll be “dressing like Klingons” and “participating in my sci-fi fantasies,” as Cat winks, “I bet you didn’t think you were chilling with a sexy Trekkie.”

“I’ve still not been to Comicon yet,” Cat admits. “So it’s partly a song about how I want to go, and what I want to happen there. I want to see Michael Dorn [the actor who plays heroic Klingon Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation] talk about what it was like to make the show, I wanna see all the props, blueprints, and costume designs… That would be a fantastic date-night for me. Mainly, I wanted to write a song that people of color, queer folk and other people who like soul music and might also like Star Trek could relate to… A psychedelic, soulful song, about how I could be Worf, and you could be Jadzia Dax…”

Part of Cat’s attraction to sci-fi culture—and Star Trek in particular—is its empathy with people of color and people who identify as queer. “I felt so free watching Star Trek, because even since the very first season there’s always been a black person, a woman,” she says. “So I always felt like I could identify with Star Trek. Even as a queer person… Jadzia Dax [a character from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine] was a Trill who slipped between genders; she was a man in a previous life. I feel very masculine and feminine in my being, and I feel like Jadzia Dax really captured that. She was really attractive to me, for her femininity and her masculinity, and she was constantly transitioning through life into different beings and different genders, and different races as well, different species. In fantasy and sci-fi, there is nothing to hold you back: you could be anything, a dragon, or a lamp. You could be *anything mystical and magical. There are so many boundaries on Earth, but in fantasy I get to be a hero. I could be Storm from X-Men, and get to change the weather, to control *everything. It’s super-powerful.”

Though many of its messages and stories are universal, Cat says No More Weak Dates is written explicitly from a black, queer perspective. “I wanted people to know who the album’s about, and it’s about me,” she says. “So it’s not about a white woman or a white man. Naw, it’s about me. There are a lot of universal aspects, like, you ask somebody out and they let you down, or you think everything’s fine but actually it’s kind of creepy. Everyone’s just looking for love. The differences come with dealing with being marginalized. I think the every day stress of being a black person, put on top of being a woman, and being queer… There’s constant stresses, and when I’m looking for a partner, I’m looking for someone who can be there for me, and be present for me, while I’m dealing with those things.

“I can go to a bar, and maybe I’m being ignored. Someone who’s not dealing with the constant forms of oppression and marginalization that I am, they won’t see what I’m going through. They’ll be, like, ‘Why are you so annoyed? Just be patient.’ And I’ll be, I’m patient, I’m patient all the time, come help me! In their world, that’s not the same thing.

“That’s why it’s important for me to be, like, ‘These are my experiences as a black queer woman.’ This is why I’m so cynical, why I’m being critical about this, that’s why I’m having these dilemmas. If you think about it through my lens, you really understand why… I’m just tired, I just need someone to lay down with right now, because it’s really hard to find a life-partner who will be able to understand everything I’m going through.”

Making the album has, Cat says, been a therapeutic experience. “Like I said, I learned a lot. Like, a lot of the time, when I’m dating, I’m all about, ‘Who do I need to be, to impress that other person?’ But the truth is, it also has to be about, What do I need, to be happy? What do I need to be feeling?” The describes the songs as dark and mysterious, and while there’s some serious stuff going in the lyrics, Sassy Black’s psychedelic soul—the squelchy, bedroom-eyed synthscapes—also make for a fine soundtrack for seduction. “There’s some very seductive songs on there,” she nods, grinning. “And then there’s some songs on there that are lyrically super-real, which might kill the mood. Maybe throw the instrumentals on.”

Her own personal make-out music, she says, would be “jazz instrumentals. I’m a jazzy cat. Or even soft-funk, like some Steve Arrington, some George Duke, maybe even some Herbie Hancock. A good, classy Herbie album, though, nothing too crazy. I’m shooting for being in their musical realm, where they have some stuff that rocks out or is crazy, and some stuff that is super-smooth, where you feel like, ‘If I put on this record, everything will be alright.’”

Is No More Weak Dates SassyBlack’s super-smooth album, or her crazy album? “At one point I thought it was gonna be my comedy album,” Cat laughs, “and when I perform it live, I tell a bunch of jokes between the songs. I don’t know… It’s a good album for if you want to have feelings. All the feelings.” - Noisey

SassyBlack is the solo alias of Catherine “Cat” Harris-White of THEESatisfaction.

In May, SassyBlack will release debut album 'No More Lame Dates', which she says is "a semi-autobiographical exploration of the highs and lows of dating as a black queer woman in modern America."

Lead single New Boo is a neat and smooth outline of Harris-White's statement: an extension of the Afrofuturist aesthetics of THEESatisfaction that holds a beseeching message made all the more personal by stepping out alone. - Dummy Magazine

Along with more recognizable genres such as soul, R&B and psychedelia, SassyBlack describes her sound as hologram funk. “It’s something that is so present but totally fantasy at the same time,” she explained in an interview with The Huffington Post. “It’s super space age, funk in the future.”

SassyBlack, born Catherine “Cat” Harris­-White​, is one half of the queer AfroFuturist hip hop dream duo known as THEESatisfaction. Harris-White is the singer, whose jazzy sound mixes the warm comfort of a silky robe with the futuristic mystery of an alien whisper. Stasia “Stas” Irons raps and lays the beats. The two used to date but are now friends and artistic collaborators.

With her newest project, “No More Weak Dates,” Harris-White embarks on her first full-length solo album. It’s been a long time coming, given the fact that she’s been making music since she can remember. As a kid growing up in Hawaii, Harris­-White​ was homeschooled, with a fluid and open curriculum that included museum visits and family dance parties. “I was able to be super free and creative,” she said. “I was probably walking around singing all the time.”

It wasn’t until the age of ten, however, when her family relocated to Seattle, that Harris-White was compelled to actually put words to paper. “Seattle was such a culture shock for me,” she explained. “I didn’t know it even existed for real. I thought it was just the funny place in ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’ The weather was different, the diversity factor was way different.”

Harris-White also switched from home schooling to public schooling, a transition she wasn’t particularly fond of. The idea of waking up early to spend all day, exhausted and nervous and frazzled, around teachers who themselves seemed constantly flustered, was baffling. “The whole structure of it didn’t make sense to me.”

“I was very weird,” Harris-White continued. She dabbled in various extracurricular activities without feeling particularly at home in any single one — sports, choir, acting, activism. She began to get involved in trainings about institutional racism and speaking out against it.

One of her greatest passions growing up, something her family had instilled in her since a young age, was science fiction. From “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” to the work of Octavia Butler, Harris-White found herself drawn to stories that revolved around embracing the other.

“I felt alienated in so many ways growing up,” she said. “To watch ‘Stark Trek’ and see a black woman on the show each week — that was a place I could identify with. There was an understanding that there are so many beings and spirits and types of energies in the universe.”

Another major fascination: Michael Jackson. “Ridiculously obsessed,” in Harris-White’s words. She recalls sitting glued to the screen as VH1 and MTV played all-day marathons of Jackson’s videos, watching “Thriller” over and over again despite being scared out of her wits. Jackson gets a shoutout in SassyBlack’s first single off the upcoming album, “New Boo,” when she refers to a “pretty young thing.” As Harris-White and Irons explained in an earlier interview with Bitch Magazine: “We’re openly queer and we like women and we want women to know that we like them.”

Harris-White started writing songs and poems when she was ten, but it wasn’t until much later that she gathered the courage to show her music to other people. “I was so nervous about my singing voice,” she said. “I went to school for music but I was terrified just thinking about people thinking about my voice.” Eventually Irons saw Harris-White perform at an open mic and the two began to experiment together on GarageBand. They debuted their joint sound at Harris-White’s senior recital in college. In the past eight years they’ve released 11 projects together.

On the cover of their most recent album, “EarthEE,” the two sit naked on a golden geometric throne set agains a purple galaxy twinkling with stars. White netting partially covers their faces and bodies, reminiscent of tribal body paint or Bjork’s crystalline masks. The project is a breakup album, but to an unwitting listener it sounds more like a trippy tour through the cosmos, looking down at the planet like it’s a singular detail of an expansive tapestry.

Numerology, horoscopes, spirituality — all play a role in Harris-White’s otherworldly worldview, and her music.”I believe in the universe. I believe in God on Earth,” Harris-White said. “We’re a part of the universe and we’re our own universes as humans and as beings in bodies. We have nervous systems that look like galaxies. We emulate each other and look like each other. We’re all energies in sync with one another, and also have energies within ourselves.”

SassyBlack sounds like she was birthed from the same futuristic womb as THEESatisfaction, but perhaps raised on a sister planet. “Collaborating with anyone, you have a different energy going in,” Harris-White said. “We both have our own vibes, our own plans, our own process. That’s going to naturally come out in whatever we create together. For me, working by myself has allowed me access to more of my thoughts. The only person I have to compromise with is myself. There is way more space for me to exist. I’m in my own little spaceship.”

Harris-White thinks of her alter-ego Sassy Black as both a character and an extension of herself, and ultimately something in between. “Me in a Blaxploitation movie,” she described. She’s rambunctious, feisty, sensitive, loving, jittery and bossy — all of which plays out in the music, from the fluid lyrics to the coincidentally skittish drum kit. “SassyBlack is me going into my adult self; it’s an evolution of me. Maybe in years past I’ve only seen little bits of her.”

SassyBlack’s past projects include “Personal Sunlight,“ a six-song album celebrating the artist’s actualizing of her full potential, and “Blackest Winter,“ an awesome rebuttal to the many years spent dreaming of a white Christmas. “May your holiday and winter be black,” the album website reads.

The new album is called “No More Weak Dates,” a plea the best of us can wholeheartedly understand and relate to. The idea was inspired by Harris-White’s recent adventures in online dating, and the all too familiar feeling that, despite pushing 30, you’re suddenly as awkward as a preteen. “It was like ‘Oh god, I’m 13 again,’” Harris-White lamented. “I felt like I was in a Yahoo chatroom.”

Obviously, dating has been a dominant theme in pop culture storytelling long before Tinder came into the picture. But even growing up on sitcoms like “Saved by the Bell” and “Martin” and comics like Archie, Harris-White felt like the popular depictions of dating didn’t quite hit home. In her own life, dating didn’t involve a string of meet-cutes, hilarious misunderstandings and blowup heartbreaks. It’s more, in Harris-White’s words, “awkward and all over the place.”

In music, the conversations about dating are also pretty one-dimensional. “It’s all ‘Oh girl, you’re gonna get it tonight,’” Harris-White joked. “It’s very extreme — either I love you, I hate you, or we’re going to have sex. What about the middle ground? I felt like releasing that. What if you have a weird conversation and you feel terrible afterwards but you keep dating them?”

With “No More Weak Dates,” Harris-White explores the range of emotions you experience while dating. It’s not based on any one person, but various memories remixed into digestible clusters. And, in true hologram funk fashion, the album includes some memories that exist in the realm of pure fantasy, like, for example going to Comic-Con.

“Tonight we’re going to the Comic-Con / And we’re dressing like Klingons / Participate in my sci-fi fantasy / I bet you didn’t think you were chillin’ with a sexy Trekky”
Other memorable songs include “Mysterious Calls,” a modern day “Bugaboo,” in which SassyBlack begs a creepy caller to take a hint before she flips out. And there’s the lead single “New Boo,” in which Harris-White schools a potential new beau on the fact that although she gives off the vibes of a “PYT” (pretty young thing), she’s grown and sexy and, ostensibly, not looking to play games.

“Sensing the hesitation in your voice / I’m here for pleasure / remember it’s your choice / Waiting on your consent / People say I’m intense / I guess it makes sense / I’m a fierce lioness / So why pretend?”
You could call it unusual to have an R&B jam about a budding love affair between two women. But what’s more radical is SassyBlack’s ability to navigate the eternally fluid ambivalence of dating with confidence and swagger, dancing between the mixed messages and disappointing encounters. With “New Boo” SassyBlack harnesses the all too real struggle of trying to read a potential hookup’s vibe, without ever once doubting herself or her magical lioness powers. It’s a song about budding love that emphasizes the importance of consent, and celebrates SassyBlack’s independent badassery, regardless of what goes down with this sexy stranger. It sounds almost too good — at once too cool and progressive and positive and raw.

But alas, it’s not just a hologram. It’s real.

Listen to “New Boo” here and click here for SassyBlack’s upcoming album “No More Weak Dates,” available May 17. You can pre-order the digital album by following the link. - The Huffington Post

Since they broke through via guest spots on Shabazz Palaces's Black Up, THEESatisfaction have been floating somewhere in the space between Georgia Anne Muldrow's astral visions and Erykah Badu's earthly perception. Their strain of rap&B is tinged with cosmic insight but always tugging earthward, mingling calls for acknowledgement, autonomy, and freedom with utopian visions and sinuous grooves. In the event that liberation actually comes, their music suggests, people will still need to dance.
As the singing half of THEESatisfaction, Catherine "Cat" Harris-White's sideline recording DIY EPs as SassyBlack has given her additional room to express her insights for a couple years now. Categorizing her music in part as "hologram funk," Harris-White's vocals sink into the similar hypnotic chants and plainspoken wisdom that she brings to her main gig. It's in a simpler form, sure; Personal Sunlight, her latest Bandcamp release, harmonizes with itself in a way that seems more intent on delivery than message.
It's the timbre of her voice, spread out along hooks-turned-mantras, that resonates the most. She runs it through fields of beats that are simple, minimalist, sometimes even forgettable in isolation; the fluttering, pendulous synth-guitar riffs in opening cut "(Dance in My) Personal Sunlight" is the closest this six-track EP comes to a memorable melodic element that arises from Harris-White's production rather than her voice. But the drums are catchy in their slipperiness, and keep a sense of focus in the track when Harris-White reels off into subtly melismatic runs. Her voice carries all the style and vibrance the music needs: Her repeated hooks locate an exact and satisfying balance between nonchalance and urgency (she nails it best in "Thriller (Game Healer)").
Her messages are simpler, more general, and more abstract than the Afrocentric core of EarthEE, but if the personal is political, Personal Sunlight isn't a departure at all, really. Harris-White credits this album as the product of a certain epiphany: "I woke up one day and realized my life's full potential. With this new found (previously understood, yet never truly fully actualized) reality, I created". What exactly it was that removed this last remaining block for her isn't specified, even on a pretty matter-of-fact record that rides on simple messages of radiant inspiration ("(Dance in My) Personal Sunlight"), the self-absorption behind environmental neglect ("What's the Sun WithOut the Rain"), and the unrestrained thrill of pure love ("Splish Splash (My Lovin on FLEEK)"). But even when the ratio of what she says to how she says it tilts this far toward the latter, it's not hard to feel the weight she brings to her voice. - Pitchfork

As one half of THEESatisfaction, SassyBlack has solidified herself as one of the most distinctive voices in this very funky and very cerebral corner of the left-field. And while the duo has been blazing trails both terrestrially and cosmically for some time now, Black’s got plenty more to offer all of you soul music futurists out there. Today she’s relinquished a full-bloom EP by the name of Personal Sunlight, headed by the glitchy electric groove of its title track, but that’s only the very tip of this icy musical mountain. The EP seamlessly transitions from spooky r&b-ism to more organic offerings without every losing a step, fluid and disjointed all at once. And while the EP stands at a slim 19-minutes and some change, it’s chock-full of reverie-inducing melodics and even shades a bit of a dystopian feel. Catch the transmission from SassyBlack’s Personal Sunlight EP below and peep one of her forthcoming tour dates to get all of the sonic goodies live and direct.

“I woke up one day and realized my life’s full potential. With this new found (previously understood, yet never truly fully actualized) reality, I created. I took action.” - Okayplayer

Have a listen to 'Personal Sunlight', the new EP from THEESatisfaction's SassyBlack - the third solo project from the Seattle singer-songwriter/producer. The soulstress will be heading out on a mini mini-tour from tomorrow (dates underneath), with a larger tour to follow in the fall. Stream below and and throwback to some THEESatisfaction hip-hop soul here (featuring Shabazz Palaces). - AfroPunk