“Have you ever really loved a human? Have you ever come across the wisest of them? They will slip right through your fingers, leaving the most unimaginable impression.”
Jupiter’s Purse is the debut EP by Dallas, Texas-based artist MATTIE on Leaving Records. Produced in conjunction with fellow Dallasite Black Taffy, Jupiter’s Purse is an expansive and unique work of experimental soul. Featuring 2021’s lauded single “Human Thing,” Jupiter’s Purse broadens a window into the fresh and exciting vision of MATTIE. Explaining the EP’s theme, MATTIE states, “I’m very fond of the planet Jupiter in the astrological sense because Jupiter represents expansion. It also represents the planet that takes everything that it is that we desire to see for ourselves in this life and it expands it, right? I was inspired to call it Jupiter’s Purse because it also reminded me of a female womb in a sense, the incubation process that happens within the womb, and kind of the purse being the womb of Jupiter. And the planet is basically holding our things and incubating them until it’s time to expand them.”
Of collaborating with Black Taffy, MATTIE says, “I felt like his melody and my pen, and the voice that was coming through me and what really wanted to be said through the lyrics, it’s like they just found a home together. And it was so effortless to really just kind of dance with his melodies and write these lyrics and these stories. So that’s basically how we kind of started working together, and yeah, I think we made a baby. A studio baby.” The EP’s five cohesive tracks loosely follow the story of a narrator named Mhuv. MATTIE states, “It’s really a story of myself as Mhuv, and how it’s felt for me to be at times identified with the body as a person, and then other times being able to observe the body, and know myself as that as well, and what that has felt like, kind of being in this sense of duality. Jupiter’s Purse is basically a vocal representation of a lot of duality that I experienced. In coming to know my true self, that duality kind of came more to the forefront, so I started to write from that, and to really understand the power in the duality, while returning back to myself as source.”
Director Tramaine Townsend provides visuals for the project. MATTIE states, “I wanted it to be clean but experimental, experimental and also clean. I wanted it to have that two-fold. I’ve been listening to a lot of recordings from Virgil Abloh, and he inspired me this year to really appreciate the duality that’s in my work. And even in the visuals, the cleanliness of it, but the experimental aspect. The purist meeting the tourist. The purist being that classic approach to visuals, which I appreciate Tramaine for, and then also allowing me as the tourist, the one that is experimental and that wants to have a different experience… Once you see it, you’ll see the beauty, the continuity of what we’re trying to say.”
MATTIE concludes, “I feel like what I realized is that there’s a home in me that is comfortable no matter where I’m at. And my life is based on finding that and remembering that home within myself. And so my focus on the external things, even though I keep them up and I maintain the physical things, but I realize that my only purpose, if there was one, is to really remember myself, as if to remember that home within myself, so that I can be comfortable no matter where I’m at. And my music is an expansion of that, that surrender to that aspect of this experience which is to come home and find that home within myself. The music is about going through what it feels like when you are on the path to remembering yourself. What it feels like, that oiliness, that stickiness, that bulldozer, the big explosions, the feeling of ground zero, the feeling of heightened senses, the feeling of being a giant but then also you feel like you are David, and there’s a Goliath. I plan on moving through, which is why the character’s name is Mhuv in Jupiter’s Purse, because I see ourselves, everyone on the planet, moving through these spaces and them not being intended to be a sticking point for us. And so Jupiter’s Purse is what I would call maybe a gateway, a womb to the other side. Jupiter is going to expand this project, because that’s what Jupiter does, and has blessed this project already, so I know Jupiter’s going to expand it to be another side of this, where we won’t be speaking from duality, but we’ll be speaking from our natural state as wholeness.”
