King Princess is ready to take the next step with fans: getting matching tattoos.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n On Sept. 13, one day after the release of her latest music manifesto, Girl Violence, the New York-based artist, aka KP aka Mikaela Straus, is hosting a global flash event in partnership with select women- and LGBTQ-led tattoo shops in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, and Australia (see the full list here<\/a>).<\/p>\n More from Spin:<\/p>\n For one day only, fans will be able to select designs that permanently memorialize the album\u2019s visual realm, including several featuring the voluptuous Cherry icon that has become the antagonist of the whole project. The cartoonish villain was first spotted in the video for the slinky lead single, \u201cRIP KP,\u201d in which Straus is a willing hostage in a lesbian strip club fever dream, and has been stalking her ever since.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re not the type of fan to get my whole face anatomically tattooed, there are other options,\u201d Straus joked during a recent conversation, sharing details of the \u201cincredible\u201d flash sheets that were created. Fans who get inked will also be entered into raffles for signed merch. \u201cThere are Cherry-themed ones. Pussy-themed ones. I really want to see someone get the CUNT News in the celebrity.land font,\u201d she added, referencing a recent Instagram video<\/a> where Lisa Rinna reads faux headlines about the beef between Straus and Cherry. (The musician is a huge fan of reality TV.) \u201cI\u2019m probably going to get one,\u201d Straus affirmed, set on an image of Cherry strutting with a pair of long legs.<\/p>\n The idea for the unique album launch came from Chris Robbins, the \u201cheavily tatted\u201d head of KP\u2019s record label section1\/Partisan. Straus was immediately drawn to the pitch. \u201cMy fan base is obviously a lot of young queer people. And tattoos are a huge part of how we decorate ourselves,\u201d she shared, a few pieces of her ink sticking out from beneath her T-shirt as she talks. \u201cIf you walk around Brooklyn, everyone\u2019s covered.\u201d<\/p>\n King Princess\u2019s new album, Girl Violence.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an early morning and Straus, also wearing a ball cap pulled tight over a shaggy wolf cut, is sitting in her backyard. She\u2019s just come back after racing to take out the recycling (\u201cYou know how serious they are in New York about the recycling!\u201d she quipped) and is about to take her first sips of coffee as the conversation turns to her own growing collection of body art.<\/p>\n \u201cI fucking love my tattoos. They\u2019ve all been kind of \u2026 sentimental,\u201d she shared, adding, \u201cI\u2019m not like the get drunk and get a tattoo type of chick. I have to plan it out and it becomes something that\u2019s ceremonial. Every time there\u2019s a new chapter in my life, I get a tattoo. Or when something good happens or something really bad happens, and I feel like I\u2019ve learned from it, I get a tattoo.\u201d<\/p>\n Straus\u2019 latest chapter was not immune to the phenomenon. She recently moved back to her native New York after seven years in L.A., where she not only explored music (initially signing to Zelig Records, run by Mark Ronson, who helped launch her career in 2018 with the uber hit \u201c1950\u201d) but also acting. Straus recently made her debut as Tina in the second season of Hulu\u2019s Nine Perfect Strangers and is soon to be seen in the Hugh Jackman\/Kate Hudson film Song Sung Blue, coming later this year. Naturally, a return to the place of her roots manifested in Straus\u2019 latest art pick: a majestic blue heron on her bicep, joining a nearby Canadian goose on her arm.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve really come into my love of birds. And I wanted to continue the birds of the Adirondacks,\u201d Strauss shared, explaining that upstate New York is a place where she spent a lot of time as a child roaming around her grandparents\u2019 lake house. \u201cI feel like the things that I connect to the most tend to be the things that I did or were the places I\u00a0 went as a kid. I guess I have attachment issues,\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cBut that house, and nature, it reminds me of my grandparents. It reminds me of my childhood. It reminds me of the beauty of this world that I feel like I\u2019m so rarely face-to-face with these days.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s that lack and wanting of a simpler, kinder world\u2014both personally and culturally\u2014that inspired the more serious tones on Girl Violence. The 13 tracks are collectively described in press materials as \u201cthe sound of Mikaela Straus picking up the pieces of a world left shattered.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cViolence has been deemed this masculine concept. And I think oftentimes basic violence is masculine: fighting physically, war, weaponry \u2026 all these things that have been basically appropriated by men and claimed by men,\u201d Straus explained \u201cWhereas this emotional warfare is what I\u2019m more interested in. That which I have been both subject to and perpetrator of. I think that I just got really intrigued by putting a name to this thing that I\u2019ve really always written about. \u2026 And to me it felt especially relevant right now, both in the world where we\u2019re so used to masculine violence dominating everything, but when the reality is women\u2019s warfare is there too \u2026 like even look at the fucking election. \u2026 Voting against your self-interest is girl violence.\u201d<\/p>\n As a proud queer artist, Straus has taken the mantle seriously in these precarious times, albeit with her own unique touch of spreading joy as much as possible, always remembering when she was a lonely gay kid that just wanted to laugh. \u201cIf I can continue to put my head down and write about things that relate to our community, then that\u2019s what I was put on this planet to do, you know?\u201d she posited. (As part of the tattoo event, Straus, along with the partnering tattoo shops and her record label, will also make donations to local charities that support LGBTQ+ communities.)<\/p>\n \u201cYes, my perspective and my lens is really relevant right now,\u201d she continued, \u201cbut the reality is that queer people have never been safe in this country. We have never been respected to our fullest. We are the proprietors of all art. If you get rid of gay people, you don\u2019t have art. \u2026 We are the makers of shit. We are the stylists. We are the wardrobe people. We are the fucking hair people, we\u2019re the makeup people, we\u2019re the singers, we\u2019re the dancers. You don\u2019t get art without us. So I\u2019m proud that I\u2019m a part of a community that has such a rich tapestry and history of being the people who make things when the world gets dark.\u201d<\/p>\n (Credit: Conor Cunningham)<\/p>\n For those who don\u2019t support the community or wish them ill, Straus still hopes they find their hands on a copy of Girl Violence and \u201cthey\u2019re fucking terrified of this record. I hope they have no idea what they\u2019re listening to and they\u2019re terrified \u2026 and horny,\u201d she joked. \u201cHunting Wives-style.\u201d<\/p>\n The album was recorded at Mission Sound, the Brooklyn studio owned by her father, recording engineer Oliver H. Straus Jr. where Arctic Monkeys, Taking Back Sunday, Pink, Sia, War on Drugs, All-American Rejects, and many others have logged sessions. As a kid, Straus found it to be an incredible \u201cplayground\u201d for her budding interests, evidenced by the many memories she\u2019s able to rattle off.<\/p>\n \u201cOh my god there\u2019s so many: Fist-bumping Missy Elliott. Watching Norah Jones and Cyndi Lauper record a Christmas album. Dolores from the Cranberries singing background vocals with incredible studio vocalists, teaching me how to layer and harmonize and build,\u201d Straus recalled. But beyond the totem pole moments, she said, \u201cThose that I really remember and resonate with most were being around studio musicians. They are really the unsung heroes of an era that I hope isn\u2019t lost in music, where you call on people who are experts in their craft to come and do what they do. I spent a lot of time with those people \u2026 and I was obsessed.\u201d<\/p>\n Straus leaned into that intimate working process with Jake Portrait (Lil Yachty, Alex G, Unknown Mortal Orchestra) and Aire Atlantica (behind SZA\u2019s \u201cLow\u201d) for the broad range of sounds on Girl Violence. In addition to the sultry first single, \u201cRIP KP,\u201d which Straus equated to, \u201cthat state of being so enamored by someone and so in love that you\u2019ll do anything they say, you\u2019ll want anything they want, you\u2019ll bend it over wherever,\u201d there\u2019s also the vengeful breakup pop of \u201cCry Cry Cry\u201d and the layered doo wop-esque tribute to \u201cGirls.\u201d<\/p>\n Straus loves hard. Not that she can help it; it\u2019s a passed down trait in her bloodline. Her great-great-grandparents were Ida and Isidor Straus, who famously died on the Titanic. As the story goes, the well-to-do couple were given spots on a lifeboat but Isidor (former congressman and co-owner of Macy\u2019s) refused as there were still other women and children aboard he thought should take precedence. Ida chose to stay with her husband where they ultimately met their fate; they were depicted in James Cameron\u2019s movie as the elderly couple who die together in bed. \u201cI do oftentimes think about that. I must have gotten this obsession with being in love and romance somewhere,\u201d said Straus.<\/p>\n (Credit: Conor Cunningham)<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t know much about that part of her family history. \u201cThe Straus side of my family was so disjointed to be quite honest \u2026 There\u2019s no, like, family reunion,\u201d she joked. \u201cSo all the history I know is via the internet. But I do find it very major that they were so extra that they had to die together.\u201d<\/p>\n When she shot Nine Perfect Strangers in Austria, Straus wasn\u2019t far from Bavaria, where her distant family emigrated from\u2014nor from the setting of another famous movie: The Sound of Music. The Hulu series had scenes in the same Salzburg estate. \u201cThe vibes in Austria are spooky,\u201d she said. \u201cThe room that we were shooting in [for this season\u2019s crazy waltz scene] had, like, frescoes on the ceiling. It was so ornate and stunning. \u2026 It felt ancient and important.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the scrapbook moments Straus took away from her first time on a set, saying the new form of expression helped her music, too. \u201cActing has really allowed me to be less precious about writing. Writing lyrics can be an extremely self-criticizing act of ridiculing yourself for the words you choose. And I don\u2019t want to be that person. I would much prefer to trust myself, and acting has really allowed me to do that,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s also allowed me to be less precious about trying things and seeing if they work.\u201d<\/p>\n Working alongside veterans like Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, and Christine Baranski (with whom Straus recently made headlines after a photo of them holding hands went wild on social media) was also a gift. \u201cI got to be a student to all these incredible actors. I got to be around people who are so much better than me. And that is the coolest shit. I always want to be the worst person in the room. You can\u2019t really learn from being the best,\u201d she theorized. \u201cThese people took me in and were so kind and patient but also really sure of me. To be new at something and have people not be worried about you, their confidence in me was a major gift.\u201d<\/p>\n As our conversation starts to wind down, a bird swoops down in Straus\u2019 yard as one final grand gesture. After greeting it in a childlike voice, the multi-talent shared, \u201cI think I\u2019m going to keep birding,\u201d already thinking about her next tattoo and the next chapter that will come with it.<\/p>\n To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
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