Tricky auf seiner Homepage zu „Mixed Race“:
„The album’s called Mixed Race because being mixed race is the single biggest influence on my music. You sat down at the table in my house and you saw every colour. It’s made me much more open-minded than I could’ve been. I come from both worlds.
Back in Knowle West I grew up in a white ghetto and could go to a Jamaican club where there’s no white people, and a white club with no other black people. And I never noticed. When I was twelve and my cousins Mark and Miles from the first line-up of Massive Attack would get ready to go out, they would be playing everything from Parliament to T-Rex. My Uncle Ken who brought me up is a white guy who got me into black music – he used to play Al Green, Sam Cooke and other legends all the time. So I grew up with all this different music, I’ve been blessed because no-one can put my music in a box – it’s not black, it’s not white, it’s not female, it’s not male….
…And it’s true that I’ve agreed to work with Massive Attack again. A year ago I would’ve said no. But what I like about it now is that, if we do an album together, people’s expectations are gonna be high. It won’t be easy. We’re gonna have to make something really special. I think it’s a challenge.
Mixed Race is a gangster album. I can’t do gangsta rap. That’s not me. I can’t talk about being a bad boy, ‘cos I’m not. But I’ve been around that. So this is the closest I can get to a gangsta album. Its very gully, as Jamaicans call it… very dark. Tense, street and urban. It’s like a movie, almost.
This is also the most uptempo album I’ve done. I wanted something that could be played in a club… maybe! Which is unusual for me. Because I don’t give a shit about clubs….
…Some of my early albums sound like a mess to me… too cluttered. I don’t understand them anymore. I wanted to avoid doing something like that, because my mind isn’t cloudy. I’m not muddled-up or as confused as I was. I know what I want to do now. Mixed Race is deliberately direct and in-your-face. It’s the easiest album to make that I’ve ever done.“
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