For 070 Shake, everything comes back to $50.
Nearly a decade ago, the then-teenage musician spent all her time writing music in her New Jersey home. She eventually hit a point where she was ready to record in a studio, but couldn’t afford the $50 rental fee. So, just as any other adolescent, she turned to her mother, who proceeded to laugh in her face. Shake accepted defeat and went about her day, but as she was leaving her house, she noticed a crisp $50 bill had been intentionally left on the counter.
“I know she didn’t have the money to give me. But she took a chance on me. If I’m seeing it from her perspective, and knowing that this [music] is all that my child has. It’s either this or nothing,” said the musician born as Danielle Balbuena. “She knew I would end up f—ed up or dead if she didn’t give me that $50 .… And thank God, I’m here in the Chateau now.”
In a newsie cap and a well-fitted Canadian tux, the 27-year-old singer sat comfortably in a corner booth in the Chateau Marmont’s restaurant, sipping a glass of Bordeaux. Surrounded by an abundance of velvet furniture and dimly lit portraiture, the “Guilty Conscious” singer was in Los Angeles during a quick break from her world tour. Supporting her third album, “Petrichor,” Shake says she is approaching this run of shows with a more “disciplined” mindset. On Friday, she’ll share that mindset with her L.A. fans at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall.
“I don’t want to focus so much on the physical response of the audience. I want to focus more on the spiritual experience,” said Shake. “You connect with music because it connects with you. I want to focus on the connection that we can’t see or touch but can only feel. I want to hone in on how these frequencies — that I’ve created and have never existed in the world before — make people feel.”
On tours for her previous albums “Modus Vivendi” and “You Can’t Kill Me,” she took more of “a rock star approach” where things were artfully careless — like when the singer, dressed in a suit and tie, would crowd surf atop a mosh pit every night. Though Shake assures that this energy hasn’t disappeared, with “Petrichor” she’s more concerned about growing up.
After finding that fateful $50 bill and recording her first track, “Proud,” she struck a deal with the studio’s owner. He would allow her to record whenever she wanted, but she had to get a job and give him her paychecks — Shake agreed. By day she worked at a kids’ indoor playground called Pump It Up and by night she and her friends, who went by the 070 collective, continued to record and upload songs to Soundcloud.
“Petrichor,” 070 Shake’s third album, was inspired by the smell of rain in the Dominican Republic, where her family is from.
(Gianni Gallant)
In 2016, Shake’s music caught the attention of Kanye West’s label G.O.O.D. Music and she signed a record deal. From there, she went on to release her first EP, “Glitter,” in 2018, and that same year her vocals were featured on Ye’s “Ghost Town” and “Violent Crimes.” Singing a catchy verse about putting her hand on a stove, in her signature autotuned vocal fry, Shake was on the path to rap stardom.
Since these early career breakthroughs, some of her more recent hits include her feature on Raye’s 2022 “Escapism” and “Guilty Conscious,” the lead single from her debut album which garnered a remix from Tame Impala.
When approaching her third full-length album, “Petrichor,” she set out with the goal of incorporating more classical sounds in her music. Released last November, the creative infused her brooding, futuristic sound into a full-fledged orchestral production. From the escalating string sections in “Pieces of You” to “Into Your Garden’s” soft theatrical piano and the submerged sounds of an electric guitar on “Love,” she matches these conventional instruments with her own distinguishable electronic touches.
Both sonically and lyrically, Shake has never shied away from extremism in her music. As she continues to explore the presence and absence of an all-consuming love, “Petrichor’s” lyrics prove she’s willing to take her artistic expression to its limit — especially in regard to love and death.
“There’s so much beauty in subtlety, but that’s just not my job. Anybody else can do it, but that’s not how I feel,” said Shake. “Even if we want to go about it in a more nonchalant manner, it is still that extreme. That’s really how I feel.… It’s just my nature.”
070 Shake and girlfriend Lily Rose Depp pose on the set of “Winter Baby / New Jersey Blues’” music video.
(Vincent Giovinazzo)
On “Blood on Your Hands,” a track that leans more toward a spoken word piece than a rap, she says, “If I die, I want you to be the one to kill me / I want my blood on your hands.” As an industrial-sounding synth steers the song, the voice of her girlfriend, actor Lily Rose Depp begins to read a diary entry — detailing the overwhelming connection they share.
“I always touch on that subject [death]. It is the most fascinating thing to me, because it’s something that we all have in common, but nobody ever wants to talk about it,” said Shake, who wears a delicate gold chain with the words “Lily-Rose” around her neck. “It’s the biggest part of life, but also something we’re afraid of. It’s why we stay on the sidewalks. It’s why we stop at red lights. It’s why we drink water and eat certain foods. But still, it’s inevitable.”
Between mortality and passion, the creative, having lived in L.A. for the past six years, also shares some hindsight into her New Jersey upbringing. On the Beach Boys-esque “Winter Baby / New Jersey Blues,” Shake brings up this idea of having “paid [her] dues,” and consuming “toxic fumes” and “processed foods.” In this anti-homesick anthem, she is able to leave her previous lifestyle, in “dirty Jersey” where all she would eat was ramen and cheap salami, behind her and open her arms to a new one — where Erewhon smoothies are plentiful.
“I spent 20 years in the same house and I did my time there. It doesn’t even feel like home anymore. It feels like I have a new home,” said Shake. “Now I have the luxury to eat the quality of things that I want to eat. But it also makes me feel bad, because I know what it is to live to be on the other side and grow up in a place where the only options you have are with the cards you’re given.”
As Shake indulges in her new way of life, she says it’s probably time to thank her mother for leaving behind that $50 bill over a decade ago, an exchange that to this day they have never openly discussed. “I got to thank her for not only that, but thank her for everything I have in life.”
