Swedish musical misfit Ängie: 'It’s nice to have cute things with hard punches'

Ängie has been eating pancakes and drinking mimosas with her management team all morning when we speak. This might sound like typically glamorous pop star behaviour, but when it comes to hedonism, I was expecting more. After all, if the songs released so far by the Swedish musician – Smoke Weed Eat Pussy, Spun and Housewife Spliffin’ – are to be taken literally, her daily routine revolves around excessive weed consumption and oral sex. These are both relatively standard themes when you consider rock and rap’s more rebellious corners, but coming from a 21-year-old woman with candy-coloured hair, it’s proved too traumatic for some to grasp. The Sun labelled her the “most shocking pop star of 2016”, while the Mirror last year claimed she was the “most controversial star” it had ever seen.

The tabloids won’t be the only ones appalled. Her heavily Auto-Tuned vocals, repeating the same deliberately vacant phrases, will almost certainly infuriate fans of “real music”. Her sound is a distillation of modern influences. She possesses the poised, pastel aesthetics of Lana Del Rey; the solemnity and sugar-coated sweetness of Kali Uchis; PC Music’s robotic pop sensibilities; and hints at the post-emo “sad lad” rap sentiment spearheaded by fellow Swede Yung Lean, or US misery rappers such as Lil Peep and Yung Goth. She’s cartoonishly playful, with a disconcerting darkness rippling underneath. Or, as she describes herself down the phone from Sweden: “It’s nice to have cute things with hard punches.” The glossy, artsy shock tactics in her videos – reminiscent of Miley Cyrus circa We Can’t Stop – are qualities that probably excited her label Universal, too.

Contrary to today’s activities, however, Ängie says her life does often revolve around sex and drugs. Her Instagram feed is filled with clues to her motives and muses: a lot of billowing smoke and nudity (plus the pink rifle that appears in many pictures is pure Spring Breakers). Meanwhile, her tattoo collection reveals a youthful recklessness – she has the words “2 girlz 1 cup” on her upper thigh (a NSFW Google search) and “Lou Reed” in a heart on her right arm.

“I love him so much. Always love him,” she says softly of her idol. “He didn’t care. He was weird, he just did whatever … whatever. I liked the attitude of his life.”

Like the Generation X-era of grunge and slacker rock, Ängie’s music is born of alienation and angst. She grew up in Nynäshamn, “a little ghetto countryside weird place” in Stockholm County, conservative in its attitudes towards sexuality and drug use. A tricky predicament for a bisexual marijuana fan. “It’s so small-minded and so beautiful and so I feel hate for so many things but I still love the country,” she says. “So many memories that fucked up my life.”

Her upbringing was filled with obstacles: as well as suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, she has depression and had bouts of suicidal thinking throughout her youth. She fell in love aged 15, with a woman, and felt ostracised by her social circle when friends discovered the relationship. Her family life was difficult too. Her mother drank a lot and her dad was in prison “for many reasons”, meaning she had to take care of herself. Or, as she rather philosophically puts it, “evolve by myself”.

After years of experimenting with art and poetry and socialising with fellow creatives in coffee shops, she wrote her first song, Smoke Weed Eat Pussy, which caught the attention of Johen of Swedish duo Death Team who ended up producing the track. Its lyrics – “And I will never be your baby / ’cos I’m a motherfucking lady / I hit the blunt like I’m Slim Shady” – are backed by triumphant synths. Although it sounds like the work of a rowdy teenager, it’s a song that documents the period when she met her first girlfriend and discovered weed, which she believes has medicinal qualities.

“[Weed] helped me get through my depression and to get to know myself so much better,” she says. “I wanted to try some kind of medicine, but then I thought I don’t want to take things if I don’t know exactly what they are doing to me.”

She was initially nervous to try the drug. “When I was younger, I thought [people who smoked] were crazy – ‘Oh you’re going to become a junkie! Don’t do it, don’t smoke, you’re going to die!’ – then I tried it and actually felt so good. Like I had some kind of tolerance so I don’t ever get super-high, but it really calms me in my mind. My thoughts just spin around.”

Being a brazen champion of recreational drug use is a daring approach, given Sweden’s zero tolerance policy. It’s also a professional risk when you consider the possible qualms most mainstream radio stations will have with her lyrical content, although Ängie is indifferent to opposition.

“My manager, he cares. But I don’t care that much. I’m just going to keep on doing it … why do you have to censor shit? It’s not the biggest thing in the world to say ‘Smoke weed’ or ‘Eat pussy.’ Yung Lean does it all the time, and Snoop Dogg. It’s just so weird.”

Ängie has just three tracks out at the moment, but has written around 40, and there is an album on the horizon. In spite of her initial output, the record will not purely focus on “weed and pussy”, she says. “I have a couple of others I am going to release and make people cry.”

Her songs may not win the Nobel prize for literature any time soon, but she is adept nonetheless at capturing a moment in youth culture. Ängie is an emblem of the liberal-minded revolution that is thriving online among teenagers and people in their early 20s. She is socially motivated, serious about her social media “art” and as committed to getting high as she is to creating a sense of community among those living in small towns as she once did.

“This is why I keep doing the shit I do – it’s so nice to help people. I want to be as open as I can about mental disorders or suicide or homophobia. I just want my fans to know that they’re more than fine to be as they are,” she says. “I just want people to feel fine with themselves.”

• Spun is out now on Universal. Ängie performs at Gold Dust, Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, London, 5 April.