Cover star interview: Shekhinah

Why she entered the TV show Idols twice in 2012 at the start of her career

I thrive off failure. I learned so much from it and it somehow pushes me forward - although it makes no sense to me. I’m like, No?, What do you mean? Let me try it again. So I guess that was me. I was very ambitious. I think I’m a lot more fearful and reserved than I was then, so I’m a bit in awe of my badder younger, go getter of version of me. Closed doors still inspire me to try and figure it out, as if I am in an escape room, how do I get out? How do I open the door? I think that's in me still - just with a little more caution than before.

How she’s managed to stay grounded during her early successes with her R&B sound

I think it's testimony to just being myself and also my time at school. I was inspired. I feel like I’ve always just tried to do what I could do. I’ve always realised the more honest I’ve been, the more it resonated with people, the more I stuck with R&B, the more it also resonated with people. It went against everything that we thought. The more albums I drop, people enjoy listening to the albums, even though we’re in a single kind of culture - but I’ve realised we're not all the same. It's really important for us to know that we don't have to put ourselves in boxes and kind of replicate things because so-and-so is doing it.

Why she is embracing being independent once again

I think we’ve always been my house, my home, my company, which is basically my sister, me, my dad and my best friend. We made those first albums in our bedroom, we funded those albums ourselves. We were really just doing what we could, without any guidance. We had to play gigs to pay for production. We are so used to being independent. I am in a better place now to encourage people and speak about it, taking ownership is really empowering. This new project is the first album we’ve made in a studio and not in a bedroom so we really had to plan this out. It’s been really fun and exciting and honestly a lot less trouble, even though there's always some trouble, the process has been much smoother. We’re now working out of a studio we own and there’s a garden.

The subjects she wanted to convey on her new album Less Trouble

I really wanted to communicate that things can start off really badly and feel catastrophic. It can seem like the world is over most of the time. I know, because I can relate - but at the end of the day, things always work out how they're meant to be. That really is what the album is about - It starts off with a myth and it ends on a bang. So I really want people to take that on. I want them to know that there could be trouble now, but it will subside.

Why her festival Rosefest remains so important to her

I wanted to have some sort of ownership as a woman in our industry. We have so many iconic males - and there were so many properties also dominated by males. There was the ‘Super Mega Show’, ‘Fill Up The Dome’ etc and I felt like, okay, if I have one, maybe I’ll start the trend for other women owning their own spaces and taking the business into their own hands too. It was really just an ambitious kind of thing. I’m grateful and a big thank you to everyone for buying tickets and also for welcoming us back. I know we haven’t been around for the past couple of years. We've been doing a lot of online things and  I'm really grateful that people received us so well and we are sold out and we're going to have a beautiful day.