In a world of bright neon, fireworks, strobe lights, dancers, large crowds jumping and dancing along, WHIPPED CREAM stands out at her own cadence. Canadian DJ and producer Caroline Cecil, more prominently known by her moniker WHIPPED CREAM, released her debut album this year and is now bringing her unique sound on tour.
Electronic music is a monolith, but its grandeur is a wide and varied spectrum with many tones and sounds. But whether the electronic music conjures heavy bass drops and the Skrillex created bro-step or Armin van Buuren’s slow and melodic trance or anything else in between, EDM is usually tied to an Ultra Miami or Electric Daisy Carnival in the background. You could even think of older days before the EDM boom, where electronic was played in dark obscure clubs. Regardless, there’s an element of communal therapy, external release alongside compatriots or fellow music lovers.
WHIPPED CREAM, while still offering therapeutic and danceable beats, is still marching to a different beat. Whether you’re at all the EDM festivals or not, you’ve probably heard WHIPPED CREAM at some point. whether it was her track “So Thick” with baby Goth in the Birds of Prey (2020) soundtrack, or her collaborative EP with Hekler, Mirrors, her music has risen atop charts in a very short time.
This year she released HOME WAS ALWAYS ME. The album released through Monstercat, the label that gave space to her first releases. It’s her debut album, and though she’s released various EP’s, this record serves as a triumphant advent. It’s an announcement that a new titan has arrived.
WHIPPED CREAM is known for trap, hip-hop style beats that are perfect for driving with friends to the club. The music is cool. It’s casual yet serious. But what makes this album stand out is the introspective nuances and the dark tones on the journey we are taken on.
The album is a quest searching for a place of belonging and identity. Cecil took some inspiration from the biblical story of Eve, not in a religious but rather a literary context. The narrative she draws in the record mirrors the idea of finding footing or place in a larger story or setting with a different center.
But reinvention was already in her DNA. Her music career actually began years after an injury ended a competitive ice skating career, WHIPPED CREAM started music after attending the now-defunct Sasquatch! Music Festival that use to operate in Washington state.
In an interview conducted via email, WHIPPED CREAM talks about working on the debut album, what has changed almost a decade into making music, the upcoming tour, and more.
Make sure to follow her on Instagram for more updates on WHIPPED CREAM, or visit her site here for ticket information for the HOME WAS ALWAYS ME Tour that kicks off this weekend in Santa Fe, NM.
Antonio Villaseñor-Baca: Your first release was in 2016, so it’s been about 10 years that you’ve been putting music out there. What has changed about your process of making music over a decade?
WHIPPED CREAM: Honestly, almost everything. When I started, I think I was trying to figure out how to make things sound “right.” I was learning production, learning what worked, and learning who I was at the same time. Ten years later, I trust myself so much more. I don’t need to overthink every decision or make something fit into a certain box.
Now I’m way more interested in how something makes me feel. I can make something really technical and perfect, but if I don’t feel anything from it, I don’t care. I also know when to leave something alone now. Sometimes the first idea has the most magic in it. I think the biggest difference is that I’m not trying to find my sound anymore. I’m just making things that feel like me.
Can you talk a little bit about the intimate nature of HOME WAS ALWAYS ME? Electronic music tends to be associated with large festivals and flamboyant, neon group festivities. This album is very personal, it has a lot of dark motifs and introspective nuances. Where did the inspiration come from, when and how long did it take you to write it?
A lot of this album came from being alone with myself and really looking at my life. I’ve spent so much of the last ten years moving, touring, creating, chasing the next thing, trying to become something. And eventually, I started asking myself what was actually underneath all of that. Electronic music can obviously be huge and explosive, and I love that side of it, but there’s another side of me that is really internal and emotional. I wanted both to exist on this record. I wanted something that could hit really hard live but still feel personal when you’re listening to it alone with headphones.
The album came together over a period of years rather than one specific writing session. I think I had to actually live through certain things before I could understand what the album was about. Eventually, all these songs that felt like different pieces of my life started making sense together, and I realized they were telling the same story.
I saw that there was some influence behind the biblical story of Eve and the idea of reclaiming authenticity and rejecting outside narratives. Can you talk about this and the “self” or “narrative” that permeates through the album?
What interested me about Eve wasn’t really religion as much as the idea of a woman being handed a story about who she is, what she did wrong, what she should be, and then questioning that story. That connected with me because I think we all get handed narratives. Especially as a woman, there are so many opinions about what you should look like, how you should act, how successful you should be, when you should settle down, what kind of artist you should be. And if you listen to all of it, you can get really far away from yourself.
A lot of this album is me stripping that away. Who am I when nobody else gets to tell me who I am? What do I actually want? What do I believe? That’s really the “self” that runs through the record. It’s not about becoming somebody new. It’s about coming back to the person who was already there.
You released an EP in 2020 with a lot of features that contrast with the 14 tracks and only three features in this debut album. Has collaborative work taken a back seat to what you were trying to do with this album or is it just something that didn’t come about organically with the record and putting a focus on your voice?
I love collaborating and I always will. Some of my favorite moments in music have come from being in a room with someone who hears something completely differently than I do. But this album needed more space for me. I don’t think I intentionally went into it saying, “I’m only going to have three features.” It just happened naturally. The more the story started revealing itself, the more I realized that bringing too many voices into it might take away from what I was trying to say. It was important for this album to really establish my voice, not necessarily my literal voice, but my perspective. I wanted you to be able to listen to it front to back and know exactly who WHIPPED CREAM is right now.
How did it feel putting together a longer project with a more connected story or arc as opposed to separated or isolated singles or even an EP?
It was way harder, but way more rewarding. With a single, you’re thinking about one world. With an album, you’re building an entire universe. A song can be great on its own and still not belong on the album, and I had to learn that. I became really obsessed with how everything connected: the energy, the transitions, the emotional moments, where you needed intensity and where you needed space. It made me think beyond individual songs and ask, “What am I actually trying to say with all of this?” I loved that. I think albums give you the opportunity to show parts of yourself that you can’t really explain with one song.
The title “home was always me” gave me a sense of initial longing for a home or loss of that home sense; would you agree with this? By the end of the album, it seems like that has been cleared. What does the phrase “home was always me” mean, directly?
For a long time I think I associated “home” with something outside of myself. A place, a person, a relationship, success, maybe even a certain version of my career. Like if I could just get there, then I would finally feel settled. And the realization behind the album was that none of those things can actually give you that permanently.
HOME WAS ALWAYS ME means that the thing I was searching for was already inside of me. I can travel anywhere, lose things, gain things, have people come into my life and leave my life, and I’m still here. It’s basically me realizing: I don’t have to find my way home. I am home.
It’s well known that you competitively ice skated but after an injury, you eventually found the path of music and haven’t looked back since. I wonder if that competitive background has influenced your music or your identity as a musician. In sports there’s this interval based mindset of getting better day by day, little by little. Is that something that has translated into your music career?
100 percent. Skating taught me discipline before I even understood what discipline was. You fall, you get up, you do it again. Nobody can really do the work for you. Music has been exactly like that for me. People see certain moments, the festivals, the releases, the opportunities, but they don’t see the thousands of hours alone working on something, failing at it, starting again, getting better by one percent.
I think skating also gave me this slightly insane ability to keep going. I’m competitive, but probably more with myself than anyone else. I always want to know what I’m capable of if I keep pushing. At the same time, I’m learning that life can’t only be about pushing. That’s actually part of what this album represents too. You can be ambitious without constantly running away from where you are.
I also want to ask about the quick rise to fame; it hadn’t been more than a couple of years before you were working with big artists, labels, and even seeing your name in a major movie’s soundtrack. How did that impact the development of your sound? Was there a moment of “I made it”, or did it feel like a natural step in your goals?
I don’t think I’ve ever had an “I made it” moment. I’ve definitely had moments where I’ve looked around and thought, “How is this my life?” And I’m really grateful for those. But every time you reach something you thought was the destination, you realize there’s another mountain behind it.
Getting those opportunities early definitely pushed me. Suddenly my music was being put into rooms and spaces that I had dreamed about, and that makes you grow really quickly. But it also taught me something important. Opportunities don’t give you an identity. You still have to figure out who you are when nobody is calling, when nobody is booking you and nobody is validating you.
I think my sound got stronger when I stopped trying to prove that I belonged in those rooms and started making music from the perspective that I already belonged there.
This tour is about to kick off after a few dates earlier in the summer. What’s running through your mind? Are you excited to bring the new music to audiences on tour? What are you expecting from the tour, what makes you nervous about, etc. etc.?
I’m really excited. I’ve spent so much time living with this music privately, so getting to finally experience it with people is probably what I’m most excited about. There’s always some nerves. Touring is unpredictable. You can plan everything and then something completely random happens five minutes before you go on. But honestly, that’s also why I love it. This tour feels different because I feel different. I’m not trying to prove something every night. I want people to come into the room and feel like they can completely let go for a couple hours. I want it to be sweaty and emotional and weird and fun. I want people leaving feeling lighter than when they walked in.
New album with a huge tour means new ears in the crowds. What should those new listeners know about WHIPPED CREAM?
Don’t try to put me in one genre. If you hear one song and think you understand what WHIPPED CREAM is, listen to another one. I’ve always been interested in contrast. I love things that are beautiful and aggressive, feminine and hard, emotional and completely chaotic. I can make something for a massive stage and then go home and make something that feels like it’s meant for one person. I think the easiest way to understand WHIPPED CREAM is that it’s always going to evolve, but the feeling behind it will always be real.
That’s it for my questions. I always like to conclude interviews by asking if there’s anything I missed, didn’t focus on enough, or that you’d like to add in general?
I think the biggest thing I’d add is that this album feels like the beginning of a new chapter for me, not the ending of one.
Ten years into making music, I’m more inspired than I’ve ever been because I finally understand that I don’t have to know exactly where I’m going. I used to think I needed this perfect plan for my career and my life. Now I’m much more interested in being present enough to recognize what feels right and following it.
That’s really what HOME WAS ALWAYS ME means to me too. It’s trusting yourself enough to move forward without needing everybody else to understand where you’re going.
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