NME’s latest star of The Cover, Sailorr, has put together an exclusive playlist to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The Vietnamese-American viral R&B hitmaker is on this week’s (June 9) edition of The Cover, a manifestation of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read Sailorr’s profile here, written by Dan Q. Dao and featuring photography by Kristen Jan Wong.
Sailorr has curated an exclusive playlist, titled ‘twerk/yearn/🔁’, to accompany her The Cover story. The 23-track playlist includes tracks by the likes of Yves Tumor, Skaiwater, The Internet and Homeshake, among others. Listen to it in full on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
Sailorr (aka Jacksonville-born singer Kayla Le) had her big breakthrough moment last year, when her single ‘Pookie’s Requiem’ went viral. “I literally woke up and had gone from 2,000 followers to 20,000,” she recalled. “The next day it was 100,000, then 200,000. It was insane.” Soon, it topped Spotify’s Viral 50 chart and cracked the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs. Summer Walker joined her on a high-profile remix earlier this year, which helped build even more momentum around the song.
But with success has also come scrutiny. Some critics have pointed to her use of AAVE in her music – a discourse she doesn’t deny nor shy away from. “I feel as though all my writing and all of my artistry is an authentic expression of myself. But people think that I’m trying to put out a caricature of what I think Black culture is – and that’s a valid concern because there are genuinely a lot of people who do that shit,” she explained. “So I’m not going to sit here and be like, ‘You can’t feel that way.’ I can only show you with more time and with more music.”
Read Sailorr’s full Cover story here and find out who else has been on The Cover here.