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his year, Kehlani turned 30 after spending more than a decade flying — and at times flailing — in the public eye as one of R&B’s modern torchbearers. The singer-songwriter (who uses she/they pronouns) has mastered a lot in that time. Not too long ago, she took up surfing, a hobby that helped further tether her to her late father and inspired her third studio album, Blue Water Road. She’s been a faithful gym rat as of late, too, as evidenced by abs so enviable some onlookers were convinced she had etched them.
Then, after a career spanning four studio albums, four mixtapes, and five Grammy nominations, she found the perfect balance of nostalgia and innovation in “Folded” — an addictive song on romantic reconciliation that became her highest charting hit. It’s earned her two more nominations at the 2026 Grammys. Both categories — Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance — are packed with excellent music, representing a banner year for the genre she’s been a faithful student of her whole life. In the Best R&B Performance race, in particular, the singer is up against two good friends — Justin Bieber, for “Yukon,” and Leon Thomas, for his rendition of “Mutt” on NPR’s Tiny Desk. Over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles, she tells me they’ve all talked in celebration.
“I’m so excited to be in a category with people that I love,” says Kehlani. “I love Justin. I fucking love Leon. That is my brother. Those are my family members.” When Kehlani was new to Los Angeles from Oakland and dropping songs on SoundCloud, Thomas was one half of the formidable production duo the Rascals alongside Khris Riddick-Tynes. Today, Riddick-Tynes is executive producing the forthcoming album Kehlani’s hard at work on and was part of the team that brought “Folded” to life. “My first sessions in L.A. were with them,” she says of the duo. “I’ve been working with Leon and Khris since the beginning of time. Leon is secretly doing background vocals on a lot of my music. He texted us that morning and was like ‘My Grammy Award-nominated family!’ That’s a party. I’m just happy, man.”
While “Folded” is an incredible feat of music-making, the Best R&B Performance nomination is especially fitting. It’s undeniably been a song for the real vocalists — think Whitney Houston’s canonical bite in telling an interviewer, “I listen to singers.… I very rarely listen to people who cannot sing,” and citing greats like Anita Baker and Luther Vandross. “Folded” exploded, in part, as netizens across social media tried their hand at covers. The song became part playground, part proving ground for the gifted.
Slowly but surely, R&B veterans joined in. First, there was Mario, of “Let Me Love You” fame, in August. Then, Brandy — often called the “Vocal Bible” by other singers and who Kehlani has fiercely defended as one of the genre’s most seminal voices — shared a cover with runs stacked to the high heavens in September. Jojo, who first debuted her stunning voice as a teen in 2004, tried her hand at it. Toni Braxton surprised fans with her snippet on Oct. 7, her 58th birthday — so did Tank. Later that month, all five artists, plus Ne-Yo, appeared on an official EP of “Folded” remixes.
It shows how difficult a song like “Folded” is to body, even for Kehlani and especially live. A seasoned stage performer, the only vocal tracks she uses are background parts and dance breaks. “There’s not a lot of room for breath in the lead of ‘Folded,’” she explains. “It’s traveling through a lot of my range. You don’t really realize, until you have to sing that with no support, that you just got to smack that lead up and down. It’s been a funny thing, but I think I got the hang of it now.”
When I ask Kehlani what most prepared her for the monster of a song, her answer veers slightly from the heuristic. “There’s an actual technical factor, and then there’s a super spiritual factor that’s happening in my life.” As for the latter: “I don’t think at any point in my career I was ready to hold the level of pressure and success that I have right now. The way that this song is changing my realm and my world and my trajectory, I don’t think that I could have held it any other time. I think God was just waiting for me to meet him with, ‘I can hold this. I’m sound enough. I’m sane enough. I’m spiritually grounded enough to be given a task like this or a season like this,’ to be honest.”
Released in June, “Folded” came as Kehlani was finally finding some peace living with bipolar II disorder, which she shared publicly in April, on her birthday. After months of struggling to find a psychiatrist accepting clients, she says, “I got diagnosed mid-crisis. Actually year one of the genocide, I’m sitting online having full-blown screaming fests with the phone.”
Kehlani has been outspoken against the Israeli government since it began retaliating against Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages. The death toll in Gaza now tops 70,000. Kehlani, a United Nations commission, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars say Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians. Israel’s Foreign Ministry has rejected that assertion, specifically calling a report commissioned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council “distorted and false.”
Sacha Lecca
The star has since been joined in her outcry by hundreds of musicians and labels who have supported initiatives like No Music for Genocide, including Hayley Williams, Japanese Breakfast, Muna, Clairo, Lucy Dacus, Nao, Faye Webster, MIKE, redveil, and more. Yet, back in October 2023, via Instagram, Kehlani broadly criticized her peers for being unengaged. In May 2024, as she prepared to release her last album, Crash, she doubled down.
Now, she notes she was also experiencing mania as she posted online incessantly at points. The psychiatric episodes, she says, heightened her very real anger and made her less strategic than she’s learned to be since. “I’m just as mind-blown that people can sit around and be silent about this,” she tells me now. “But the way in which I would’ve gone about it would’ve probably been a lot more careful because I think I was just screaming and I alienated a lot of people in my realm that I really wish I could have just pulled in for conversation.” (Much more on this, in her own words, below.)
While many fans commended Kehlani’s advocacy, the backlash was swift and harsh elsewhere. In the spring, Cornell University’s president canceled a concert she was set to play, citing Kehlani’s “antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos, and on social media.” She rebuked the notion that she was antisemitic, saying at the time, “I am anti-genocide, I am anti the actions of the Israeli government, I am anti an extermination of an entire people, I’m anti the bombing of innocent children, men women … that’s what I’m anti.” Then, under pressure from New York City mayor Eric Adam’s office, the popular SummerStage concert series canceled her appearance set to celebrate Pride.
Today, Kehlani says, she couldn’t even count the total number of paid opportunities she’s lost: “It was coming from every angle.” This says nothing of the “massive amounts of death threats” the singer says she’s received. Yet, for Kehlani — who has been no stranger to condemnation in the past, for everything from her love life to her tattoos — the most consequential controversy of her career has overlapped with the height of her mainstream success.
“I just don’t think that there was a way that I could have appreciated where I’m at right now without experiencing what I experienced,” she says. “I also think that it was necessary because I think that it’s imperative that people see me thrive after this, so that they can know that they can speak and they can stand up for things they believe in, in light of being told their career will end because of it.”
All this thriving means Kehlani is working through Thanksgiving. We’re talking the day before. She typically doesn’t commemorate the actual holiday, she says, but had a “Soulful Sunday” with friends that week. Her daughter Adeya appears off camera the moment Kehlani details that her routines these days revolve around the first-grader, of whom she has full custody after a legal battle with Adeya’s father. She’s hosting some of Adeya’s pals for the break from school. (Kehlani recently told The Breakfast Club she’s protected her daughter from her crises: “I don’t fall apart in front of her,” she said. “She doesn’t have a clue if anything is going on with me.”) Tomorrow, though, she’s set to finalize the vocals for her album. And today, after our call, she has to run and meet the Usher to finalize their song on the LP (more on that below, too). The album title is off the record for now, but the crux of it is not.
“I really just homed in on making records,” says Kehlani. “If I think of the difference between bops, little songs here and there — records were things that took time and took effort from multiple people and took thinking of each individual song as a piece of art, versus I just came and doodled the song and spit it out and put it out, which I did for a long time. I’m not saying that there were a million, trillion steps or people involved in it, but I’m saying we treated these songs with the same amount of care.”
Here, Kehlani goes deep on making an album indebted to classic R&B, the genre’s recent queer awakening, what ethical fandom looks like, and how she’s learned to live with bipolar disorder.
On your birthday this year, you shared that you’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and BPD. What is the latter an acronym for?
That’s borderline personality disorder. But honestly, I need to get diagnosed by at least two more people because I think that BPD might be misdiagnosed. I’m speaking to you as [I’m] medicated, been in various forms of therapy. I might just be in some sort of remission for the BPD, but I’ve been episode-free and kooky-free for almost a year now. The episodes don’t necessarily go away, but you can apply thought to them and you can acknowledge when they’re happening, like, “Oh, OK, I woke up this morning feeling like a superhero and I need to do 872 things and maybe leave the country and maybe rethink my life. I must be manic.” Or you’re like, “Everybody hates me. I think maybe I should die. I must be in a low.” You can go into these parameters of “Here’s my steps, here’s all the options I can choose to help myself through this right now.” I’ve been just in that world for the last year, and it’s been really nice.
You’ve recently said that even Crash was made during a bout of mania, but as a fan, it can be hard to tell that that’s happening. What did that look like for you pre-diagnosis, and how did it affect your career?
What’s interesting is I got diagnosed mid-crisis. Actually year one of the genocide, I’m sitting online having full-blown screaming fests with the phone, and I chop all my hair off. I had a pink buzz cut, and I was like, “How did nobody fucking just tell me I was in an episode?” I got my legs super tatted — didn’t really recall the tattoo session. [The tattoo artist] finishes one leg apparently, and she’s like, “OK, I’m done.” And apparently I was like, “Just keep going,” but through an entire bottle of tequila. There was a lot that happened that year; even the mania broke into full-blown paranoia. Leaving my house was difficult, thinking everybody is out to get me. I’m thinking I need to have security set outside my house. All the while, people are having very real conversations with me about my activism: “This is what can happen to your career and this is what can happen to you as a person and your safety.” I also was receiving massive amounts of death threats. So pairing all of the very real issues like that with a disorder like this, I flew off the handles. My romantic life was crazy. Every area of my life you can imagine was just like ass-whoop, ass-whoop, ass-whoop. I had been asking for a psychiatrist for six months, and every single person wasn’t taking clients.
They were too busy? They were at capacity?
They were full at capacity. And I’m like, if me — with access and money and the ability to have multiple people searching for this — am struggling right now, what is everybody else doing? So for six months, I’m in and out of crisis, in and out of psychosis and hypomania. Top-level manic things that can happen. I ran it up. I think there’s been a lot of moments that people may have not noticed as an expression of my bipolar disorder.
It looks like, on paper, you’re having your most successful year ever while bravely saying that there has been a genocide happening. How do you hold all of that? You were experiencing mania, but a lot of the things that you were saying were necessary.
Before I got medicated, I sat down at lunch with my friend who’s also medicated, [and they were] like, “Oh, just so you know, by day two, three on medication, you’re going to wake up and look around and want to change everything. People are going to seem different to you. All your choices are going to seem fucking heinous to you. You’re going to get ideas, new ideas about your regimen, just take your time with it.” Literally on day three, I was like, “Oh, I was tweaking.”
I wouldn’t say that I was brave because I was manic. I also have a hard time calling this brave in general. I think [in mania], you get hyper-confident. You don’t think anything can happen to you. I think that how I naturally would feel about witnessing something like this is the same. I’m just as angry, I’m just as upset. I’m just as confused at our world and our government. I’m just as mind-blown that people can sit around and be silent about this. But the way in which I would’ve gone about it would’ve probably been a lot more careful, because I think I was just screaming and I alienated a lot of people in my realm that I really wish I could have just pulled in for conversation.
Who do you mean when you say “in your own realm”?
In my industry, in my peer group, in my interpersonal circles. I appreciate looking back and just seeing that I was passionate and I cared. I think me now, with the grounding that I have, would’ve been more strategic. I’m not an organizer, but something I really learned in the last year and two years of moving through all of this and having really patient people teach me is their strategy, the way that they call people in and teach people. That was something that I really appreciated and learned to integrate post-having-more-sanity.
Can you give me an example of an encounter or a conversation that felt more aligned with these principles of organizing that you’ve learned, versus what felt a little more crash-out-y to you?
Like Aja Monet — incredible person, incredible poet, incredible activist — hosted a bunch of us who were all aligned on this topic at her house. Artists, organizers, just people who needed a place to sit and imagine what a new world would look like. [We were] putting our thoughts together. “How can we call more people in? Is there any information you’re maybe lacking on this subject? Let’s talk about the history of it.” I’m sitting in the living room with people who have actually been to Palestine, who have been going back and forth to Palestine since maybe I was even in middle school. [It’s like] “OK, you’ve done step one, which is you’re angry and aware. Now, you have to take step two, and realize that this is a really long battle.” It’s a really long fight. Even post ceasefire, the journey to the entirety of freeing Palestine itself is going to be a really long battle and you have to have some type of self-preservation so you don’t burn out. We talked a lot about empathy fatigue and doing-the-work fatigue. It was just all of these things that I had never heard of. I think if everybody that was passionate was equipped with these thoughts and these processes, things would go differently. But step one, I’m grateful that I was angry and aware.
But then the crash-out is that I put everybody that worked for me in a group chat and was like, “If you don’t fucking say something, you’re fired.” Does it come from a great place? Does it come from my heart and my anger? Yes. But does it do anything? Versus [asking], “How can I sit my team down and call them in and say, ‘Hey, you guys may have valid fears about speaking about this. Or you may feel like you don’t actually know what’s going on’?” Am I here to pacify that? No, but I can lovingly correct [that] being that I’m in a position of being leadership, and I’m responsible for [them] and I also want [them] to be an extension of me. Just all of these more thoughtful processes.
You’ve said you’ve lost a lot because of your advocacy for Palestine and against the Israeli government. Are you still losing things?
Absolutely. Oh, there’s people that have told me verbatim that they’ll never with fuck with me. Companies, magazines, all of it. You name it. And you just thug it. That’s honestly why I’m so consistent with my art. It’s why I’m so direct-to-consumer. I’m going to get this song out to my fans. I’m going to work the song. I’m going to post about the song. I’m going to market it. I’m not afraid to talk to my fans and be in conversation with them because you can’t disrupt that. That isn’t dependent on a brand deal; that isn’t dependent on anything except for me and the other humans that are listening to me. That’s just where I’ve given my focus after the fact.
And do you also think having a decade-ish-long career has taught you that grassroots approach? You’ve had a very specific fan base follow you all these years. Are you reassured that if you continue to build that relationship that you can keep your life intact?
I mean, these are some people that I have had to pass out my physical copy of my CD to when I was 19. These are people that have seen me go from a teenager to a mother. Your entire twenties, people spend not famous, fucking up and tweaking out and wilding out and then come to their thirties and be like, “Whoa, my twenties was a whirlwind.” They did it in private. I did it completely publicly. Every single thing that has been blasted, that’s been out in the open, that people have seen gave them an opportunity to love me as a person.
A lot of people have their opinions and you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think that people that really can grasp me as a whole human, they love me in a different way, and I definitely attribute [that to] my ability to keep floating and keep thriving too. My interactions with them aren’t ever normal. They’re full-blown, “How’s your cat and how’s your dog and how’s your daughter and how’s your mom doing? Have you spoken to your biological mom?” They care about me as a person.
Sacha Lecca
Sacha Lecca
What does responsible, respectful fandom actually look like to you? You’re saying these people love you, but they also don’t know you personally.
I just base it off of “In a perfect world, what do I wish being a fan of someone would look like? In a perfect world, what do the boundaries of still being a person that’s ever-changing and growing just like everyone else look like? How would I want to be received?” I’ve had to correct my fan base a lot over the years. I remember when I first came out [as queer] and they were being awful to the men that were also my fans. Then I had to correct the men from being weird and gross. I’ve had to [deal with] a lot of them being weird to any partner they’ve seen me with. I’m like, “Yo, bro, I get that you have a fixation on me, but you can’t be awful to the person that I’ve chosen to share with you.”
Also, half the time, I’ve only chosen to share this with people because I’m tired of sneaking around. It’s not a fun feeling in love to know you’re going on a date and then you walk into a restaurant and everybody’s like [mimics someone recording her on their phone beneath an imaginary table], or you just had a couple drinks with the person that you love and you stumbled out of a club and now there’s some video that everybody’s like, “Gotcha, bitch!”
It’s a lot of picking and choosing of what to share and how to share and when to share. Also, being aware that you’re not going to be able to ever be in control of the reception. But as far as my ethical fan base goes, I think it’s guiding them when I can, correcting them when I can, not letting them bully other people or other artists, other fan bases.
To your point of not wanting to sneak around, I’m a huge Kwn fan [the British, lesbian R&B singer with whom Kehlani has collaborated and starred on social media]. The public has seen that you guys have some sort of relationship — I don’t know what kind, that’s your business. I’m interested in how you reconcile those moments where you want to be more private in love — platonic or not — with the moments that you don’t want to hide.
I’m just going to speak broadly. I think that we just have a right to live freely and love freely. And just like any other girl, any normal person gets excited about anyone and wants to be able to have those moments where they’re like, “I’m proud of them,” or, “I care about them, and I want to share,” I don’t think celebrities are exempt from that. We don’t suddenly have different feelings because we have millions of followers. It’s a very strange feeling to come home and be like, “Oh, my God, so-and-so, did we get caught?” That’s not pertaining to any relationship I’ve ever been in or any relationship I ever will be in or am in or not. It’s just a rule of thumb that it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t, in my position. Either way, it’s just not normal. So once you accept that it’s not normal, you just got to pick one. I think it’ll vary for me. Depending on how I’m feeling, depending on how I’m living at the moment. I’m a 30-year-old woman. I am just learning and loving in front of everyone.
There are two things happening in R&B that I’m really excited about. One is the rise of queer R&B, but the other is the way artists like you are authentically tapping into the past. “Folded” does this really well; your latest single, “Out the Window,” does this well. How do you make music and videos that are an homage to a previous era without cosplaying it?
Everything that I’m doing is because it includes the ingredients and the recipe of [an] era. I’m thinking of what I know as the classic recipes of R&B. I’m not a person that thinks something has to be reinvented over and over again. I’ve done it, but I don’t think R&B is broken. I have ventured out of R&B; I’ve done a lot of pop music. I think most of my [music] has been alternative R&B, but I said I really wanted to make [music that] has the recipe of classic R&B.
I think that there’s a thin line between the cosplay-homage thing and this [thing] that has the ingredients. If you can name eight people when you’re looking at my video or listening to my song and say, “OK, so I’m seeing Aaliyah, Janet, Usher, hearing Brandy, seeing Omarion” all at the same time, it just means that I’m doing justice to the era and I’m doing justice to the genre.
I saw you were recording with producer and artist Ryan Leslie. Is whatever you guys worked on going to be on this album?
Me, Ryan Leslie, and James Fauntleroy have a song that I think is dope.
What is the vibe of that song?
It’s very James-y. I love it. The coolest thing about it is when James makes something, you can hear the James in it, and I think it’s probably one of the more eclectic songs on the project. It’s not so straightforward R&B. It has a little energy in it. It has some bounce to it.
What does James-y mean to you?
James has this incredible way of writing these whimsical melodies with these dirty, edgy lyrics that tell stories and paint a picture, but vocally, it’s like there’s so much traveling in it. I think he has such a sonic thing. You’ll press play on a song and be like, “Oh, you went to the school of James Fauntleroy.” Just like I can hear so much Frank [Ocean] in a lot of the new generations, they’re not realizing that even a lot of Frank-y stuff is James-y stuff.
You can just really hear the schools that people graduated from in their music. I don’t like when people say that’s a bad thing. I think that these conversations were also had in the Nineties. We’re paying so much homage to the 2000s and the Nineties. They were also paying homage to what came before them, and also being disruptive at the same time. It’s having to navigate that balance.
You’ve also said that you have a song with Usher. Is that going to be on this album?
Yeah, that’s going to be on this. I actually have to go after this interview and finish the final vocals with him.
Oh, wait, in person?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you guys make the bulk of this song in person?
No, actually, we’ve been going back and forth multiple times to get the song right. Different songs at that as well. It’s just trying to find the right song. But honestly, I just really appreciated how much of a person he’s been to me. I had a show in Atlanta where my voice was completely gone when I got there because I was shooting a video until the late wee hours outside.
And was the video “Out the Window”?
It was actually the original “Out the Window” that isn’t coming out.
Quick aside, I don’t want you to lose your story, but why did that get stopped?
Too many variables. Everything was just seeming to go wrong, and we were missing a lot of footage and a lot didn’t get shot, and it was just like, “Damn.” I got sick. I was actually outside in the middle of downtown L.A. Very “Touch” [by Omarion] vibes. I got sick as hell, and so when I got to Atlanta, I put on my [Instagram] story or on my notes “I’m so sick,” and he somehow saw that and called me and was like, “I’m about to bring you everything, and I’m about to put you on with my voice coach.” This man came to my hotel room, did vocal lessons with me, brought me 72 million remedies, and literally brought my voice back. I was only able to do One Music Fest because Usher Raymond saved my guts.
Who are the other dream collaborators you got to work with on this album?
Oh, man, so many. The Underdogs. I got to write with Ne-Yo. I got to work with Stargate. I got to write with Tank. I cut a song from Johntá Austin. I did Jermaine Dupri and Brian Michael Cox. Oh, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Man, that was one of the coolest moments of my life, and it’s probably my favorite song on the album.
What are you most excited about in bringing this album to life?
Honestly, I just want people to have an experience. I want people to just love singing and dancing again. It is really that simple. It’s such a personal moment for me right now to be proving myself. I feel so personally just motivated to rewrite my story, and I hope that trickles into the experience that people have. I hope people feel empowered.
What is the log line of the story that’s being rewritten?
I contributed a lot to R&B in the last 10 years, and I think it gets overlooked. I’m one of the few that are still remaining from my coming-out time [as an artist], and I think that’s important. To still be able to make splashes like this 10 years in, I think it’s a big deal.
You’ve been nominated for Best R&B Song at the Grammys back to back, last year for “After Hours.” How do you compare the experience?
Last year, I was genuinely shocked. My friend texted me, and he lives in Brazil, so he was just ahead. I was asleep, and he was like, “Grammy noms come out today.” I was like, “They’re not worried about me. I’m going back to sleep.” I woke up to seven missed calls and eight texts, and he was like, “They clearly worried about you. Wake up.” And I was like, “What the fuck?” Especially because “After Hours” and Crash in general had gotten such a polarizing reception. I was shocked.
This year everybody, from week five of “Folded” coming out, was like, “You’re getting a nomination.” So I had this opposite pressure, like, if we don’t get nominated after everybody’s saying this, then all I’m going to have to hear for the next months is how I was snubbed. I don’t need that sitting on my back. I just need to be focused on creating, honestly. That’s the biggest difference for sure.
Sacha Lecca
How would your ideal Grammy week look? Your ideal Grammy day? What are you wearing? Where are you going?
I honestly just want to be not-anxious. I want to be feeling very settled. I want to walk in there knowing that no matter what, I shifted a conversation. I want to spend time with my family. I want to wear a matching outfit with Destin [Conrad, nominated for Best Progressive R&B album for Love on Digital, which features Kehlani]. That’s really what I want to do.
I think most importantly, I just want to be sitting in gratitude that week and that day. I don’t want any other feelings. I’m not a very competitive person. I don’t really have those feelings. I’m stoked and I want to stay in this.
You mentioned Destin; Durand Benarr earned three grammy nominations as well. It really feels like we’re in a special moment for queer R&B between you guys and others, similar to the sapphic moment in pop last year. Does it feel like something is happening to you?
No, there is. I think that it was very taboo in the beginning for people to be able to use the pronouns they actually talk to in the actual songs that they sing. I think the fact that not only can you do that, but you can present exactly how you want to present, you can make music videos kissing the gender you want to kiss — all of that being possible right now is crazy. I don’t know how to say anything that isn’t obvious, like duh, people that are growing up need to be able to have their sexuality represented. I’m glad that I’m a part of it.
It’s a trip to be able to watch VH1’s Behind the Music from old-ass shit and see how many people were in the closet. You hear these industry stories about how so-and-so was a little queer, and now we just don’t have to do that. It’s beautiful, and I consider us lucky.
“Folded” is a pronoun-less song. Do you think that it could have broken through like this if it wasn’t?
Honestly, I don’t know. So many people who are new to me because of “Folded” think its about a man to the point where they got mad at me in the video because I wasn’t having a man pick up his clothes from my house. And I don’t think the video would’ve been successful if I had a love interest. If I would’ve did a video where I would’ve been having a woman come pick up her clothes and [been] kissing on a girl, they would’ve been mad regardless.
Are there songs on this album that you believe in like you believe in “Folded,” but are gendered in their pronouns?
[There are] songs that I want people to, when they’re singing the song, either feel like they are me in the song or feel like I am talking directly to them.
So the pronouns are mostly like “me” and “you”?
All these songs we wrote with that perspective. If I was texting you, if I was writing you a letter, if I was talking directly to you, I don’t go, “Yeah, I really miss you so much, girl.” I don’t go, “Damn, me and you, baby girl.” I don’t talk like that.
Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you would like to, especially with the album coming out?
I just want to drill the point home that this was just my time to go this route and hit the nail on the head in a conscious choice to break through this ceiling that I’ve been [under] for a while. It took a lot of trying and failing [with] other sounds and succeeding in certain lenses. I think it took a lot of polarization in my art. I don’t have any regrets about any choices artistically that I’ve made before. Going this direction doesn’t mean this is the direction for the rest of my life either. I take it era by era and creative choice by creative choice. I’m just glad that people are receiving it right now.
