Taken from the Autumn 2020 issue. Order your copy now.

Yesterday, I was driving this convertible and I was just so happy. All my girls were in the car, we were having so much fun and it reminded me of when I got my very first car… And I was just thinking, like, wow. Ain’t shit changed?”

Preparing for the release of her long-anticipated sophomore album, Kali Uchis is thinking about how far she’s come since she started making music from her teenage bedroom in Virginia. “I guess appreciating those little moments where I’m like, I really haven’t changed,” she mediates. “I just have elevated myself and I’ve evolved. I’m a grown woman now, and I’m so grateful for that. I’m not a broken little girl anymore.”

For Uchis, that evolution has stemmed from the realisation that she can give herself everything she needs, and that meeting those needs shouldn’t be contingent on external factors. “I wouldn’t treat myself and let myself feel worthy of certain things,” she says, explaining that when she was younger, she never used to celebrate herself — or birthdays, or graduation, or prom — glossing over the little wins and saving self-love for elusive milestones of success. “I would always feel like I haven’t worked hard enough yet, I’m gonna go on a vacation once I this, I’m gonna celebrate once this. I don’t have a reason to celebrate yet, I haven’t gotten to where I want to be in my life yet. Now, looking back on it, I wish that I had celebrated myself more and I wish that I had enjoyed the journey and treated myself along the way

Knowing what she deserves, unconditionally, has also meant cutting off anyone who doesn’t value her time or meet her energy in the same way. “It’s very easy to settle for what’s comfortable and stay in that comfort zone — stay with that friend group or that lover, or that whoever it is not actually giving you what you need,” she muses. “’Cause every human being has a different set of needs, and when people’s needs aren’t being met, that’s when you have to read-dress the people that you have around you and the things that you’re doing with your life.”

It’s this message that inspired her latest track, “Aquí Yo Mando” (“Here I Command”), with Maryland rapper Rico Nasty. “I’m just kind of at a point in my life, personally, where you should not feel bad about having demands about anything in your life,” she said, explaining its lyrics to YouTube platform Genius. “And if somebody wants to be a part of your life, a reminder: having access to me can easily be revoked.”

Uchis captures this confidence in her music sonically, too. Each of her tracks fits into a dreamy universe imbued with the glamour of feeling yourself and feeling theatrical, music to soundtrack anything from a nighttime drive to dressing up on your own or dumping a lousy boyfriend. “I call her like a calm storm, because her music is very, very fucking relaxing,” Nasty said in the same Genius video, “but it also really makes you feel like a bad bitch, very independent, like you don’t need nobody.”

Like her acclaimed debut album Isolation, Uchis’ next record will feature new iterations of this sound across a range of genres — this time though, it’s her first full project in Spanish. “For me, it’s really important and really special and probably the most important body of work that I’ve ever made,” she says. “I was really excited to experiment with not just sounds that sounded typically like Latin music, but stuff that I can play with any genre and sing it in Spanish. And there’s nothing that sounds like some of these songs… There’s some that are like OK, I could hear this out in Columbia right now, I could see this playing at a club. But then there’s some like oh my god, you would never have heard some shit like this ever in your life and probably never will again.”

Catching up with Nasty ahead of its release, they reflect on what it means to be an artist, how they still feel like high school misfits in an industry that favours streaming numbers over their words, and why they’ll never bend to fit that mould.

KU: Where you come from is supposed to be where you break first, because it’s like obviously hometown love, right? But for me, it was weird because I felt like people didn’t show me love in the DMV.
RN: I just feel like you were ahead of your time. You always sounded like you were from somewhere else. And your swag, too…

KU: People always used to say when I would be walking around, ‘You’re not from our here, you must be from Cali or something…’
RN: No bullshit, you fit right in bitch!

KU: That was just because when I was growing up I used to hate shopping where everyone else would shop. I remember one time when I was really little, I went to elementary school and another girl was wearing the same shirt as me, and that shit really hurt. I was like I will never let this happen again, I don’t ever want to be seeing another girl wearing the same shit as me.
RN: You know what’s ironic? That shit happened to me. It was fucking prom, sis. So many people are like, ‘Were you like this in high school?’ And I wasn’t, I wore a uniform at school, it didn’t bother me before, but when I went to prom and I worked so hard to get that dress… I was like wow, I want to dress different on purpose now.

KU: Exactly, exactly. After that I would make my own shirts, I would paint on top of my clothes, I would do anything just to like make that shit look different […] But I think another part of it was also ‘cause I went to school in Columbia when I was really little and I had that part of my childhood too, so being from somewhere else I never really felt like I super super fit in. I still see the DMV as home, but there was always an other home for me.
RN: Now you’re such a resilient artist that it’s like, in a way, those things had to happen to you because now you don’t sound like nobody, you don’t dress like nobody. You really are in a league of your own, bro.

KU: […] People like us, we come from places where there’s not a big industry, you know? We really had to figure this shit as we go along, versus people who live in like New York or live in LA, you can get plugged knowing certain people. So when you’re just figuring shit out as you go along, sometimes that shit is really a journey. I know it’s been a journey for you, too.
RN: My dad was a rapper, so growing up my mum didn’t want me to become a rapper because she’s like ‘You can’t become a rapper out here! I literally watched your dad try to become a rapper, but there’s nothing here.’ It was one of them things too where when I got in the industry, you don’t have nobody looking over like ‘Hey, don’t do her dirty’, or ‘Don’t do that to her, this is my people.’ So you really do gotta watch out for yourself. But that’s why the music stays fierce, because these battles we face that we talk about in our music are not coming from other people. These are real things we’ve had to overcome […] So when you make Spanish songs, are you ever nervous to put those out?

KU: Someone else asked me recently, like ‘You don’t feel scared?’ Because you’ve never dropped a full album in Spanish before, that’s a whole new market, you basically have to start from scratch again.
RN: How do you get over that?

KU: It’s not scratch scratch, because I do have a little fan base already in South America and stuff, but it’s definitely a risk. But I feel like it’s important, as artists, to take risks and make sure that we’re never predictable and people don’t know what to expect from us. Because otherwise that shit is just fucking boring. You could probably make a million “Smack A Bitch”s. But it’s like, you don’t want to make the same song again and again.
RN: That’s exactly how I feel.

KU: You’ve got to switch it up. I could make a million “Loner”s if I wanted to and that would be safe, that would be easy. I would know that my fans would eat it up every time and that it would be received well. You’ve got to remember there’s always going to be people who are like ‘I miss this style of her’, or ‘I want her to make more songs like this’, or whatever. I get that it’s a business and people feel like we should cater to our audience, but we’re artists.
RN: The audience follows us. We have to bring the new shit to the table.

KU: That’s the point of being a trendsetter. We take the risks and we just do whatever the fuck we feel is right and do whatever the fuck we feel is the thing. And then if that ends up being the next wave, it’s better to be someone on your own shit, in your own lane, on your own wave, than to be follow-ing a wave just to sell or whatever.
RN: Because as an artist, if you’re not giving out the message that you want, then you always feel like you’re not doing your job right.

KU: I can hear it in your music too, that shit really comes from your heart. There’s so much passion in it. There’s passion in the rage and there’s soul in that rage. That’s the most important thing in the world, to protect your soul and to not lose your soul. So it’s like all that other shit — like sell-ing and being number one — it’s all cool, it’s all great, but for some of us that isn’t the goal. […] I think it’s important to also let other artists know that we don’t have to feel like we’re in competition for these number slots.
RN: I feel like it’s bad in the industry in general, but for some reason, it’s so bad as a girl.

KU: Girl, shit is like high school!
RN: ’m very happy you spoke on that, because so many people ask me that. They’re like ‘So, this next album, you want to chart?’ And I’m like, of course, I want it to, but if my message isn’t chart-worthy, or whatever the case may be, that’s not going to affect my fans. My fans gon’ get this message regardless. I want to make sure all my fans that are saying they’re fucking sad have a day that they’re like ‘OK bitch, this is the best day ever.’ That’s what music is about, man.

KU: Exactly… Because like we are super unique and nobody can replace us. There’s never gonna be another Rico Nasty, there’s never gonna be another Kali Uchis.
RN: Never!

KU: You’ve just got to sit back and you’ve gotta know that what you’re putting out is good, what you’re putting out is true to you and is fire… I don’t think it should ever be to fucking be in this weird foo foo competition. That shit is literally like high school, and in high school I was exactly who I am right now. I was definitely not sitting on no fucking popular table.
RN: That’s bullshit, bitch I was a loner! Times don’t change… If you love this shit and you see your fans and you see their faces at your shows and you love what you stand for, you’ve got to stand in that shit no matter what the industry has to say.

KU: We have the insight to connect to those people because we are them, we are the misfits and the outcasts and we’ve been the underdogs since forever… We know what it’s like to not be loved, we know what it’s like to be misunderstood, we know what it’s like to feel like we don’t be-long. And you know, if we were to be anything else, our fans wouldn’t even be able to connect with us no more.
RN: Bro, they would call us out. They would be like ‘What the fuck are you doing? What is this?’

KU: That’s why it’s going to be so amazing to see us do what we’re going to do and to see us accomplish the things we’re going to accomplish. I hope you’re so proud of how far you’ve come already because I’m already knowing, from where we come from, how rare this shit is. It’s just going to make it even better.
RN: Right! Like who would have thought? That’s fucking crazy.

KU: Right! Like who would have thought? That’s fucking crazy.
RN: Let’s get to these music videos that you always drop… Your music videos are always sexy as shit, fire. So many people are like ‘Oh Rico, you turn it on when the camera come on…’ Kali, bitch you really turn it on when the camera come on! I love that shit. Full-blown character, full-blown sexy, you know just what to do, just where to move. People like me, I’m sexy sometimes but I just want to know, when you are thinking of these visuals and you’re in the mirror and you’re in these outfits, how do you get into that mode, feeling like a boss?

KU: OK, first of all bitch, talk about sexy sometimes? You are so sexy. But I get what you mean where you’re trying to be humble, because I do that too.
RN: I feel like I just rage a lot, I’m always jumping around.

KU: But that’s sexy too, you look good. You have one of those faces where you just look good wearing anything, you don’t even have to try. That’s the most sexy thing, someone who just effortlessly bombs.
RN: That’s low key how I felt about you too. Like, you didn’t have eyebrows in the video, and I’m like this bitch is just bad, it doesn’t matter.

KU: I feel like it’s definitely just a mindstate of knowing that you’re that bitch. You just have to remind yourself of all the things that people can’t get from anyone else that they could get from you, all the things you have to offer that are unique. Literally, like I said earlier how no one could be a Rico Nasty, no one could be a Kali Uchis. That’s our power… We’re literally us, unique. No one could ever do it.