So good you’ve got to say it twice. The Surinamese-Dutch dynamite has blown contemporary R&B wide-open with her sultry and sophisticated debut album, Papercut. But beneath her glamour and imminent fame, pgLang’s first female signee is happiest with a subtle sort of solitude.

The papercut. A universally annoying, fleetingly troublesome sensation. A lesson learned through a sharp but biting twang of immediately incurable but eventually ephemeral pain. “It’s a powerful word,” Imani Imani thinks aloud, staring off beyond the realms of our video call, her statement dripping with a romantic residue I’d previously unattached to the word she’s describing.

She finds the term so profound, in fact, that she christened it the title of her debut album, released on 2nd June via Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar’s label, pgLang. The prickled epiphany came to her as she lay awake one night on holiday, staring at the “finger” like prongs of the room fan spinning ceaselessly on the ceiling above. “I kept thinking, ‘Oh, what if you have a cut? You always have to fix it yourself. I can hurt myself, but I can also fix it myself.’” A papercut. The centre of your attention one moment, gone forever the next – at least until the edge of a sheet of paper pierces your skin again.

The short, sharp phrase seamlessly sums up Imani Imani’s beguiling opening entrée. Through tales of late night rendezvous, lovesick loneliness, and impenetrable infatuation, her album slashes and wounds, heals, and eventually mends. There’s no rose without thorns.

Summer has rolled towards its completion on a musky eventide in early September, as Imani Imani finds herself locked in a conversational dance with an indisposed flu struck journalist. It’s not her first, or second, interview – bits and pieces (get it) pop up if you Google search – but there’s a sense that she’s yet to be weighed down by tediously having to repeat answers to the same questions as she ticks off a long list of press. This is her inaugural cover story, and handles it with a manner that’s refreshingly welcoming, light-hearted, and honest.

Just a few weeks prior, the Utrecht-born, now Berlin-based singer songwriter was in the same East London park as me attending All Points East Festival. For now, as a punter rather than a performer. But maybe she’ll be on the bill next year? “I hope so,” she laughs. “That’s the plan.”

Such intention is far from unattainable – with only a single album to her name, the Surinamese-Dutch diamond has found a wealth of critical acclaim and internet buzz which will only surge in value. Bookers will undoubtedly be circling. Yet, remarkably, at the time of writing, she has never played a live show as Imani Imani (an artist moniker that doubles her birth name, one which she switched to after releasing early snippets online as Imani Selina). She hasn’t been on stage in over five years. “That’s in the next phase, you know,” she says, grinning knowingly.

Millions of streams, a swiftly growing listenership (whom she views more as “friends” than fans), but no live crowds as of yet to share her music with in person. There’s a gorgeous dichotomy to the fact, one that feels apt when you understand her journey to this current acme.

“For years before signing [to pgLang], Imani Imani has lived – and continues to live – somewhat of a double life. On one hand, she’s signed to pgLang, one of the most exciting and significant labels to emerge from the music industry this decade, and the first and, so far, only woman on its small roster. Shrouded in mysticism, she is a striking, seraphic presence, immediately recognisable and memorable for her blonde close-cropped hair and curiously captivating features. A superstar in the making, bound for the heights of popular culture, Imani Imani the artist is a slick and sensual serenader, philosophising on love and heartache with sultry sophistication and arena-ready vocals.

But beneath the beauty, talent, and early career success, she’s as grounded and genuine as your next-door neighbour or local barista. For now, at least, she is living a normal life devoid of glitz and glamour in a city where there’s little-to no R&B scene and “people really create art just for the sake of art.” She and her long-time producer and closest collaborator Daan Zinkhaan moved in tandem a year or so ago from Amsterdam (where she had relocated from Utrecht at 18 years old). She “loves” Berlin; the city is creative enough for her to sprout outwards musically and socially, while bringing isolation to draw from the quiet, necessary depth of artistry. “This is the right time to be here,” she muses. “I hope I can stay as long as possible, as long as it works for my career.”

The stark difference in these two sides of her life – the glitzy vibrance of LA and the gentle seclusion of Berlin – is bountiful but requires continual adjustment. “I think it is a little bit hard to deal with sometimes because you’re not physically in that life all the time. So it’s a bit tiring. But there’s also so much creativity in this in-between because it doesn’t match up. I’m here [in Berlin], just going to the supermarket, a super normal girl. But if I would go to LA it would be different. I can walk and talk and surround myself with these kinds of people, and be in these kinds of rooms. I like it in this way, but I hope for myself that at some point I’ll land a little bit more. It’s floaty sometimes.”

The duality of Imani Imani was planted at her roots. A Dutch father, Surinamese mother, separated when she was young. Two disparate households, cultures, outlooks. An internal tug of war from childhood that has shaped the rope’s holder, and taught her how to slack off. “Growing up I did struggle a lot with it,” she admits. “My parents weren’t together, and they are also two different people from each other generally, their style of how they would raise me. Maybe that’s why I’m used to this double life because there was always this conflict. I have had to find peace within that middle world. What I like about it now is that I realised it’s easier for me to go out in the world and reinvent myself and re-explore and rediscover. Even though I feel strongly connected to my Surinamese culture and my Dutch culture in a way too, I’m also very free. I don’t feel limited.”

Her cultural fluidity is reflected in her artistic approach. Refined to its current form in the years since she began making music as a teenager, the music of Imani Imani finds its flow in R&B’s atmosphere but is in no way limited to a single direction. Papercut traverses sun-kissed soul, free-wheeling hip hop, anthemic pop, and hints at experimentalism with electronic ideas. It befits the quiet evolution of the R&B genre, sitting within a not too dissimilar sonic world to pioneers like SZA, Syd, or Jhené Aiko, while still feeling effortlessly individual. The album is supremely confident in its execution, even more impressive given its surprise release that comes as more an initial introduction into her artistry rather than a long awaited full-length mission statement. No EPs or run of singles to build anticipation, no tour supporting a bigger artist, no TikTok farming or paid placements. Just a fearless plunge into the world, a full-bodied laying out of who and what Imani Imani is.

But behind the scenes, Imani has been putting the work in for years, with all of her creative labour leading up to the release of her excellent debut album. pgLang – and Dave Free in particular – have been there the whole way. And the tale of how the label and artist came to be is a small miracle.

First, some context. An off-shoot of the supremely successful but industry compliant Top Dawg Entertainment, pgLang was founded in 2020 by 27-time Grammy Award-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar and his school friend-come-business partner in a media empire, TDE former co-president Dave Free. Set out to function as a multidisciplinary, artist-first company that shuns the commercial rigmarole of a major label, the independent label built a small musical roster of: Lamar himself; the highly talented Baby Keem, who is Lamar’s cousin; and now Imani Imani.

In 2023, a new signing plucked from European obscurity without a single official release to her name. Her single “Snatch” was first teased during Chanel’s SS24 Haute Couture show, which was designed by Kendrick and Dave. Bar that, nothing until the out-of-the-blue drop of Papercut.

So… How?!

“I love the story objectively, you know what I mean?” Imani Imani beams. “It even inspires me to know that this is a real story, the way this came about.”

It began in 2021 when Dave reached out on Instagram. She had no music released through DSPs, but had short video snippets of her singing over her producer Daan’s instrumentals, accompanying conceptual shoots photographed by her friend, Keanna Williams. They weren’t amassing much attention though, not going viral or having conversations with serious industry people. Imani Imani felt somewhat stuck.

“It was COVID,” she recalls. “Me and Daan were making music every day and we knew we were onto a sound, but at the same time we were making the world that closed down at this point. So we didn’t see much prospect, and that got to me because you have so much young energy and all you want to do is express it, but you can’t. There were moments where I’d feel like, ‘Well, I’m actually not sure what we’re doing.’ We didn’t have any guidance. We didn’t have any Dutch industry or business people reaching out to me. So we felt we were kind of onto something, but then also onto nothing.”

Imani Imani reached breaking point. She went to Daan’s studio and told him she didn’t know if she wanted to continue like this. But they skeptically agreed to keep going, because you never know what might happen. “There’s such a strong moment I remember being like, ‘You don’t know who picks it up.’ It was a crazy sentence to say, knowing that was the day that someone actually picked it up.”

That very day, a message from one of US rap music’s most important figures appeared in her Instagram DMs. “Dave reached out to ask me about my music ambitions and asked if he could help me in any way with his company, pgLang I didn’t know pg then because it was only live for maybe a year at that point, and even more mysterious than they are right now because back then there was no content at all. I didn’t believe it was true, but then we called a few days after on a full moon – I remember all my important moments with pg have been during a full moon, which I really like because I care about that. But yeah, we had the call, and fully connected. Then I met the team at the time a couple of weeks after on Zoom. But I wasn’t ready to take the next step into releasing. I was still exploring my sound. So I told Dave, ‘I need time. I really enjoyed this conversation, but I don’t know how I can continue.’ And he was like, ‘No, we’re also taking our time. We’re also building our company right now.’”

Analogously, both Imani Imani and Dave were building something new from the ground up, patiently planning for creative dynasties rather than transient triumphs. “We were on the same path of rediscovering who we were but having a very clear focus on art that we connected on. It took pretty long before we even had a conversation about working together. It was more about, let’s see if I can help you here and there. If he feels right about the person, Dave will help them out. He’s super good at that, it’s his superpower.”

Time passed by. Imani Imani would send Dave music here and there. Then everything changed when he invited her to an Amsterdam stop off for Kendrick’s The Big Steppers tour. “We were backstage and they were kind of testing me, asking me to sing some melodies over some songs, some harmonies in front of them,” she remembers. “They could tell that I was just willing to do it even though it was very new to me because I’ve never recorded with anyone else but Daan. It was the right connection that we felt, because we’re similar a little bit in how we treated each other, which just felt right from the get-go. So we just continued our conversation and built a relationship up until I signed [in 2023].”

Imani Imani’s signing to pgLang is a tale of improbable serendipity. Of all the tens of thousands of artists making music worldwide, vying for the attention of a tastemaker and industry heavyweight like Dave Free, it is she who has broken through. And now, some five years after receiving that first DM? She’s hanging out with Kendrick Lamar.

“It’s exactly how you think it is,” Imani Imani smiles at my gushing query of what being in K. Dot’s presence is like. “It is the same way that I still also view him when I’m not with him, where it’s just like… He’s so inspirational in how he lives his life and the way he approaches his career, he does the same with his real life. When I was in the studio with him I would just watch, just be the audience and be like, ‘Wow, I want to see how you work.’ I would learn from that. Kendrick is the type of person, I think, who you don’t have to be around him much, or have to talk to him a lot, to get his energy and be inspired by it. And that is something that’s really special.”

So, her and Kenny have been working together then? She smiles mischievously. “We’ve been in the studio at some point, yeah.”

Not many artists can say they’ve created with the greatest rapper of his generation. Far fewer at such an early stage in their career. But Imani Imani isn’t like anyone else. Her journey is unique, her sound is dazzlingly distinctive, and her outlook is her own. Papercut is the first step on a path to wide-spread critical recognition, millions of adoring fans (or friends, by her definition), festival slots and sold-out arenas. First though, she will probably have to play a few smaller shows.

Afterward: As Imani Imani and I said our goodbyes, I joked that every time I get a papercut, I will think of her. As I write the last paragraphs of this feature, I feel a pang of pain on my pinky finger. On closer inspection, I have a papercut. I don’t know where it came from.

Life is funny like that sometimes, isn’t it?

WONDERLAND’S AUTUMN/WINTER 26 ISSUE IS AVAILABLE NOW.

Photography Drew Vickers
Styling Carlos Nazario
Words Ben Tibbits

Hair Lucas Wilson at MA+ Group using Funner
Make-up Yadim Carranza at Art Partner
Manicurist Lauren Efron
Production Company LOLA Production
Casting Rachel Chandler for MIDLAND

Lighting Technician Nate Margolis
1st Photo Assistant Alex Kalb
2nd Photo Assistant Ashton Herman
Fashion Assistants Christopher Contaldi, Katey Kabu-Kubi
Tailor Jacqui Bennett
Hair Assistants Cody Ainey, Yetunde Egunjobi
Make-up Assistants Aimi Osada, Miki Ishikura
Post-Production Artpost