“THE album is like a window into my mind, my life experiences, my politics, my hopeful and sentimental sides, and my hope for humanity at large. I want to be an example of nuance, because the media does not want to portray [black women] in a way that is nuanced. Often people come out all guns blazing and they don’t navigate nuance. Instead of punching out of the gate with absolutely everything I have, I’m going to really try and navigate nuance.
“I studied my creative process to the point where I knew what kind of state my brain needed to be in to generate ideas and knew what time of day my ideas turn up, and so the whole process was, ‘OK, I’m going to start writing some things now explicitly for this record.’ I wasn’t seeing anybody and I was just staying up until five o’clock in the morning until my brain was really fuzzy and hazy and then ideas would just jump out.