is dealing with the usual pre-album jitters. The Arizona-born singer is used to these. She’s been in the industry for over a decade now, having gotten her start as a back-up dancer on Ye’s Yeezus Tour and eventually being signed to GOOD Music. After releasing one album with the label — 2017’sIn the aftermath of parting ways, Hill pursued an independent music career during the pandemic, debuting.
There was a time off period where I genuinely didn’t know if this was what I wanted to do. Getting out of my GOOD Music contract feels like that took years off my life. It was very stressful. It was about so many things that were not about making music. That was a traumatic experience. And then to put out two albums as an independent artist, I was just like ‘What is the return on that?’ Not everything needs to make you rich…it wasn’t even about that. I just felt really fried.
I had met with a handful of labels. The gift of signing with someone new on my fourth album versus my first is that I basically had a finished album . I felt comfortable going into a new relationship with a label knowing that they knew exactly what they were getting. A decade ago, I had no idea who I was. The people that I was surrounded by both on the management side and label were a lot of ultra-successful people. I felt like an outsider. I felt like I had to get rid of the parts that I felt kind of ashamed of. That’s something I’ve had to unpack as I get older. And I think that that’s an LA thing, too. There’s so many people that grew up around entertainment and with money, and I felt unworthy. I felt like they had the wrong person.