Kali Uchis

0:05Pushkin.

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3:14There's something coherent in the messaging and the feel of the album that make it stand out as not just a great collection of songs, but also a great album. So it wasn't surprising during the course of our conversation to find that Callie, unlike her other records, wrote most of this one on her own before bringing it into the studio. It also unfortunately made a lot of sense that Callie had recently been through a traumatic, life-altering experience with her mother. Over the course of our conversation, we talk about those experiences along with parenthood growing up in Virginia, her family's immigration story, and her daunting first experience on tour.

3:51This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations. This episode is brought to you by Defender, a vehicle engineered to meet challenges head-on so you can explore with confidence. Adventure seekers and risk-takers can explore the full Defender lineup at LandRoverUSA.com. Here's my conversation with with Kali Uchis. Kali Uchis. Hello. It's great to meet you. Good to meet you too. You're way more up on what's going on with the world than I would have imagined considering the album I just heard, how good it is. I would have thought you were shutting the rest of the world out. No, I feel like a lot of the album is about the state of the world in an abstract way.

4:36Obviously, I don't touch on political or socioeconomic topics, but a lot of it does kind of always lean back on music being an escape and like escaping from the state of the world so in that way i touch on it it's a lot of tenderness though in the album too like it's like like when i like i haven't really enjoyed listening to the last couple of weeks just because it feels so distinctly different from the world we're in right now which is really harsh and cruel and terrible and miserable but i could go on but i feel like a lot of people are dropping dance music right now obviously it's the summer so i feel like it's definitely really different from the other stuff coming out at the moment and this is the third album it's the third english album it's my fifth overall album but third album in three years though oh yeah like back to back to back you've done three in a row so i was just like the quality i was just so shocked by the quality oh thank you what um when did this album start for you like the writing and um pretty much towards the end of me getting together, my last album, Orquídeas, I had started the writing process for this next album.

5:44And coming off of Orquídeas, why did this become, like, what was the, I imagine you could have gone a lot of different directions. How did you start coalescing around this group of songs and this sound? Well, Orquídeas was a very dance-heavy sound. So even though it was a lot of different genres, the main element of everything thematically was movement and there was a lot of different um there was a lot of different dance music um involved in the project so i was like i want to do a project that's just sentimental emotional vulnerable something that i feel that i haven't done in a long time and in a new way in a fresh way so i'm kind of leaning back on my roots in music but doing it in a fresh way for you what is leaning back on your your roots man um like for instance like my first projects i want to say my first mixtape which was called por vida i think it's a little bit more leaning in that those pockets um even my first album isolation is leaning a little bit more in that pocket not to say that it's the same as either of those projects at all but it's more so what you would expect from that artist if you were to have listened to that artist how that artist would have evolved versus i think my latin projects like orquidias and like sin miedo they kind of have took took on their own world in hindsight is like i'm sure you got some pushback from trying to go from isolation to sin miedo yeah definitely but in hindsight it's really cool because the way you've set your career up now is like for the audiences to know what to expect in the best way like you know like when this got sent to me and i was going to put it on i'm like who knows like who i just got my car i was gonna put on like who knows what i'm in for you know what i mean yeah and i love that i love to be an artist that's unpredictable and for people to not know what to expect where does that come from for you that that that eclectic sensibility i think just growing up with so many different inspirations um being bicultural being that i grew up in different places and i had that um you know that sense of like music from Colombia, music from VA, music in America versus South America.

7:57And then also I listen to music from all over the world, French music, music from Africa, Italy, wherever it was. I've always just been very much an avid music listener, like a real music nerd my whole life. So I think having so many different influences and inspirations to the point where I never felt restricted to keep myself into anything. I always just felt that freedom of expression was the most important thing for me. And yeah, not to limit myself creatively. Was that normal for your peer group, like for your friend group? Or like, was everyone else around you also listening to all kinds of different sounds?

8:32Or was this sort of, did you somehow just... No, I think most of my friends and people at school, they used to make fun of that my... We used to have iPods back then, right? You know the vibes. Now I'm younger than you. What are you talking about? I don't know about iPods now. They used to be like, oh, I used to always have the most random music and whatever. That was just something that I loved. But I did know a couple of other people that were really into finding new music and obscure bands and stuff like that. But, yeah, I think most people were just listening to whatever was on the radio. So it was just different strokes for different folks.

9:06You must have also been listening to what was on the radio, too, right? I was never big on the radio personally. Like, I loved to find, like, you know, artists from different eras. I love to listen to old school music, the music that my parents were listening to or that older people were listening to. I would love that when I was playing music in the house, you know, cleaning the house or whatever. That's the type of stuff that used to make me interested in diving into like oldies and stuff like that. So who were some of the artists at that time that would have gotten you interested in thinking about music or writing or listening?

9:43I mean, I wrote music from since I could write. I always was writing songs. I was just that kid that was kind of like would wander off. You know, when my family was out doing stuff, I would always be like on my own coming up with songs. And my parents would always be kind of like embarrassed and start laughing because I used to be just coming up with songs like in the grocery store or wherever. And people used to be like, oh, she's so cute. She's so weird. I was just always like the weird little kid that was just coming up with songs or stories or you know singing for the kids in the neighborhood and doing stuff like that so I never had an artist that made me want to be like it was just kind of like I always did it um from as long as I can remember I always wrote music um but I definitely I mean in regards to trying to like find different music and stuff I think um because my dad his job was um he worked in apartment complexes and so when people used to leave and they would leave all their stuff sometimes he would just bring me home the cds or the vinyls or whatever so I used to get a lot of random different stuff from whatever whoever and that was kind of how when I was really little I started digging into like different types of music and then my friend's dad gave us a bunch of his vinyls and um that was how I started getting into like it was just different ways that I got exposed here and there through random things um outside of my own family that kind of just made me interested and made me have that thirst for knowledge of more musicians and artists and bands and that there was a whole world out there of music that I wasn't exposed to in in my towns that's really incredible what um how did that transition from just being someone who would write you know silly songs as a kid or you know age-appropriate songs we could say as a kid to like uh to um you know to kind of listening to all this type of eclectic music how did that person how did you transition from that to like making your first you dropped because you dropped a mixtape on dat piff which is legendary i gotta I say that you started from the Dapf era.

11:51That's incredible. So once you finally got into like a studio making music, like what did you want to present to the world? I think I really just, my main goal was, I just wanted to try to actually do my best and really learn. It was kind of like a growing in public type of thing. It was like I was learning and then I was just putting, You know, I was literally would literally make a song that night and then just put it out onto the Internet. Like I didn't really have any intention for where the music was going to go or who was going to listen to it. I was just like, oh, I made this cool thing, whatever.

12:29And once I realized, oh, people are actually listening to it, it made me realize to be more intentional. Like, OK, let me actually try. Like, let me really try to sing. I didn't know how to be a singer. I knew how to write songs. but I was never like you know I've never been vocally trained or I was never in choir I never had any of those type of things so I didn't I didn't know how to sing at all at that point You say you weren't in choir but you were in jazz band Yeah yeah I played saxophone I played piano I also did a lot of poetry competitions I took them really seriously like when you said age appropriate songs it made me laugh in my head because the songs that I used to write people used to always be like what the heck is this little girl going through because they were always really deep um I've always been a poetic girl let's say that um and yeah so I've always just been artistic and that's always been my like that's always been my thing do you remember feeling too like there were like the the things you were expressing were maybe a little like deeper than what a kid your age might be feeling or no I think it's just that was a comment that i used to get a lot from adults is like oh you're you're very mature or you're very you know where are you coming up with this stuff from what's going on um yeah i remember i had a poem it won a contest it was called another person and it was i was really little and it was about like it was about looking at yourself younger self and like it was about the existentialism of like your life's course and seeing your future and your past and your present like stuff like that that i was talking about when i was really little you're getting like metaphysical yeah but it was a poem and anyway i won the contest um but um yeah that's the type of stuff or like my cat ran away from home and i ran i wrote a song about my cat running away but it was like this this longing and this sadness that people didn't realize was about my cat and they were like are you okay like you know things like that i don't know were your parents concerned no no like maybe you feel too deeply like is she is she i don't think no i don't think they were ever concerned i did um i was the kid that had to go to the counselor in school for sure but but that was about you know as far as that went got it got it um why and why jazz like why why jazz how did you end up in jazz band i always loved jazz music i've always been that's a lot of my grounding um As a vocalist as well, like when I first started singing, I had a lot of people would be like, oh, you have such a jazzy infliction on your voice.

15:03And I guess it just comes from that. Like, I, you know, I don't think I can read music anymore, but at the time I can read music. I was first chair. You know, I went to a lot of competitions. Yeah, you were first chair. I took it very serious. Yeah. On sax? Yeah, also. What? Yeah, I did it for years. I took it very seriously and I think that definitely had some type of impact on when I first started making music, you know, where my musical grounding was in melodically. Do you ever think about picking the sax back up? Like, does that ever cross your mind? Everybody always asks me that. I mean, I think that I could, but it's not something that everyone always tells me like, oh, you should just pick the sax up in the middle of a concert one day.

15:41I'm like, I mean, maybe. We kind of fly, actually. Could you imagine halfway through? I don't know. Kind of random. But I mean, it's cool. I like, you know, it's part of, you know, who I am and it's part of, you know, what got me into music in a sense. That's cool. Well, it's nice to hear, though, because like when I was reading through interviews, it's nice to hear you refer to yourself kind of as a vocalist. because when I was kind of going through listening to some old interviews and reading some old stuff, it seemed like maybe there was at least an era of time or a period of time where we wouldn't say you put yourself down, but you definitely refer to yourself as a certain kind of vocalist.

16:21Well, I really consider myself more just an artist than anything. I feel like everyone has their fortes. I feel like art is just mine. But I think I definitely have learned a lot about my voice and I taught myself a lot about how to use it. And I've grown a lot as a vocalist. If you heard those first little songs that I put out there, I definitely have grown a lot. So I'm proud of that. Yeah, the opening line is incredible. That whole first verse is like, vocally, that was stunning. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, just the way, I won't attempt it, but the way you... I think once I realized my range, I started playing with it a lot more.

17:04And I think in this album, I definitely lean more into the higher ranges because it just became something that was fun for me to do. But yeah, I think it's just, it's all a learning process. And I think with every album, I'm just learning more about my voice and the things that I can do with it. Yeah. But it wasn't even like on that first cut in particular, it wasn't even like also just that higher register. It's just the way you were sliding between that. It just was really dynamic. Yeah, thank you. It sounded like it was lyrically really impressive and also just like the way you phrased it and sang it.

17:33I think the most important thing to me is kind of how we were saying earlier, like I've never been inspired by one artist or one, like I'm not trying to follow anybody's path sonically or with anything that I do as an artist. So I have really found my own way and my own footing in regards to my sound. Do you have certain influences in different eras of your life? Would you say like, are there a handful of artists that you're listening to now that you feel like are particularly inspiring to you when you hear them or you want to go to them? I think I knew for the album in general, the type of inspirations I was going for.

18:13I don't think people, people might not actually hear those inspirations when they listen to the music. But I was, I love female vocalists in general. I really don't listen to male music, which is it's funny because so many people are the opposite. Like a lot of people. I remember the first time that someone ever told me that one of my cousins were we were sharing music. I was showing her some some songs that I liked when I was really young. And she's like, I showed her Bjork and she's like, I don't listen to girl singers like I only listen to I like guy voices. Because I guess it's more soothing to people, the low tones or I don't know what it may be.

18:48the internalized misogyny who knows and i was like um that's so strange because i started looking at my own cadillac and i was like i only listen to girls singers i really don't have that many um male artists in my personal like day-to-day music that i listen to be to that just like classics like you know marvin gay you know like legends and marvin's got more of a you know yeah yeah yeah um i don't listen to too much guy music i've never been like a fan over any guy or had that type of i don't really understand that that lifestyle it's too it's too i don't understand people that are like oh this guy like i just never been that person i'll be like oh my gosh this woman she's so you know like i was you know like sade or selena or like you know so many amazing women And like, that's just always been my thing.

19:42Yeah. So Sade, Selena. Yeah. Votefully or the other. Okay, yeah. For this album. Okay, Sade, Selena, Amy Winehouse, The Cranberries, Cocktail Twins.

19:58Who else? Who else? Who else? The Sundays. Wow. A lot of more. I was more listening to a lot of more angsty, you know, 90s music. and I think in general just, oh, Fiona Apple, she's a huge inspiration. Yeah, just music that's a little bit, and like I said, you wouldn't listen to this music and think that that's inspired by them, but it's more so in regards to women that are really able to like bear their soul and their emotion and dig a little bit deeper into their vocabulary and the things that they want to say and get poetic with it. Yeah, that does make sense to me though because the album is emotionally really poignant.

20:39When I was saying earlier, I wasn't sure what I was 100 % going to get from this album. I do love that. It's like, you know, if I want to party, there's great Caliucci's tracks. And the last album is one of those. If I want to just vibe out at home by myself, there's great songs I can put on for that. But when I put this on, the album did make me very emotional. Okay. And, you know, the background knowing, you know, you just had a kid. Part of me, it did sound very firmly to me, and, you know, this was my feeling when I was listening. It sounded like an album of, like, it sounded like an album just wrapped in love.

21:26You know what I mean? And it made sense to me that you both, that you had a kid, that you sort of had this long-term partnership. And it felt to me like it could have been maybe about either one of those things or both of those things. Yeah. I mean, there's even songs that touch on, because I try to, I know a lot of music is very male-centered or relationship-focused. And so I really try to make sure that I touch other topics because I don't ever want my music to just be like about. So, yeah, I have songs for my son. I have songs even dedicated to like friendships like Daggers is like, you know, about another girl.

22:04You know, it's about it's about a homegirl. What? Daggers. Is that like but what's the Daggers? What's the thing? Is it was it now trying to think what the lyrics to Daggers was a betrayal? No, no. Daggers. Daggers wasn't about betrayal. Sugar Honey Love was about betrayal. Really? Which nobody would expect from that title, but Sugar Honey Love is about betrayal. Daggers is about a girl, a friend of mine. Daggers was, they shoot daggers from their eyes. So it's about, you know, she gets a lot of, you know, people that are envious of her or people that look her some type of way and she might not really know exactly what her worth is and she doesn't see herself the way that I see her and she doesn't necessarily have the things that I wish that she had, which is real love and, you know, valuable, meaningful relationship, connections, inner peace, things that really matter.

22:58And I think it was really important for me to have songs that are, you know, about different things that matter to me outside of just a relationship, you know. And Sugar Honey Love, that's about a betrayal? Yeah, well, the beginning of the verse starts, whoop, there's another one, who could I ever trust? And then it goes, whoop, there's another one, tell me who could I trust? so it's about it's about trust and it's about it's about you know um well later on it goes swear at this point i've seen it i've seen it all so nothing scares me anymore sick and tired of betrayal tell me who can i trust so it literally says it's about betrayal right there i start listening for the lyrics more i know and a lot of people say like that i don't enunciate well enough so maybe it's my fault i don't think it's your fault i just i'm really not usually listen I gotta get you a lyric so you can really like listen and read the lyrics at the same time and then you can fully grasp it sometimes I gotta do that someone even told me the other day like something about um someone was talking about what's that Mariah Carey song um oh we got some we got some lambs in the building they might be able to help you we got a Mariah Carey fan in the building uh she's one of my all-time favorites but uh legend legend legend uh but what's that um it's that song that Jermaine Dupri did with Mariah Carey and the 90s big hit now it's gonna, but some basically one of her big hits and someone was telling me about the lyrics of the day about how they're like, they're kinda like a bit darker if you listen to them and I was like, you gotta be lying to me and I listened to the song, I was like, okay, yeah, I've been missing this the entire time, like, there's layers it happens, like me I have to watch the movies with subtitles so I get it that might be what you need, you might need to just thank you for diagnosing me, I appreciate it We'll be back with more from Kali Uchis after the break.

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28:23Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash broken. That's BetterHelp.com slash broken. I was wondering how many songs you recorded for the album versus how many made it because these songs are so good and but there's also so many various styles you've stitched together that just sounded to me like the you you must have been having some really fruitful writing sessions lately I made a lot of music yeah I made a lot of music it was very hard to pick a track list I know a lot of people are doing the um you know 50 songs in one album thing these days but it's not really my cup of tea um so I was like I needed to be like around 14 songs and I think uh I'm gonna save some other ones for the deluxe and that's just what I'm gonna do there but yeah I definitely made a lot a lot of music um a couple of days ago you you you posted about your mom I'm passing away too.

29:22So I wanted to say my condolences for that. That's really tough.

29:30Did that have any bearing on what you wrote for the album? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that was the headspace that I was in. Yeah. Yeah. My mom was diagnosed with stage four when I was pregnant. So that was something that was ongoing pretty much during the whole writing process, kind of you know having to you know see her in out of the hospital and stuff like that so that was something definitely that um impacted the album and then um on the deluxe i have a song that was written like right after her passing for her so that's on the deluxe though that must have just been like a really hard headspace to navigate being pregnant and your mom's getting this diagnosis yeah like becoming a mom for the first time and losing my mom at the same time is it's definitely um it's still you know that's why i'm kind of taking my time before um and i had got right back into the studio um just because i felt that i needed to but now i'm just i'm just giving myself time to take it easy and not trying to do too much on myself right now because i am still grieving i am still mourning um it is relatively recent so yeah just taking it day by day yeah um did you guys get to connect about motherhood much before oh yeah yeah definitely yeah she loved my son and she you know she had a great a great bomb with him she was obsessed with him and you know obviously i wish we had more time um to you know to talk about motherhood and to for her to see my son grow up and all of that but but she got to meet him and i'm happy about that that's really that's really great is that her voice on the album oh yeah sunshine and rain that's my mom's voice in sunshine and rain yeah i'm actually dedicating the album to her um and so that i put that that uh voice note it was a voice note she sent me um for my son and um it just so happened that she that she said sunshine and so i said let me put this in sunshine and rain wow that was a really touching moment i for the i thought it was you to be honest for you guys kind of did i don't know if i don't know if you guys sounded similar to my you guys had a similar timbre maybe maybe um but that was a really touching moment man thank you um thank you and i also have some of my my son's um voice on the end of love you so much it hurts so that was really that was really nice to get some voice recordings of him and be able to include him in the album as well it was great you know like uh reminded me of uh like isn't she lovely you know like how you like stevie gets his kid on there like it's just a you know um i love that's what i love too it's like again and i just appreciate it as a parent myself like when i put this album on it felt like um if i don't want to say like you know like a grown-up album but it just felt like you know it's mature yeah it's a mature album it's just something it's like and it's like i can really from my perspective in life like appreciate it and having things like that that I can play around my kids that make them think about our relationship, you know what I mean?

32:34Oh, that's nice. You know what I mean? It's just like, that's just such a cool touch to add to your catalog, you know? Yeah. I love, a lot of times people come to my shows with their parents, and I think it's just so sweet that they're able to, like, it'll be a girl, and she'll be like, me and my mom both love you, and so it's nice to be able to touch different generations and then be able to share that experience of you know having an artist that they both love in common it's really cool that's like one of my favorite things to see at my shows yeah it's amazing who um who would you consider as being some of your like important collaborators on on this album um who helped it come into like focus i guess in a way that's a difficult question because i made the album in my house by myself never mind um even majority of the songs they were written without music and i would just send them to different people and I would work on, you know, getting all the production together and stuff.

33:30So I saw the studio say Kali's headquarters. I was going to ask where that is. Yeah, it's my house. So, yeah, it's it's my least collaborative album that I've ever made, I would say. Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe why it sounds so kind of like sober and just sort of like direct in a sense, you know, that's really what I was picking up from is just the songs are so direct um uh so that does make sense is that a way you would work again absolutely i loved it yeah yeah i loved it what's what was the tell me tell me why what what um i guess just the that rawness of just being in your own house and just being able to go upstairs and pick up the mic it's nice i mean i do i did a few songs traveling like it's just us i recorded that in Houston because I also have a house in Houston.

34:22So I did that there. And then all I can say, I wrote that one while I was in Miami. So there's a few songs that I wrote while, you know, being out of the house, but everything else I did in my house and I loved it. Wow. It's kind of cool how you, a lot of people and you have, being you, I feel like you have you could just go to like any number of like really big producers and just like do a record with them but it never seems it seems like you've always been very open to collaborating with a variety of people and not necessarily even people that are like i mean quote-unquote hot you know what i mean like think about like you work with the group not too much not too much of my producers no no no no i'm just saying no but like think about like you collaborating with someone like like damon albam with gorillas like he wasn't like you know what i mean it's not like um he's not really like in the pop space you know what i mean okay i get you sorry i think aaron had a heart attack no um i i like to work with people that i trust and i think when i first moved to the city i was doing a lot of sessions with a lot of you know producers um of the moment and whatever and i don't know i was just getting a lot of like leaks like music like demo leaks and or them playing my songs for other artists that they might get in with because they're trying to get placements and if i'm not using it they're like well maybe they maybe and i don't i don't write songs for other artists like my music is too personal to do that and they will just do it you know on their own without asking consent first like oh i played this song for so-and-so and they wanted for the album who told you that you could play my music for you know I don't like that type of stuff um so yeah I just learned to I have uh trusted people that I've worked with like Josh Crocker worked on a lot of this I've worked with him since isolation I know him he's really cool normal dude he has a family he has kids he lives all the way in England and I just go back and forth with him hey what about this add this let's do this and we just get it done dylan wiggins another person who worked a lot on this album who i've also worked with on other projects it's like people who's part of who's i think rafael i interviewed rafael sadiq once is that rafael's nephew dylan yeah i think he is yeah because i think he told me there's a deal he's like yeah my nephew dylan is really good i think someone i think someone did mention to me that yeah i think that that rings a bell yeah um but yeah dylan he's another person who worked a lot on the production of this album and the transitions and um but yeah it's just people that i can trust because at the end of the day it's really personal music and like i said i'm literally sending voice notes of myself with like sometimes maybe a couple chords sometimes just completely raw to you know these people that i trust and i'm like hey can you build something like this around it can you do something like this i'm thinking maybe so so it's like the process of making the songs is a lot more raw and a lot more personal than just how people just like might just get in a studio together and be like, play some beats and I'll jump on.

37:34You know, it's not like that. That's not the way you make stuff. Yeah, personally. So yeah, I just kind of learned to go with what works and, you know, maybe for the next project I'll work differently, but that was the process on this one. when you announced the new album um you put out a statement and part of that statement was essentially you said you you were so grateful for everyone who was a part of um you you like this is a quote everyone part of your silent ascent and i was just curious what that meant to you viewed your your rise in your career as silent it's so funny when when y 'all quote me in these interviews and tell me stuff that i posted because i don't ever remember what i post i'm always like i said that okay um i would be the same way because i'm quoting things back to me you'd be like you said my producers were hot i did not say that i just i just write stuff on there and just i'm just like in the moment with my feelings and then um yeah i think i mean i think silent ascent is really just i've never had like a year that was like a breakout year i was like best new artist to watch out for but or whatever it's like I've just grown every year and I've always done better than the year before and I've always like I'm still here and a lot of people can't say that so I like that type of trajectory for me and I think it's okay for other artists to also have those type of ambitions rather than I think a lot of people just want overnight success and I think that my journey's been really beautiful and I'm really grateful for the people that's still here that have been like watching me grow literally from day one it's cool is there somewhere along did you like did that strike you somewhere along the line that that's maybe a better way to grow your career or did it like i think everyone you know everybody's journey is different everyone's path is different for me i never like this that's just personally what i I want it for myself.