Kali Uchis on Being an Industry Outcast and How Her Mother's Death — and Son's Birth — Shaped Her New Album

Yahoo

11-05-2025

Kali Uchis was raised to be self-reliant.
Her stoic yet effervescent spirit — captured on projects from her raw debut 2012 mixtape 'Drunken Babble' to the celestial melodies of 'Sincerely,' her latest album — isn't just the backbone of her anthems of female empowerment; it's been her shield. But in person, nothing about her seems impenetrable. She radiates softness; her voice barely rises above a breath, as if she's letting you in on a secret.
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'When I was young, and especially when I was just starting out in this industry, I was more open to share personal details because I was naive, and I didn't realize the more people knew about me, the more they had the opportunity to hurt me,' Uchis tells Variety. And although she has a lot to share on 'Sincerely,' her new album, she does so 'without giving away too much, and while still keeping certain things sacred.'
Just two months after the January 2024 release of 'Orquídeas' — her fourth and highest-charting album, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in January 2024 — Uchis and her partner, rapper Don Toliver, welcomed their first child in March. Like most new parents, the pair nested at home, and Uchis basked in motherhood, writing and recording songs about 'doing anything to keep my baby safe.'
'Sincerely,' — the comma is part of the title, like the closing of a letter — was completed shortly before the holidays and was mostly written by Uchis in solitude; she would send her songs to collaborators, who range from Rosalía/ Miguel producer Dylan Wiggins to electronic-music artist-producer Vegyn. Its mood is reflected in titles like 'Heaven Knows' and 'Angels All Around Me,' the latter of which includes the lyric 'Let us pray/ The stars in your eyes will never fade/ And I pray/ For your happiness every day.'
But such idyllic thoughts abruptly came to a halt when Uchis' mother (whose name she declines to reveal) died of lung cancer shortly after the album was finished. Her mother wasn't a smoker and lived a relatively healthy lifestyle; Uchis was stunned.
'I wrote the song 'Heaven Knows' maybe a month after I found out I was pregnant,' Uchis says. 'That was the first song that I wrote, and somehow in it, I wrote [the lyric], 'Look into the clouds, see a smiling face, and it gives me hope.' It's almost like I wrote the music that I needed to heal before I even knew what would transpire.'
Indeed, when Uchis turned to music to find solace after her mother's death, her usual favorites did little to soothe the pain. But when listening to songs from the new album, she says, 'I felt a sense of comfort on a new level, because it was me. Sometimes I write stuff, and I might not even consciously know what exactly I'm talking about. With 'Angels All Around Me,' I recorded all of it on a microphone with no music — I just started singing it.'
Uchis, 30, drops hints about her past and family history across 'Sincerely,' particularly on the song 'It's Just Us,' which is about being so in love that virtually nothing else seems to matter ('It's Don's favorite,' she says gleefully). But between the lines Uchis drops hints of the life she left behind — she sings about being kicked out of her home as a teenager, 'I did all my time/ For a crime that wasn't mine.'
What crime? 'In my mind as a kid, I used to think, 'How can I succeed, coming from what I come from?',' she says. 'I used to feel that I was cursed because of my family — their generational trauma became heavy to carry,' she continues, without specifying. 'And I used to feel that I had a huge responsibility to break this curse. It sounds fucked up to admit this, but I often wished I had a different family… I felt that I was being punished in my life for things that didn't have to do with me.'
The sentiment has carried over to her public life, from online commentary about her relationship with Toliver to her unusual place betwixt and between the Latin and Anglo markets. 'As a woman, I'm constantly feeling that I'm being blamed for things that are beyond me, but I'm in a better place with that now, but that's because I decide how I want to tell my story,' she continues, stressing the personal pronouns.
Her story has been bicultural from the very beginning. Born Karly-Marina Loaiza in Alexandria, Virginia, Uchis began to recording music in the early 2010s. Raised in both Virginia and Colombia, she'd developed a deep connection to the Latin music she heard at home, as well as genres ranging from R&B to doo-wop.
Her debut album was an English-language set dubbed 'Isolation,' and she's alternated between English and Spanish with every album since. With the release of her first fully Spanish-language album 'Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)' in 2020, Uchis began a rare reverse crossover — historically, Spanish-speaking artists have had to work hard to gain traction in English-speaking markets. 'Sin Miedo' earned a nomination for best música urbana at the Grammy Awards, but was notably overlooked by the Latin Grammys. However, the follow-up, 'Orquídeas,' which saw her flitting between the two languages, received a Grammy nomination for best Latin pop album and secured four Latin Grammy nominations, including record of the year. (Mixing genres even more, she won a best dance recording Grammy in 2021 for her guest vocal on the song '10%' by Kaytranada.)
'I think it's hard for people to wrap their head around the music I make,' she says. ' Most of my time in this industry has felt like an uphill battle, and it would be a lot easier for me to just be agreeable and do what I have to do to become more mainstream and marketable.'
Instead, Uchis is taking 'the harder, longer route,' as she describes it. 'I don't mind it. My idea of success is to be able to say that I'm doing something no one else is doing and nobody else can do. And I love to be able to inspire other artists who are also bicultural to express themselves freely, without feeling the need to over-explain themselves.'
Admittedly, following the success of 'Orquídeas' is a challenge. Along with the emotions involved in the album itself, there are more eyes and ears on her — Charli xcx even declared it will be a 'Kali Uchis Summer' at Coachella. 'I thought my friend was trolling me when they sent it me,' Uchis says. 'It was so cute, and I love her for that.'
But as for herself, 'I'm still on a healing journey,' she sighs. 'I'm still grieving, I'm still mourning. It's all very recent, and I'm trying to feel everything that I need to feel, and I don't have all the answers.
'I think putting this [album] out into the world will also open a chapter for me, personally,' she concludes. 'To be able to share it with the world will hopefully bring me a new sense of peace.'
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