Kali Uchis Breaks Down Every Song on Her Debut Album, Isolation

It took Kali Uchis three years to create her first proper album. “I made a lot of music while working on it, but 90 percent of it was trash,” the Colombian-American singer tells me the day before the record’s release last week. The 15 luxurious soul tracks that did make it onto Isolation paint the same picture the 23-year-old Uchis gives of herself in person: kind and giggly; self-assured but sensitive; a dedicated music fan with an earnest attentiveness to craft. Her first two releases, a 2012 mixtape Drunken Babble and an EP called Por Vida, featuring production from Diplo, Kaytranada, and Tyler, the Creator, proved her to be an explorer of both contemporary pop and retro R&B. Isolation amplifies her polyglot tendencies.

Puffing on a vape pen in the courtyard of a millennial-friendly outdoor mall in Los Angeles, Uchis opens up about the endless studio sessions, where she exorcised emotional ghosts and worked with a sweeping number of collaborators. “I can only be inspired if I’m working with people that I really respect,” she says. The producers and guest performers featured on Isolation are quite formidable and representative of her diverse taste: Thundercat, Damon Albarn, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, Colombian reggaetón star Reykon, and UK up-and-comer Jorja Smith, among others.

“I could have made a catchy, mindless pop song years ago if that’s what I wanted,” she says. “But I’ve never been that person.”

“Killer”

This is another song you did with the Dap-Kings. Why did you decide to end the album with this one?

It was really special to me, because I wrote it on my own when I was really young, with a toy keyboard and a little shitty microphone. I always held on to it because I felt like there was something timeless about it that I needed to not give away so soon. I’m really glad that I did because I was able to find the right people to contribute to the production so it turned out the way I felt it should—full and lush while still having that old-school vibe.

And any song where you’re singing about dying should probably be the end of your album. [laughs] It definitely felt like a place to end that was melancholy and somber—but also still, like, maybe I’m gonna come back to life. To be continued? Let’s see.