To Myself

Baby Rose has an absolute stunner of a voice: It\'s dusky, soulful, and seems to have emotional texture simply built in. The old-school qualities of her singing have drawn comparisons to icons like Nina Simone—who she cites as one of her favorite artists of all time—and Amy Winehouse, but her musical interests run the gamut from instrumental and jazz albums to rap and psychedelia. The footprints of such assorted sounds all show up on her debut album, *To Myself*. The singer, who grew up in Washington, D.C., and Fayetteville, North Carolina, says the project was an exercise in release. “It was really just going in and not holding back on doing the coolest shit that we could think of—even if it didn\'t sound sonically on center with the music that\'s out right now,” she tells Apple Music. “It was just leaning into that, leaning into all the things that make me different and really just pushing the vulnerability and emotions out.” *To Myself* traces the intricate constellation of a relationship, from moments of confusion and disillusion to those of bliss and blinding love; the lyrics coupled with Baby Rose\'s arresting voice capture each tangled phase in a manner that feels urgent and diaristic. “I\'m definitely a lot more dramatic as an artist as far as the things that I write about, how angry I get—it\'s not that deep,” she admits. “In real life, I\'m very chill and I\'m very much nonconfrontational in a lot of ways—I like to just keep the peace and find the solution. As an artist, I really get to pour all of the shit that maybe I\'ve restrained into my work.” But the stakes were much higher than trying to make something grand out of a broken heart. “Even though it was helping me get over a hardship in my life and it was helping me mitigate through all of my emotions, for everyone else \[I was working with\] and for me as well, it was like, \'Okay, this is my shot,\'” she says. “I have studio time. I have a little money in my account. I have no excuse. I have to go for this—this is it.” Here\'s a track-by-track guide to the project from Baby Rose herself. **Sold Out** “It\'s such a fairy-tale arrangement, the way the production is with the strings and the Mellotron. It was just kind of floating. And then what I\'m talking about is very anti-that. It\'s very \'No, I\'m over this shit.\' I just love juxtaposition, so I thought that would be a really good way to introduce who I am if there was one record. I love the sound design because it immediately puts you in a world—that getting in a car and just leaving somebody\'s place or leaving wherever. It feels really real and really cinematic, which I loved to open \[the album\].” **Borderline** “‘Borderline’ is definitely about indecision. That was actually the original name. It\'s about me also kind of finding somebody new or falling for somebody new in the midst of all of the BS, because we were on a break, and so it\'s just like, now there\'s someone else, wait, there\'s more!” **Ragrets** “We were really just kind of going for like a sampled Muscle Shoals, really gritty type of sound with the record, because it was really talking about something that was very gritty and dark. ‘Ragrets’ is about all of the things that I don\'t let other people see or that I was really hiding from my significant other. And it\'s like, \'Damn, you are getting to live in bliss as you put me through all of this bullshit and I have to hold in all of these secrets and deal with all of these emotions that you\'ll never know.\' I was really just kind of tired of holding back and hiding things. It was hurting me a lot more than it would ever hurt him.” **Pressure** “I was really deep in this world when I wrote that song—I think I had a cold. I was in an apartment with pink lights, drinking wine and smoking cloves and really just in a vibe. That song was really an ode to the juxtaposition between what I put out on Instagram and what a lot of people put out on Instagram versus what the reality is in the present moment. I have a lot of shit that no one knows for real for real because I don\'t want to show that, but there\'s a lot of pressure that holds me back, and I\'m trying to deal with it. And so it\'s kind of like the influencers\' anthem that they sing to themselves to get through. It\'s one of two really rare moments in the album where it\'s not me putting the blame on anybody else. It\'s more of me just looking at myself like, \'What have I done to make me feel so bad? What have I done?\' Because it has to be an internal thing. There has to be some type of autonomy in this decision. I can\'t just allow people to make me feel like this—it\'s really me.” **Mortal** “It\'s a dual meaning. For one, there\'s this side of me that I originally wrote from, which is like when you love someone so much—they\'re bigger than just another person to you. It almost seems like you\'re looking up to them. You\'re just really drawn to somebody, almost like they\'re a god, and you just feel like you surrender. So there\'s that one part, which is heavy, and then there\'s the other side—I kind of realized this meaning after I created it—which is like a gospel song. Instead of that person being another person, it\'s more like God: \'I pick the pieces up and come back running every time/You make it easy.\' Even when I\'m fucking up, God is there with open arms to understand the human condition and just be there for you. So there\'s two meanings, depending on the night or the day that you listen to it.” **All to Myself** “‘All to Myself’ was written, produced, and recorded within two to three hours. After the Dreamville sessions, people started doing their own camps to keep up the momentum, and so I was at a camp. We made this song after watching this video of Sam Cooke perform. Tim \[Maxey\] just started playing chords, and Vincent \[Berry II\], who is an amazing songwriter, was just like, ‘What would you write if there was a refrain, if there was something repeated like how they used to do back in the day?’ And then that\'s when—\'I guess I keep it all to myself.\' And I went to go test the mic in the booth, but low-key, I had already been writing some shit. I go in there and I just did it in one take. It was just an energy. We cleaned up, and I punched in where I was fucking up words, but the whole song itself is just one continuous take. That was the last song to get on the album, because we made it after the album was already done, after I had already shown it to everyone. But then it was like, \'Nah, I have another one.\' That was the song where I really knew this shit is anointed for sure. I usually go crazy with backgrounds and stuff to fill in something that\'s lacking almost, so I bring in choral backgrounds, but this didn\'t need anything. It was the bare minimum of just a piano, a bass, and an organ and my voice—it held it down. I\'d never done a song like that before. Even though it gave me gospel vibes, it also gave me a traditional, classic vibe. I was like, \'Nah, this shit is bigger than me.\'” **In Your Arms** “A few years ago, shit was not really sweet, and I was staying at my mom\'s apartment. She had a one-bedroom apartment. I was really sad, and I had a laptop, and so I just started making beats. One of the beats was the one for \'In Your Arms.\' I had wrote that song on my mom\'s living room floor and just being sad and just very much like praying—it was like a prayer. I felt like that song is really just—rather than \[being\] for another person in love, it was more like, \'I\'ve been led astray so many times and with the best intentions. All I want to do is be able to do my purpose, and I\'ve gotten so far, but then it\'s like two steps forward, five steps back every time.\' So it\'s like to God I was just kind of proclaiming, \'You show me. You give me the way rather than me trying to find it in other people or go through all of this shit again. Can you just be there and show me what it is that you want to show me?\'” **Artifacts** “I engineered it myself. I figured out—rather, I discovered the doubler effect. I really am into psychedelic music and stuff like that, especially modern psychedelic. I love what\'s going on with Tame Impala and just all the weird tints, the weird vocal effects. Shit like that really makes me happy. I hate a very clean vocal for some reason—it just doesn\'t resonate with me—so I was just trying some shit. \'Artifacts\' is definitely one of those songs that I love to perform, because it has this gritty type of I-don\'t-give-a-fuck energy, and I really fall into that when I perform. And it\'s just about realizing that somebody is no longer meant for your present moment. They\'re an artifact, like, \'This is not even what it was, this is not hitting the same as it was, so I\'m out.\'” **Over** “If ‘Artifacts’ was the party, like I don\'t care, \'Over\' is like after the party, \[when\] you\'re at home and you\'re like, \'Damn, this person just posted on their story that they\'re with another girl, and now, all of a sudden, I\'m mad all over again. I was over it and now I\'m mad because I don\'t want to be over, but you just completely disrespected the fuck out of me.\' That\'s \'Over.\' It gets to a point where it\'s like, \'Why am I feeling like this? I don\'t want to feel like I have to be with you or I feel alone. There\'s plenty of people, but I\'m just drawn to you—you have this effect on me\' type of thing.” **Show You** “In every bar, there\'s a back and forth, like, you know you want me like this. You want me to be fucked up over you, but I\'m still doing really well for myself without you: \'There\'s so many things I have to say, but I want to show you.\' The song itself, for me, is the perfect conclusion because it still ends on uncertainty—a confident uncertainty, but still an uncertainty of what is there in the future. What will come of this? Because I\'m still hurt, and I still feel the scars, but I definitely am doing everything that I\'ve always wanted to do now that I\'ve gone and we\'ve kind of fell apart. \'Show You\' is all those things. You miss certain things about a person and about a relationship, but overall, it\'s needed. That time is ultimately needed for you to grow—for both of y\'all to grow.”

With a voice that evokes Nina Simone’s, the 24-year-old Atlanta soul singer uses her debut album to explore post-breakup intimacies of pain and desire.