Normani stormed back onto the scene today with her long-awaited new single ‘1.59.’

The track, which features Gunna, serves as the lead offering from the starlet’s eagerly awaited (and gestating debut album ‘Dopamine’).

With the countdown officially on to the LP’s June 14 release, Normani posed it up for Elle and then opened about her journey to this point – waxing candid on scrapped album titles, what fans can expect from  her project, and her goal to be a “revolutionary” artist.

Quotes below…

On Today’s Era of Artistry:

“I always joke that I was born in the wrong era. When Justin Timberlake was coming up, when Destiny’s Child was coming up, and Beyoncé in the early 2000s, the only thing that mattered was the music. I strive to be [both] a revolutionary and a legacy artist, but you can’t not be aware of the temperature of the world. The reality of it is that TikTok drives records now.”

On Taking the Reigns of Her Career:

“I know what it’s like to put out music and records that I don’t wholeheartedly believe in. When we were in [Fifth Harmony], we didn’t have the opportunity to have a real opinion until the last project we did. I promised myself, “If God gives me another opportunity to do things in my own way, I’m not going to take that for granted.”

On Tweeting She Had Her Album Title Back in 2018:

“That [title] didn’t see the light of day. At one point, it was 1906, because that was the address of my grandmother’s house that I was raised in. Then it evolved and turned into Butterfly Effect. That was a whole thing, but it didn’t stand the test of time.”

On People’s Misconceptions About Her:

“I think that there’s a false narrative that because of how long this process has taken, that means I don’t care, or that means I’m more interested in doing other things than putting this body of work out. Nobody wants this project to come out more than me. I think that at the end of the day, if I stand behind this wholeheartedly, it doesn’t matter what the world thinks.”

On ‘Motivation’:

It’s crazy. Now I appreciate that song so much more than I did then. I cried, I “boohoo” cried. I was like, “I don’t want this to be my single.” Then I had total creative control over the video, which meant a lot. I just wanted to feel represented. Now I get it. I understand it more now.

On The Buzz Around New Song ‘Candy Paint’:

“‘Candy Paint’ is Dopamine. It bridges the gap, I think, between “Motivation” and where I am now. It’s the big cousin to “Motivation.” As soon as it comes on, you move, and when you think of me, you think of movement. I feel like where we are musically, we can afford to pick it up a little bit, like tempo, energy, full-on eight counts.”

Your thoughts?

[Photo Credit: Elle / Sharif Hamza]

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