The Baby Genius is back.
Brooklyn producer, singer and rapper Laila! has returned two years after dropping her impressive debut Gap Year! in 2024. “Miss Mango” — the new single — tells the story about a love that was lost, an unlikely friendship, and the road to revenge. She wrote and produced the song herself, of course, while adding creative director to her already growing resumé as she creative directed the music video herself.
Speaking of the video, she traveled to Saint Thomas — where she once lived for six months during the pandemic — and incorporated natives from the Caribbean island into the Moldyroom-directed clip as cast members. “I feel like St. Thomas was probably the perfect place to make these videos,” Laila! told me before revealing that she first started making beats out of boredom during her stay. “And it was cool to be able to get people that I already knew from the island involved with the process of making the music video too.”
The new music she’s been making has a warm, summer vibe because she wanted to invoke the the feeling of making memories with friends, and what better time to do that than when the sun is out and the weather is perfect? While she wouldn’t confirm whether or not a new album is coming this year, she did admit that she’s been in the lab cooking up since getting off tour with Kali Uchis and Mariah the Scientist.
We talked about her experience on tour, “Miss Mango,” and much more. Check out our convo and the premiere of her new song and music video below.
This single has an island vibe to it. Could fans expect more of that sound from you this year?
I feel like I just wanted to make something that people could enjoy during the summertime. I just wanted the music to feel really warm and pretty much highlight memory-making, and when you’re with people that you care about, or just all the different things that can happen over one summer or one stretch of time. I just wanted that to be the energy, and I felt like what better place to make visuals for that than on an actual island. You’re away from home, you’re making new experiences, you’re meeting new people, and you’re feeling more free than you normally would. So, yeah, that was the goal, and that’s the whole world of the music I’ve been making.
Was there a particular trip that inspired this?
I actually lived in Saint Thomas for half a year during the pandemic, and that’s where I started making beats. I didn’t have anything else to do during my time, other than go to the beach every day. I had family that lived there at the time, so we were just with our family, and I didn’t have much friends, I was pretty new to living there.
I would visit occasionally when I was a kid, but I never lived there, so it was a huge shift in my lifestyle going from being a city kid to now living on an island, and I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my time when I was home. That’s when I started making beats, and I challenged myself to see if I could even do it, and I really fell in love with it.
When did you make “Miss Mango”?
I think I first made the rough idea for it maybe around a year ago, andI guess the inspiration for song title came from this Mr. Mango store in Clinton Hill, the neighborhood where I grew up. And there’s like Mr. Coco, Mr. Melon, like all those little fruit stands, and for whatever reason, I was like, “There’s no ‘Miss’ anything.” It was just a passing thought. I think Miss Mango is such a good title, I like how that sounds, so I decided to use Miss Mango for this story I wanted to tell of this girl that personifies a mango. Mangoes are colorful on the outside and they’re sweet on the inside — that could definitely describe someone’s traits. They’re beautiful on the outside and the inside and have all this stuff to offer the world, but yet they find themselves stuck in situations where they don’t know their worth, or how amazing they are. I wanted to turn that into a song and play on that whole idea.
So, what’s good with dude in the video? Was he cheating? Treating her bad?
It could be any form of mistreatment. It wasn’t necessarily anything specific. In the music video, he’s just an a—hole, for lack of a better word.
You guys hatched a plan to rob him at the end. I was like how the hell to he get himself into that pretzel. Y’all folded him up.
[Laughs.] That was crazy. We showed him the Peter Griffin meme and he nailed it, which was so funny. He’s super cool, his name is Jelani. But yeah, the boyfriend is just a bad guy, he’s not showing her the basic level of kindness. They get into an argument or whatever, and then he shoves her, and it was just an asshole move, he doesn’t really like care for her. I wanted to have the journey follow a newfound friendship between me and the girl, and how we go do our own thing like, “F—k this guy. You don’t need him, he’s clearly an a—hole, he doesn’t treat you well in public or around strangers.” That was my first encounter with them, so you can only imagine what their relationship really looks like in private.
Was everybody in the video from the island?
Yeah. So, the girl that stars in the video with me, her name is Anna Lee. She plays Miss Mango. We actually met when I lived there during the pandemic. We honestly didn’t really get to hang out much while I lived there because I worked at this gallery called 81C. That’s where we shot the gallery scene, and a good family friend of ours, Zack, owns the gallery. That was my first job ever. That’s where I met Anna Lee, and she was just super sweet and super cool, and we kept in touch on Instagram. It was really cool to be able to come back to the island and hang out with her. It was so fun making the video with her, she played the role so well.
Was “Miss Mango” the only thing you shot in Saint Thomas?
We shot a bunch of stuff in there. I’m really excited for people to see it, and I think people are really gonna love the “Miss Mango” video because I love it.
This was your first time creative directing a video. How was that?
It was really cool putting this world together and creating this story. I really wanted a robbery and a fight in the video and it was just fun. I actually do Muay Thai, so I wanted to incorporate that while doing something silly and fun.
You do your own stunts.
[Laughs.] Yeah, I do my own stunts. It was just fun to have the ability to work with everybody. I had this idea of this character and this friendship, and we end up ultimately robbing this dude together. It just translated really well, so in the future I want to continue to creative direct my videos where I’m able to say exactly what I want it to look like, come up with a story, come up with scenes, come up with all this stuff, and let it unfold on screen.
You already do that with your social media. I noticed some of the same aesthetics in the video, like the scribbles, for example.
I really love handwritten things and I’m a really big fan of printing, scanning, and mixed media like cutouts. I like tangible things. I feel like there’s nothing more personal than something handwritten from somebody that you know, or you miss, or whoever. Someone’s handwriting can tell so much about them, and I’m someone who’s always trying to showcase my personality with everything that I do. The use of mixed media and art in that way just makes a video so much fun.
Do you handwrite your lyrics more times than not?
It depends. Sometimes I type it because I have ADHD, and my brain moves really fast. I don’t wanna tart writing and then get distracted, but I do tend to scribble a lot. I like to write things down in my free time It just helps my brain process and memorize, but I just like the way handwriting looks. I like the texture of it.
You said you came up with the lyrics, maybe like a year ago, right? Were you in Brooklyn when you wrote them?
I was in. When I first wrote the song it sounded completely different than how it sounds now. It was honestly very mellow, but I liked the direction it was going in. I liked the melody, you know? I had these really laid back drums and synth stuff, and it was cool, but in my head, I thought it could be a more groovy, soul-inspired kind of song, so I went to LA a few months after that to record it. It was my first time working with actual session players who were playing live instruments, and we recorded at Westlake, which is where Michael Jackson recorded Bad I think.
The energy in that room was really crazy and I think it really shown through in the recording process. There was a guitarist, a bass player, there was a drummer and there was me, and we just vibed out. It was my first time conducting a group of musicians that actually play for real. They were there to listen and like take my cues. I felt really in charge, and that was really cool.
You felt like Quincy Jones.
I really did.
You usually produce on a computer and use MPCs and things like that. I think your sound has been strictly digital for the most part. How were you able to implement what was in your head in a live session? Did you have a skeleton to play off?
I basically had a very stripped-back version of the song in my computer. It was pretty much very simple, just the chords, a very laid-back baseline, and those bongos were actually on the computer. We tried to record them, but the ones on the computer just sounded so good.
Also, there was this huge piano there, so I played them the chords and they learned the chords. Then I asked the drummer to play in the style of Roberta Flack’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love” because it has a really nice groove and I wanted something that was super ’70s. Then with the bass player, I was like, “I want you to just have fun and play with that rhythm, and do some groovy shit. He nailed it. Then for the guitarist, he had these shimmery notes that he was doing at the top and I had him do a couple passes of the cool lead guitar thing we have going on in the chorus. It was very dramatic.
So, it was my opportunity to go from something I heard in my head that I had pieces of on my computer and bringing it to life with live instruments. There are still some elements I left in that were things I produced on my computer, like these little details that I feel like add a lot. I did the strings all myself on the computer, so that was definitely cool.
Are you hoping to record more this way in the future?
Absolutely, that’s definitely my goal for the future. I really want to work with live players, because it just changes the sound of stuff so much. I think I like being able to have this mix, you know? I want to still use elements that I produced and then bringing in real instruments to make it sound a million times better.
Let’s talk about the Kali Uchis For the Girls Tour you were just on. How was that experience? This was your first big tour, right?
Yeah, this is my first big tour, and my first time supporting on a tour, so it was a really, really big experience for me. I learned so much watching Kali’s show and seeing her production, the musical direction, choreography, lighting, all these things on these large stages was really informational for me. There are things I definitely want to apply to my next shows. Like, how can I do lighting in the way that I want. How can I put together a really great set with my band, and having these seamless transitions. Her show is so incredible. That was a big moment for me watching that.
It was also a great experience to see how her audience is so kind and they were actually really excited to see me. There’d be times where I would go into the audience to watch to watch the show for a little bit, check out the vibe out there. And it was kind of hard for me to watch the show because people wanted to take pictures and talk to me and sign stuff. I was not expecting that at all. I didn’t think people would even know who I am, especially because I would go on so much earlier that by the time I would go to see Mariah or Kali’s show, there would be a lot more people that definitely didn’t see my set.
How’d you feel about your set?
I think they responded really well to my set. I played a lot of new music on tour. I did a mix of some things that they would be familiar with, but I played a lot of new music. I did that because I wanted to have the opportunity to try it out with an audience that doesn’t already know me. I wanted to show them exactly what I had in store for now and for what’s to come. I wanted to get a feel for how people are going to respond to the songs before they’re even out, and they really were super excited about a lot of them, especially “Miss Mango.” I think that was probably the audience’s favorite of the ones that I did. It was really interactive. People got to clap with the song, and it just has that groove to it that I think a lot of people responded to.
Was there a city or state that you liked?
There were so many places that I never been to. I think, most notably was Colorado. I’d never been there. We played at Red Rocks Amphitheater, and it was just so beautiful. I got to go to so many different places because of this tour. We also went to New Mexico, which is really cool. There was this huge desert-y kind of field by the venue hat was really pretty and the view was gorgeous, just beautiful sunsets. Where else did we go? I’ve never been to Alabama, Arkansas, Tampa.
How were the vibes like in places like Arkansas and Alabama?
They were lit. It was raining in Alabama, and they were still there dancing with me. I had a pretty full audience, which I wasn’t expecting because I’m already the opener, and it’s raining. That was definitely a highlight.
How did the love make you feel? Did it give you confidence?
I didn’t realize I necessarily had an impact like that. You know, where people were actually really excited to see me, or that they would really love my set. Sometimes when you’re on stage, you really don’t know exactly how everyone in the audience is perceiving you, or taking in what you’re doing until after the show. Sometimes when I felt like I didn’t put on my best show, my team would be like, “That was so great.” And it’s just like, “Okay, cool, maybe I am good at this.” It’s not as bad as it may seem or feel, even if the crowd wasn’t the most hype or whatever in that moment.
Kali’s tour manager Kim told me about this thing called 99/1 — and I’m quoting this really badly — but all the effort that you put into something, the hard work, the long nights, the show days that aren’t going quite right, the bad sound check, everything that got you to be in the position to be on that stage, that one person coming to you and telling you that they love what you’re doing, that you inspire them, or anything like that, makes up for that 99 percent.
There was a moment where I went to get some food and while we were standing in line these two little girls ran up came up to me screaming — they had to be like eight, so cute and adorable — and they were like, “Please, can we take a picture?” They were so excited to see me, and it was just the sweetest interaction ever. After we took the picture, they ran off all excited and giggling to each other. That little moment made everything feel so worth it. Those interactions are what kept me going. You’re impacting people even when you don’t realize it or think that you are.
Gap Year! came out in 2024. What have you been up to these last couple years?
I’ve been doing so many things. I had like a major life change. I moved out at 19. I’m not the same person at all that I was when I finished high school and making Gap Year!. I’ve traveled a lot more. I’ve had a lot more experiences that I used for making new music. I think in order to create things, you have to live and actually have life experiences before you just jump into making stuff. I’m always going to want to make things and be creative, but a lot of the creativity comes from real life happenings. So, I’ve been adjusting to adulthood. I’m no longer a teenager. I’ve just grown up a lot since graduating high school.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.billboard.com ’
‘ O artigo anterior foi obtido e traduzido do site internacional da celebrity.land ’ Source Link
