Rolling Stone caught up with Shay Lia for the latest episode of On Your Radar.
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00:00 Hey, what's up? I'm Shayleah, and this is On Your Radar.
00:03 I feel like everything that I've been accomplishing
00:05 has been a result of a form of manifestation for me.
00:08 I grew up in Djibouti, East Africa.
00:11 Never been able to go to a concert there
00:13 'cause it's so not westernized and Muslim,
00:17 it's traditional.
00:18 Artists don't go there, period.
00:20 I mean, Beyonce went to Ethiopia,
00:22 and it was a whole event in my school,
00:24 and it's not the same country.
00:25 So to say how different it is,
00:29 but I would spend hours on YouTube
00:31 listening to new artists.
00:32 I didn't speak English at the time,
00:33 and still, I think I was still manifesting things.
00:37 So when I moved to Montreal from Djibouti to study,
00:41 that was my only goal, but then I met so many artists,
00:44 and I realized that there was a lot of incredible producers.
00:47 So I guess I started manifesting
00:48 that I could work with them,
00:50 but I wasn't really sure because I've been,
00:54 I'm naturally really shy, and I don't really sing.
00:56 I mean, nowadays, yes,
00:58 but growing up, I would hide in my room to sing.
01:01 So I never saw myself as a singer, but I loved music.
01:05 And when I met K Trinata, he asked me,
01:08 after seeing me sing on Facebook for a friend or something,
01:11 if I could write songs, and I lied to him.
01:13 I said, "Yeah, of course."
01:14 I write songs in English, whatever the language.
01:17 I could barely speak English back then.
01:19 I lied, and it worked 'cause I came up with a song,
01:24 and that song is "Three Months,"
01:25 which is my first release on my platforms,
01:28 being SoundCloud at the time.
01:30 And that song made 100K plays in three days,
01:35 and to the point where SoundCloud blocked my account,
01:38 thinking it was some sort of thing,
01:40 like hacking or whatever, which wasn't the case,
01:43 and I was crying for three days because,
01:45 my God, I can't access my SoundCloud account.
01:47 My career's ruined.
01:49 But yeah, it started like that slowly,
01:51 and then I'd be thinking,
01:52 oh, I wanna work with that producer, let me try it.
01:54 I wanted to have a junior nomination,
01:56 and I had it in two, I think,
01:58 three years ago for my second EP.
02:01 I also remember seeing Barack Obama's list,
02:03 a summer list of new artists he loves,
02:06 and I saw "Katrina" down there,
02:07 and I thought, okay, if he got it, I can do it.
02:10 And it worked because six months later,
02:12 Michelle Obama added my song "Good Together"
02:15 to her list for a Spotify show about love,
02:18 and on that list, I think I was the only French,
02:21 East African, and independent artist.
02:23 So it really felt like
02:24 an out-of-nowhere manifestation moment for me.
02:27 It's hard to put into words how you feel about music
02:30 when you're so passionate.
02:32 I think I can go into a trance, I would say,
02:36 if I'm really, I think it's the case for a lot of artists.
02:40 A painter, you let it go.
02:42 When I'm writing music as well, the melodies,
02:44 I'm just singing to what I'm hearing,
02:46 and it's like a sort of a trance.
02:48 And when it comes to dancing,
02:49 because I grew up doing that a lot in my room,
02:53 I'm able to, my body's able to respond faster
02:56 to how I feel, but I go into a trance.
03:00 But for that to happen,
03:02 I need to feel in a safe environment,
03:03 which was the case with the boiler room, for example.
03:06 I knew K Trinada, he obviously invited me,
03:08 and when he invited me, he said, "You better dance."
03:11 Why? Because I would dance like that everywhere.
03:13 I didn't take that boiler room very seriously.
03:16 Till this day, it took me 10 years to claim it,
03:18 for many reasons.
03:21 One, there's a delay between the sound and the audio.
03:23 It's a tiny delay, but when you hit all the sounds,
03:27 you go back home, it's out, you're literally 18, 19,
03:30 and you see yourself completely, it's not on.
03:33 Yeah, no, I was horrified.
03:35 And then all the comments, a lot of comments talk,
03:39 because it's the club culture,
03:40 and they see me wilding out, just being so free.
03:43 A lot of people thought I was on drugs,
03:45 and I was the opposite, I was on water.
03:47 I still think it's a little sad to, for sure,
03:51 think that someone is on drugs because they feel free,
03:54 which means that people take drugs to feel free,
03:56 and I'm glad I have these hormones in me naturally,
04:01 and thank you to the good music.
04:03 And I didn't expect the boiler room to,
04:04 I mean, my presence in the boiler room to have that impact,
04:07 because it's weird having people telling you,
04:09 "I love you for being yourself and having fun.
04:13 "I worked so hard on my music and my career,"
04:15 and all that shit for people to come to me
04:18 for just enjoying myself.
04:20 But I guess it tells something about, again,
04:23 that universal language,
04:25 and me being a multicultural artist,
04:29 I'm happy that my energy,
04:30 and I'm trying to keep my spontaneity as much as possible.
04:35 So if people like my energy as raw as it was,
04:38 that's what they can get on the show,
04:40 that's what they can, you know, it's just me.
04:42 But it's weird having that recognition
04:44 for such a very spontaneous moment, honestly.
04:49 I would say that the way I think
04:51 about how I create has changed.
04:54 It's in a more holistic way.
04:56 I feel more capable of doing things.
04:58 So I'm gonna think about stage,
05:00 I'm gonna think about, also the industry's evolving,
05:03 the way we communicate, too.
05:04 So I think about those things a little bit,
05:06 but I make sure to keep my songwriting the same way.
05:10 It's still me having fun, vibing.
05:13 I try to keep, also, my connections to new artists
05:16 or producers I work with very candid,
05:19 and that's the way I started in the music industry.
05:21 I wanna keep it that way 'til the end.
05:24 I worked on "Takuta" when I was in LA.
05:26 I decided to go to LA for a month to write on new music.
05:29 I need to refresh a lot of things in my life.
05:31 So I was there with my friend Andres Rebellon,
05:34 who's the producer,
05:35 and I remember we were in the studio,
05:37 and he came to me and he said,
05:39 "Shea, I wanna do something like your song "Good Together,"
05:42 "very soulful, very,"
05:44 and I looked at him.
05:46 I'm sorry, Andres, but I wanna do a club song.
05:49 I have this melanin, melanin, melanin,
05:51 melanin idea in my mind,
05:52 and I just wanna do a club song.
05:54 He laughed because I don't have a club song
05:57 in my catalog,
06:01 but I don't know, I felt like that's what I wanted to do,
06:03 and also, I feel like the vibe between him and I,
06:07 again, it's very organic, the way I work,
06:09 was so playful and free
06:12 that he was the right person to work on a song like that.
06:15 It all happened in one session.
06:16 We were laughing the whole time.
06:18 It's probably the most fun I've ever had in a studio
06:20 because I was speaking in French in the song,
06:23 which I think shows how immediate it was for me
06:26 to sing on it or talk my shit on it, let's say.
06:29 I was also thinking about my East African queer friends.
06:33 The European side of me was really connected
06:35 to my identity, that song,
06:37 and the way I worked on it was very spontaneous.
06:40 The moment we started working on it,
06:41 I knew, because I was thinking about clubs, dancing,
06:44 I wanted to keep the freedom in terms of movement,
06:48 and that's a little, not a challenge,
06:49 but it's a fun thing for me as I'm moving forward.
06:52 I really wanna keep what's special to me,
06:55 what people liked in that bowling room,
06:56 which is just me vibing,
06:58 and adapt that to, in a more professional way,
07:01 maybe a little more polished
07:02 or with more skills depending on the project.
07:05 So I'm keeping my essence in terms of having fun,
07:09 exploring, trusting myself more,
07:12 but my vision is wider
07:15 and more holistic, yet more precise.
07:18 (laughs)
07:21 (swoosh)