Kehlani Parrish has figured out the formula for making blunt, truth-hitting R&B songs that feel good. From her empowering tweets to her uplifting breakup songs, the 20-year-old weed-smoking singer oozes positivity. It doesn’t come from a preachy, try-hard place, but rather a place of awareness and understanding that life can, indeed, get better. Growing up, her mother wasn’t consistently around due to struggles with addiction and her father died when she was just an infant, but she found a parental figure in her aunt. At 16, she tried out for America’s Got Talent with her cover band PopLyfe and didn’t win, but found her own voice as a solo singer and a mentor in Nick Cannon. And recently, she released her second mixtape You Should Be Here and signed with Atlantic Records. We talk to the Bay area singer about why she can’t write breakup songs that are just sad and calling people out on their shit.
On You Should Be Here your music comes from a place that seems very self-aware and mature. How did you get here?
I was fortunate to know myself very early in life because I went through a lot of situations that forced me to learn myself and grow up with myself a lot earlier than most people. For the teenage years where it’s important to have a mother, I didn’t have one – I was doing it all by myself. Those years when I was growing up it was just me, so I guess that’s how I got here.
Did you have second thoughts about putting your story out for everyone to hear?
At first, I didn’t really want anybody to know anything ’cause I didn’t want everybody to feel bad for me. I would hate for people to listen to my music and feel pity, I want them to listen to my music and feel some sense of strength and only gather the fact that everything shaped me in a positive way. I realized that people weren’t even attempting to look at it in that light, that they were looking at it as more of a way to get through theirs [problems], more of a healing tool, more of a motivating thing.
“Alive” is such a positive breakup song. What inspired this song?
It’s funny, someone did an article on me the other day and they said I have a knack for taking the wounded girl and turning it into something positive. It’s actually something I’m trying to work on, I can’t write about negative things that go on and not make them positive. It’s hard for me to make a sad song and like, it’s just sad. “The Letter,” I think, was the first song I’ve been able to do that for. I feel like it’s in my personality. When my friends go through heartbreak or when I go through heartbreak, I’m sitting there saying, ‘This is going to stop,’ or, ‘I can only go up from here, this is God teaching me a lesson.’ I have to feel true to that in my music.
You have a tattoo of Lauryn Hill and you’ve said that she inspires you musically. What connects you with her?
She was so honest. I don’t want to say she didn’t give a fuck, because she definitely gave a fuck. But, she was very conscious and she was socially aware and she stated facts, she wasn’t talking out of her ass about over-opinionated things. It was just like, ‘I know exactly what’s going on in the world right now and I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to hear with no sugarcoating.’
I love how over the bullshit you are on tracks like “Niggas“, “How That Taste“, and “Jealous.” Are you the friend to call people out on their shit?
I always call people out on their shit, but I always encourage everyone to call me out on my shit as well. So it’s not an unequal amount of shit calling. The other day I was talking about how the definition of loyalty is having someone’s back when they are right or wrong but knowing how to steer them right when they’re wrong. And I was getting a lot of feedback saying that most people forget the second half. I care about humanity in itself – if you care about something you don’t let it go on being stupid.
You have this “I inspire you, you inspire me” relationship with your fans that’s pretty cool. ‘Role model’ is also a complicated term. What’s your definition of it?I think a role model is someone who you don’t feel uncomfortable with taking advice from or being inspired by them. It’s just naturally pulled inside of you like, ‘Their message is important and I feel inspired by it and I want to continue learning from them or rocking with what they’re teaching.’ For example, Lauryn Hill was never out here telling people, ‘Yo, follow me I’m Jesus, I’m the truth.’ She just did what she believed in and people followed because they knew it was real. People can call me a non-role model all day because I smoke weed, drink, do whatever, but that’s not what I’m leading. I’m showing people you can be 100% yourself.