Hearing King describe her current creative life in such glowing terms makes it evident that she believes she’s a far different artist now than her younger self. Her 2007 debut album “East Side Story” earned her a Grammy nomination for “Best Contemporary R&B Album of the Year,” but King said she looks back at that time with discomfort. “I was so young that I didn’t realize I could put my foot down and say, “This is what I want to do,” she recalled of being stuck in a creatively stifling record deal with J Records. “I was just being diplomatic to a fault. I was lost.” An eternal optimist, King said she’s come to believe “it all happened the way it should have because then I realized no award or fame is worth anything unless you can sleep at night and say, ‘I did my best and I love what I put out.’”