“When you smell the acrylic, you know just where you are,” Leikeli47 tells me about the title of her new album, inspired by both nail salons and the streets of New York City. Then she clarifies further: “You know you’re in the hood.” That’s the central credo behind Acrylic, a diverse, genre-hopping tour de force that locates listeners firmly within Leikeli’s Brooklyn stomping grounds, whether riding the subway with her boyfriend on the bouncy “Hoyt and Schermerhorn” or honoring the women who raised her on “No Reload.” The artist, who performs and appears in music videos sporting a ski mask at all times, aims for the jugular on Acrylic, a vividly rendered project that caps off a year of career milestones for her.

Leikeli released her studio debut, Wash & Set, last year, following a slew of hard-hitting mixtapes and a crucial early Jay-Z cosign for her fire-starting 2014 single “Fuck the Summer Up.” Serving up anthem after anthem dedicated to feeling yourself, Wash & Set’s chest-rattling, largely self-produced beats and Leikeli’s signature rapid-fire flow eventually caught the ear of the music supervisor behind Issa Rae and HBO’s “Insecure”; during the most recent season this past summer, it became commonplace to hear Leikeli’s energetic raps blaring behind a pool party or one of Issa’s myriad hookups.

As it turns out, Wash & Set was the first entry in a “beauty series,” as Leikeli calls it, with Acrylic second and a third installment, Shape Up, to come next year. “They’re all clear invites into my world,” she says of the trilogy. “Invites into my experience—my black experience, my growing up, my streets, my campuses. All three of them are creative insights into who I am.”

Witty, brash, and dripping with self-confidence, Leikeli’s verses on Acrylic are dense with references to those who have paved the way for her, from Erykah Badu to fashion photographer Herb Ritts. She creates art with a clear sense of purpose and on her own terms, a fact which extends itself to the self-mythologizing at work behind her ever-present mask. Acrylic, then, serves as a way to crystallize that message of self-reliance and mental fortitude for others. “We know acrylic is a hard substance, and a lot of us grew up in these hard places and it hardens our hearts, hardens our minds,” she tells me over the phone from L.A. “But with [Acrylic], I wanted to show just how resilience looks within that world.”

Pitchfork: Wash & Set and Acrylic share a lot of themes. How are these two projects in conversation with each other?

Leikeli47: They’re both creative ways of inviting people into who I am. I talk about falling in love, I talk about meeting your boo on the train, I talk about walking the campuses of our HBCUs. I talk about seeing kings and queens within each other. I wanted to just have fun with finding a creative way to get my message and keep my message out there.

I wanted to ask about one song in particular that I'm obsessed with, “Full Set.” Where are those ballroom samples from?

That is an iconic exchange between [ballroom MCs] MC Debra and Kelly after a ball, and that was captured via Ballroom Throwbacks. I’ve always wanted to create something around it because the message—a new style, a new cut—all of the things MC Debra was saying was speaking to my soul because that’s what I felt the game needed. We have so many great artists and so many great things going on within the world of entertainment, but it’s time for something new to come in as well. It’s time for a new kid to enter into the school—not even just a new kid, some new kids. Let’s show them how we paint, how we color, how we do things. So it’s my little message to the world saying that it’s time—it’s time to embrace some new, it’s time to get into some new. It’s time for you, wherever it is that you are in your journey, no matter what it is that you do, to bust through with your new cut, your new color, your new style. It’s such a colorful statement and colorful sample, but what she’s saying is completely true and it has so much power.

You included a few skits in this album. Do you have favorite skits from albums that you like?

There are so, so many. I know one that speaks to me is within “Living for the City,” by Stevie Wonder. When he breaks down, the guy gets off that bus, “Aaah, New York City!” [laughs] Trouble finds him immediately. Honestly, that skit right there speaks to Acrylic. Things happen in our hoods left and right, it happens very quick. We go through a lot of things, but we’re resilient people, we’re overcoming people, and we’re a loving people. This is my personal invite to show that the girl you like, the girl you’re pressing play to and listening to and bopping to, hey, this is where she’s from. These are the things she’s done, these are the things she’s overcome. It doesn’t have to be the exact same hood—all hoods are the same. All our neighborhoods are the same, all our ghettos are the same. We all relate in some way. It speaks to the black experience [specifically], but this is my invite to the world for everyone of all colors to come in and to understand our messaging, our stories, our narratives. It’s a message of love and a labor of love.

“Hoyt and Schermerhorn” is one of the more romantic songs on the album. What is that song about?

I am a huge, huge, huge Michael Jackson fan. I’ve studied every way he pointed a finger, he held the mic, how he walked, every beat of Michael I just studied. Hoyt-Schermerhorn [subway stop in Brooklyn], it’s so iconic because it’s kind of like one of my favorite musicians’ home. In The Wiz, a lot of people don’t know that that little moment that happens in the train station, that’s Hoyt-Schermerhorn. When we talk about “Bad,” that [was filmed at] Hoyt and Schermerhorn. I wanted to have a lot of fun with showing people where I’m from, the places that I’ve lived, the trains that I’ve ridden, the boyfriends I’ve had on those trains, the days I didn’t want to get off for work on this train. Jesus. This is the train stop of Michael Jackson, but it was also the train stop where I had to cross over to get to another train to go to work. It’s also the train stop most of us have been stuck at and had conversations with people we don’t even know. It’s one of those train stops where I’m sure there have been plenty of love quarrels and even googly eyes, you know? It’s a lot that goes on on our trains and the platforms. I just wanted to celebrate it and keep the name Hoyt and Schermerhorn alive because it’s so legendary. It’s a Brooklyn staple, and it’s Michael’s second home.