That is a lot to handle for someone in their early 20s!

When you enter the industry as a teenager, you get stuck being a teenager. You’re exposed to very adult things at an early age, but that doesn’t mean you’re mature enough to handle them in an adult way. You’re in an adult world with alcohol and parties, and it’s conflicting for the human brain to grow in that situation. I was the kid in the group for so long, and suddenly I found myself in the position of taking care of someone else. On the flip side, being so young may have made some things easier, because I was so un-set in my ways. Now, I can’t imagine not being a mother.

What brought you to making music again?

After Joshua Tree, I got divorced from my son’s dad and moved to Seattle because I have a sister there who was pregnant with her first child. I started really missing music and being able to express myself. I started flying out to L.A. and talking about getting back into it, and I met the writer and producer Ammar Malik at Benny Blanco’s house. In France, there wasn't a songwriting scene, but in L.A. there are so many songwriters and it’s so collaborative. Seeing how different the process felt made me fall in love with music in a whole other way.

The heartbreak theme on Tokyo Love Hotel was pretty explicit.

Did it come through? [Laughs] I was in a two-year relationship as I was writing the music. It didn’t end up working out, and it was so hard, because that person was my best friend, and nobody did anything wrong — it just didn’t work. Every song ended up being a dialogue on that as I was trying to figure it out. I didn’t set out to make the “I got my heart broken” EP, it just happened.

“Sad Money” was a critique of Instagram materialism and the logical opposite of stuff like “Pop the Glock.”

It felt like a good time to be brutally honest. Social media was still so new around my first records, but it’s out of control now.

The Myspace era was a test run for this hell world of social media, but it felt less pervasive and more DIY. Are you nostalgic for that time?

I was just in a session today and we were talking about how great that time was. There was a naiveté to it all. If I look at the current situation positively, though? Right now, anything can be pop. Labels don’t know how to break an artist anymore, so there's a gap — or there could be, hopefully — for more DIY artists to break through. On the flip side, the music scene is so oversaturated. Music’s in a very strange place right now.

Do your kids know about your life as Uffie?

Kind of. My daughter came home from her friend’s house the other day and was like, “We Googled you today!” So they know, but they also don’t. I’ll play them my songs that are appropriate after work, just so they get what I’m doing. I’ll bring them to the chiller sessions sometimes, and they have fun. My daughter actually writes songs. She has one hook that’s like, “You are the snowflake of my heart.” You know when you’re listening to music in the car and “Artist Unavailable” pops up? She wrote a song about being unavailable and how she couldn’t connect because the WiFi wasn’t strong. It’s pretty genius for a nine-year-old. I was like, “You’ve got potential, kid.”

