T: When I Get Home showed that you were in a space that allowed you to feel free and fearless—it proved you’re the captain of your ship. I listened to your album on repeat as a fan to appreciate every creative force you put into it. Can you elaborate on the concept behind it? What is the message that you hope fans will take from it? In terms of its sound, it’s very different from A Seat at the Table. Have there been some changes that have stimulated artistic changes in you?

S: I feel really lucky that I’m a part of a community of people who really fuck with my growth. It’s invaluable to me. It literally makes me smile with gratitude before I sleep. I said exactly what I needed to say and express with A Seat at the Table, and I feel really proud of that. My heart is filled with gratitude for that moment. I felt so much power in that and couldn’t have written any other record because those songs were in my spirit and I was being confronted with it every day. I wanted to create a bit more of a world with When I Get Home. A mecca that spoke to an environment and an expression. A place that you could go sonically and visually and digitally and feel immersed in as a project about what exactly the process of home is and the feelings behind it. It means so much to me you dug it! Makes me smile real big inside. This album was purely about feeling.

T: How would you describe your creative process as an artist, and does it spill over in your personal life as a mother, wife and just a woman of her own?

S: Well, I look at each project as a timestamp of who I was and who I wanted to become and so each time I am trying to both reflect on that and achieve that through my work. A lot of times, that involves my son, my friends, my mama, and really leaning on them to lift me up and to bounce energy off of. But a lot of times that’s done in solitude because only I know that answer. I have to really quiet myself for that. I’m also extremely environmental, so I try to build the world I am wishing to create within the space I work in. So much of this album was created in Houston at an incredible art space called Project Row Houses in the neighborhood I grew up in called Third Ward. Just having the space to say, “Hey, this is where it started.” What do I feel here? Who do I become here? Do I speak different, dress different, see the world differently? If my dad drops by, how does that energy eject itself into this 3:30 second song? Does this lyric mean something else now that he’s here, and we’ve hugged? Did some shit come up emotionally and now this language takes on another context? Those things really matter to me, and they activate the spirit of the sound to me. So I’m hypersensitive to it all.