The past 10—and especially five—years, there’s been a push to rewrite the canon, to include more voices. Now we’re in kind of a mask-off moment, where a lot of people are showing they never really cared about that. How are you experiencing that?

A lot of people thought 2020 cured racism and sexism and misogyny and it didn’t. Things only change when they affect people’s bottom line, and I think most marginalized people always knew that. I think our focus for a while was, let’s take down these big corporations and let’s teach these people blah, blah, blah. But my focus has always been on the artists. How can we take care of each other? How can we take more control over our narratives? How can we divest from these spaces that don’t feel safe, and create communities where we can thrive? That’s always been my focus, creating safe spaces within unsafe spaces. We throw around “community” and “family” in a way that, to me, has always been false. Like, this is some dysfunctional family. All the black squares [on Instagram] and all that foolishness; sure, some people became more aware. Some things did change for the better. But a lot of the stuff is still the same.

It’s interesting that you focus on practical training, already knowing you’re going into a possibly unsafe space.

That’s the truth of this thing, okay? It’s show business for a reason. We as artists are always focused on the art, but it’s a business, and I think we romanticize the industry a little bit too much. Without the butts in the seats, we will be struggling. There are people that have to do the gross part, the part that feels like it’s taking away from the art, but if we decide this is the work we want to do in these spaces, how can we keep it from bankrupting our spirits?

Amid all of this, where do you get inspiration for new music?

Samara Joy is high on the list. Christie Dashiell. All the new jazz girlies inspire me. Jazmine Sullivan, India.Arie stay on rotation. Erykah Badu…women who are unapologetic in their sound and in their message are close to my heart. I’m always trying to collect new artists because music is always changing and growing and I want to keep my ears to the pulse.