With ‘People Stories,’ UMI is Thriving In Spite of Industry Challenges: ‘You Can’t Explain Me in One Sentence’

After spending years being lauded successful R&B circles, Seattle-raised singer-songwriter UMI, 26, is taking lessons learned from past statement experiences to rotation her evocative, folk-infused People Stories medium into a globally resonant healing experience. A Black and Japanese creator who broke done with 2018’s “Remember Me” aft years of moving the SoundCloud circuit, UMI spent the past 7 years solidifying her fanbase and fine-tuning her artistry done planetary tours, her 2022 debut album, Forest successful the City, and collaborations with the likes of BTS’ V (“Wherever U R”) and Joyce Wrice (“That’s On You”). Armed with a pen that effortlessly balances hyper-specificity and universality — and a dependable tender and grounded capable to convey the immense expanse of quality emotion — UMI plays connected the folky, bluesier edges of R&B, which tin beryllium traced backmost to the oral-based storytelling traditions of West African griots. 

That level of introspection can, astatine times, struggle with an manufacture much acrophobic with packaging and selling, and that hostility has informed the mode UMI moved wrong and extracurricular of the statement strategy for the past decade. With People Stories, an medium that blends Japanese-sung lyrics (“Mango Sticky Rice”), reggae elements (“Grocery Store”) and 808-laden state inflections (“Rain Rain”), UMI hopes to leverage humanity’s quality to consciousness “every and immoderate acquisition and emotion” into impervious affirmative that you don’t request to “explain [music] successful 1 sentence” for radical to link with it. 

“The euphony manufacture is successful a truly weird spot close now, particularly successful America,” she tells Billboard a fewer hours aft performing astatine a Today Show taping co-hosted by Cardi B. “It feels similar nothing’s breaking done due to the fact that these aged systems are astir acceptable to autumn apart. I person to archer myself to clasp connected due to the fact that nary 1 knows however to marketplace anybody close now. You can’t truthfully merchantability a soulful happening similar music.” 

Below, Billboard’s R&B Rookie of the Month for September details the making of People Stories, starting a caller section with Epic Records, and moving with 6LACK and Diane Warren.

What are immoderate of your earliest philharmonic memories? 

Me successful my chamber making a fake microphone retired of paper. I had a bunk bed, and I stuck this insubstantial microphone connected the ceiling. I would beryllium connected the apical of my bunk furniture and unreal I was successful the studio. 

Do you find the euphony that your parents introduced you to inactive informs the euphony that you marque today? 

Yes, precise overmuch so. My ma is Japanese, truthful I grew up listening to a batch of Japanese popular music. She besides played piano, truthful I listened to a batch of classical music. But she besides loved R&B and would spell to these R&B nights successful Seattle, truthful she introduced maine to Destiny’s Child and TLC. My dada plays the drums, truthful helium introduced maine to gospel music, Sade, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, the full spectrum of music.  

What’s the archetypal opus you retrieve being stuck successful your head? 

The archetypal happening I ever downloaded connected my iPod was the Alvin and the Chipmunks album....