Once again, Normani‘s got everybody talking and we cannot say we’re surprised.
The triple threat — singer. songwriter. dancer. — was one of many performers who hit the stage at Rihanna‘s Savage x Fenty Fashion Show around this time in 2019. Normani absolutely shut sh*t down and now, one year later and after another successful Fenty fashion show, she’s shutting down the coveted cover of Teen Vogue.
Inside, she talks being a positive role model to other young Black women, appearing in Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion’s history-making “WAP” video, and more.
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On her upcoming album:
The new album then — when it finally drops — will be her reintroduction as Normani, the solo star. The guards are down, the defense mechanisms are disabled. It will “be an opportunity for the public to be able to get to know me in a way that they haven’t been able to before,” she says. “I feel hurt, sad, elated sometimes. I feel like I’m in my head. I feel not so confident. I just want to be able to show not only women, but people in general, that I am a human as well.”
On representing young women who look like her:
Her resilience is for the Black girls, who, like her, fail the brown-paper-bag test but are still a standard of beauty. “Representation, like I always say, is key,” she says. “To be a young woman that looks like myself, I just feel like [being a positive example] is a part of my legacy. It’s me wanting to create better opportunities for us, and also just for people who think that they got us figured out, [I want to show that] we are multifaceted and capable of much more than we get credit for, in the music industry and also in society. I feel like I have a duty.”
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On “WAP:”
“The ‘WAP’ video I was really, really excited to be a part of, just because I feel like we’re in a time in music where women — and Black women — are really on top, which is something I feel like we haven’t seen in a very, very long time,” she says. “Where I come from, we were all about female empowerment. The fact that I could be a part of such a special moment embracing our sexuality, in which I definitely think there’s a double standard, [was exciting] to be a part of it.”
Read her full cover story here and check out more photos of Normani being nothing but goals below.
