Lady Sings The Clues

On Kali Uchis’s debut album, the Colombian-American singer offers a blueprint for empowering underdogs like her.

- Jessica Herndon

“They fucked me up!” Kali Uchis says, holding out both hands to display her jacked-up manicure. The singer-songwriter is sitting on a Victorian style velvet couch in a lavender sweatsuit after her NYLON photo shoot in Los Angeles. She explains that a nail artist was supposed to hook her up with a blended French tip, her usual look, but left her with an uneven mess instead. “The guy just threw his hands up and walked away. I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to be an hour late to my shoot for this!?’” She pauses, then shrugs and laughs.

Uchis’s vanity isn’t so deep that she’d let the mishap ruin her day, but you can’t blame her for wanting every detail of the lead-up to her full length debut to be right. “I feel like my whole life has been building up for this moment,” she says. Having grown up with little means in northern Virginia and Pereira, Colombia, with her parents and siblings, Uchis has always found a way to fend for herself. As a teen, she shot music videos and designed mixtape cover art for Maryland rappers. She also made custom clothes and sold them out of her Subaru Forester, a ride she lived in after her dad kicked her out when she was 17 for being rebellious. Now 23 years old, residing in L.A. with her boyfriend, and with an album hitting the streets via a major label (Interscope Records) this month, she’s developing a new sense of empowerment and independence.