HER NAME IS LOLO ZOUAI

Music and passion — here Lolo reflects on living a life of contrasts, a sound that’s rare in this world, and keeping it real in her work.

- LINA ESA

We live in a time of flux. There’s the shiny sheen of curated lives made amazing on social media, and the harder-to-swallow drudgery of real life. Twenty-five-year-old singer and songwriter Lolo Zouaï knows this: seeing the highest of highs and living the fly life, tempered against the bittersweet lows. (Her sound meshes emotion with dance elements which make them “bittersweet bangers”. Apt.) Lolo keeps it real. “I am not going to lie on my songs, and I think I am not capable of not being myself, it ’s hard for me to put on a fake thing,” she shares.

Remember her name: Lolo Zouaï is the next big thing. Now based in Brooklyn, she is an amalgamation of different backgrounds, having been born in Paris and growing up in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Being French-Algerian, she’s multilingual and brings this rich mix to her music, which catapulted her to fame after being discovered as a teen recording songs in her bedroom. Take a listen of tunes like “Caffeine” and you’ll be instantly hooked. And thanks to the digital world we are in, some of Lolo’s biggest fans are in Malaysia (the top three Asian countries for audio streams are Taiwan, Malaysia and Philippines!) so we dive right into her music, how she keeps it real and who the real Lolo is.

Why did you choose “High Highs to Low Lows” as the album title?