Jae Stephens on Debut Album ‘Audacity,’ Pop Stardom, and Mendacity for Enjoyable

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veryone who labored on Jae Stephens’ debut album, Audacity, obtained a compulsory task: to observe Coyote Ugly. The 2000 movie stars Piper Perabo as Violet, an aspiring songwriter with big-city desires and a gig at a bar that’s like a boot camp for constructing self-confidence. “She just wants to be a star,” Stephens says on a sweltering morning in New York. The cult basic related along with her as a child rising up in Pasadena, California, however much more in order a lady with formidable pop-star aspirations of her personal — and the nerve to go after them.

Stephens initially needed to fulfill me at a dive bar to set the scene for Audacity, her album out Sept. 25. She’s watched Coyote Ugly extra occasions than she will be able to rely, however because the file began taking form, it was all she may see and listen to.

“I felt like this was an album that sonically and thematically lived in that world,” Stephens says. “It feels like it’s in the city. It feels like it’s at night. It feels like it’s run by women. The men are literally only here as objects. Give me your money and leave. Like, this is not about you. I’m gonna auction you off to the highest bidder.”

There aren’t many spots within the metropolis with rowdy crowds and sticky flooring open at 10 within the morning, so we accept espresso. Stephens arrives as if the plan remained intact, her head-to-toe leather-based look rebelling towards the searing warmth. In a couple of days, her dive-bar dream will come true on the set of the music video for her magnetic new single, “Sugar Trap.” Her fictional bar is named Miss Andry’s, a play on misandry, positioned on the intersection of not taking place and suppose once more. “Come on down to Miss Andry’s and get you a drink,” she says, giving her greatest gross sales pitch. “What else are you gonna get? Maybe not much.”

Stephens’ outfit within the video is a cultured chastity belt layered over low-rise denims and a black balconette bra branded with a scarlet letter. It’s an A is for Audacity, but in addition for autonomy in life and in love, amusing one-liners, and ascending to an elite stage of pop success. 

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In 2024, Stephens inked a take care of Def Jam Recordings and Raedio, the music enterprise created by Issa Rae, which she was chosen for by way of an rising creators program in 2022. By then, Stephens had already landed songwriting placements with Ashanti, Jennifer Lopez, Ne-Yo, and extra whereas working in periods alongside producers like Hit-Boy, Rahki, and Brasstracks. Early in her profession, she sporadically dropped songs on SoundCloud and Tumblr, then type of forgot about them. Some have been private, others have been pitches that didn’t land with different artists. When it got here to her personal releases, Stephens discovered shortly that the function of a pop star is way more demanding. 

“As a songwriter, your job ends when you leave the studio,” Stephens says. “With this, the job starts when the song is done.” For some time, she was obsessed with creating music, however “it wasn’t something I was deeply intentional about or invested in.” It wasn’t the music she let slip, however the advertising and marketing and promotion required to remain high of thoughts for the viewers she hoped to domesticate. Still, the eye accrued when she wasn’t trying. A observe from her self-produced EP F**okay It I’ll Do It Myself (2019) racked up thousands and thousands of streams and he or she didn’t even discover. That identical 12 months, she carried out alongside Khalid on Saturday Night Live. All the items have been there, she simply wanted to step into the highlight.

On Tumblr, Stephens ran a preferred account below the deal with BeyonceBeytwice. Her quick-witted humorousness drove up her follower rely all through the 2010s. One of her greatest posts got here in response to somebody asking, “What does it mean when a guy says hi to you?” She replied with two phrases: “He’s lying.” The publish has greater than 287,000 notes. That identical viewers shaped the inspiration of her fanbase. The 29-year-old’s comedic edge is as current in dialog and on-line as it’s in her songwriting, like when she takes a person to process on an Audacity deep minimize that scolds, “Got arrested in Dallas with a negative balance, boy, what more do you have to lose?”

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“I’ve always just had an audacious kind of spirit when I write,” Stephens says. “I feel like that’s the one place I’m allowed to be the villain. I’m allowed to say what I want, and the listener can decide if I’m serious or not.” She doesn’t prioritize turning her deepest ideas into intensely private songs. What’s enjoyable to put in writing, sing, and carry out comes first, and the reality (or one thing resembling it) can come later. “I really value the process in that order,” she says. “I don’t want to prize the truth so much that the song is unlistenable.” 

With Audacity, Stephens strikes an ideal steadiness. Produced by her shut collaborator Dallas Caton, the file is full-blown maximalist pop. They have been impressed by a touch upon her single “Afterbody,” from her three-part EP sequence Sellout, that stated it appeared like her producer used each sound on his laptop. “Dallas, do more of that,” she informed him. “Do even more of that.” If there was a second when Stephens actually got here into her personal as a pop star, not simply in her personal eyes, however for the broader pop viewers, too, it was “Afterbody.” It’s a foundational precursor for Audacity, which replicates its addictive pop earworm high quality throughout each tune. The beats are excessive, the writing is daring and direct, and Stephens is an alluring major character with a pointy tongue and an ear for dynamic pop and R&B melodies. 

“A lot of the album is me trying to figure out: Am I the bad guy here? Am I wrong for wanting this, or should I really be willing to settle down a little bit now that I’m in this relationship?” She units her requirements excessive on “Expensive & Difficult,” and searches for somebody who would possibly be capable to meet them on the New Jack Swing observe “Crush.” She tries out the domesticated life on “I Miss the City,” the closest she will get to a real ballad, however makes a break for it by the top of the observe. The tune is related to “The Distance,” the place Stephens turns into one thing of an unreliable narrator. “‘I Miss the City’ is like, ‘He sucks and he’s controlling and he’s trying to keep me down and he’s bad and I’m leaving,’” she says. “And then ‘The Distance’ is the part where you’re like, oh, it sounds like you just don’t like him and you’re kind of a bitch.”

Sometimes being a bitch is the one approach to get issues carried out. Stephens has needed to reinforce her boundaries and shield her independence in relationships as a lot as she has in her profession. “I think people are quick to assume that I need hand-holding because I’m new to the major label system, but I’m not new to the industry,” says Stephens, referring to hovering A&Rs who would possibly really feel the necessity to insert themselves into her inventive course of. “Please leave. You don’t need to be here. I know how to write a song.”

“I’m trying to walk that line between being assertive, but also understanding that everybody is trying to do their job,” Stephens says. “There’s so many roadblocks in the way.” Post-Sellout she has been in a position to get her label to grasp her imaginative and prescient a bit extra. It hasn’t been with out convincing. “You want to tell me that tweets don’t equal streams. Well, tweets equal ticket sales — half the people in this room are OOMF,” Stephens says, utilizing the web shorthand for “one of my followers.” “It’s just been a thing of me proving that there’s a different way to do things, and I’m unafraid to shut people up in different ways.”

It’s a cautious line to toe as a Black girl when being direct can so simply be learn as being abrasive. Last 12 months, Stephens launched the Sellout Podcast, the place she welcomed artists like Jensen McRae, Flowerovlove, Hemlocke Springs, Alemeda, and extra to candidly talk about their experiences within the music business. “I learned that we’re all going through it,” she says. “No two journeys are the same, but as Black artists in our respective fields, we all have those moments of doubt — whether it’s self-inflicted or inflicted upon us by this ages-old industry that has always done things one way and is scared of a disruptor. I found a lot of solace in hearing how other people deal with it.”

Growing up on-line armed Stephens with a necessary, if unconventional, skillset on the subject of advertising and marketing her music. One technique specifically has labored pretty properly: straight-up mendacity. “It did start with me, maybe a little bit,” Stephens says. “But it wasn’t lying. It was joking.” She crafted the fateful first lie on a airplane in 2024, modifying Barack Obama’s annual summer season playlist to incorporate her single “Wet.” Her followers took it from there. Last month, they tweaked the Lollapalooza lineup to checklist Stephens as a headliner alongside Charli XCX and Tate McRae. They additionally continued their custom of taking some inventive liberties with Obama’s summer season picks, this time together with “Attaboy!” from Audacity. “Obama is the biggest JaeBae,” Stephens says. “One day it’ll be real.”

It’s all enjoyable and video games till the jokes break containment. During a current interview with KTLA 5 Morning News, Stephens needed to set the file straight about some lighthearted fabrications, we’ll name them, that slipped by way of their fact-checking cracks. The first was that Khalid is her cousin. She’ll be hitting the street with him in Europe later this 12 months, however there aren’t any household ties, so far as we all know. Stephens racks her mind for the opposite lie. “Oh, that ‘Afterbody’ was in the dictionary,” she says, referencing the equal elements attractive and sweaty Sellout single. “Yes, it’s very true. Haters will say it’s Photoshop. I didn’t correct them on that one. I let that slide.”

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Inevitably, the mendacity began to meet up with her. “It has gotten to the point where when something good does happen to me for real, people don’t believe it,” Stephens says. “When ‘Afterbody’ was on Love Island last year, which was huge, I was like, ah, that’s so fun. Everybody thought it was fake. Everybody was like, ‘You literally just edited this.’ And you know what? That’s the price I pay.”

There are solely extra thrilling (and actual) achievements to come back. “Sellout was me tackling [pop stardom] with a bit of tongue in cheek and with humor in an effort to get comfortable with chasing something bigger,” she says. “With Audacity, I’m fully stepping in it and I’m very confident in it. It feels less like something I’m hiding behind, and more like something I just am.”