![]() ![]() “They’ll literally make tap shoes out of a can and make music,” she marvels. Here, she can walk down the street and watch kids dance on the sidewalk. It’s here where, at age 3, she sat on the floor of her grandmother’s living room, watching Annie, and declared to her mother, “I want to do that.” It’s here that she started listening to Anita Baker and Toni Braxton - “grown-up music” - on the radio, silky sounds she now wants to emulate with her own voice. “This is a city that I’ve grown to love so much, and it means everything to me,” says Normani. Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Imagesīut New Orleans, she says, is the source of everything she is and wants to express about herself on her album. ![]() “That felt like some sort of destiny.”įifth Harmony’s Ally Brooke, Normani, Jauregui, Dinah Jane and Cabello appeared on NBC’s 'Today' in 2013. “I was like, ‘Isn’t Beyoncé from Houston?’ was like, ‘Yeah.’ So I said, ‘OK, let’s go to Houston,’” and her father, grandmother, mom, dog and two turtles all moved there. “I remember my mom asking, when we were in traffic, ‘Do you want to go to Dallas or do you want to go to Houston?’” They had family in Dallas, but then Normani remembered something. Hurricane Katrina forced her family to relocate to Texas when Normani was 9, and she still recalls packing up the car right before the storm hit, tearfully leaving behind her three best friends, and living in a motel before starting a new life. Normani’s furious run of performances and studio sessions has finally slowed to a speed-walk, giving her time to hang out in New Orleans and spend the holidays in Houston. “If I’m bad at this, don’t put it in the article,” she says with a self-conscious laugh. We’re cooking a three-course, non-Seamless-assisted meal, and Normani looks somewhat intimidated. “Saddle up, cowgirls! It’s time to cook!” A silver-goateed instructor who goes by Chef Joe instructs us to put on our aprons. “Not as Normani in the entity of Fifth Harmony, but as someone who is a totally separate and different person: Normani.” Now she just needs to figure out exactly what being Normani means. “I’m actually capable and strong enough to do this on my own,” she says. ![]() She’s got a handful of well-received singles with prominent collaborators - including one, “Love Lies” with Khalid, that dominated radio and the charts and eventually reached the top 10 of the Hot 100 a spot opening for Ariana Grande’s Sweetener world tour and, for the first time in her career, a sense of what she can accomplish. And as the year of her album release begins, Normani has what seems like the ideal foundation for carving out her own lane. Normani Talks Performing With Khalid, Meeting Janet Jackson, Working With Missy Elliott at…įor girl- and boy-group alums, going solo is now a little easier than it was in the Destiny’s Child days: A flush industry will more readily take a chance on wannabe breakouts, who can market-test their brands on social media. She carries herself gracefully, and ‘Motivation’ - girl, that was the prime!” Finally she decides: Normani is a Kelly Rowland - not necessarily the obvious star, but a confident, formidable singer who found her brand and stuck to it. She whips out her iPhone to show me two of the many fan accounts she follows, and But “I see myself in Kelly,” she counters. “This is terrible.”īeyoncé is Beyoncé, she figures, and Normani stans. But first, she’s got this decision to make: Is she a Kelly Rowland or a Beyoncé? “That’s not fair!” she says, when I insist that no, she can’t choose both. We’re killing time before heading to a nearby cooking class where she can learn to make the local classic. Today, she’s feeling inspired by food - specifically, her grandmother’s gumbo. We’re sitting at a tourist-jammed French Quarter restaurant in New Orleans, where she grew up and has been visiting often, working on her forthcoming first solo album and soaking up inspiration from the city. “Can’t I choose more than one?” she pleads. As she sits back up, her hands float to the edges of her hair, pulled into a topknot more impeccable than it needs to be given her otherwise low-key look (black jeans, oversized hoodie, no makeup). ![]()
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