First Look Friday: Snoh Aalegra Lets The Winter Sun Shine In

R&b songwriter and vocalist Snoh Aalegra's native Sweden is a world of extremes: snowcapped mountains and white sand beaches; long, lightless winters as much as summers of perpetual sun.  Fittingly, Snoh's childhood there was filled with both joy and heartache and the extremes of her past have given her rich material to draw from. On her newest EP There Will Be Sunshine, Aalegra pours her heart out onto the page, delivering lyrics that go beyond the hackneyed r&b subjects of love and longing. "I find good things in bad versions of me / I do bad things to good versions of me" she coos on her lead-off single "Bad Things," a track that features none other than Common and has gone on to be remixed with new bars from Killer Mike. In a later verse, she admits "Something undefined is now taking over me / Who am I to fight me for my own soul?" digging into the kind of fragile first-person paydirt that has made Frank Ocean and The Weeknd superstars.

While Aalegra has been in and out of the music business since she was 14, There Will Be Sunshine has proven to be the breakthrough she'd been hoping for. The entire EP was produced and co-written with the help of hip-hop legend No I.D., whose keen ear for taut drums and stately pianos helped create the perfect foundation for the Swede to bring out her inner muse. Okayplayer caught up with Aalegra on an icy cold New York afternoon for a photoshoot and interview as she prepared to jet back to her adopted (and much sunnier) home of Los Angeles. Snoh spoke to her about her difficult past, her exciting present, and a future that's been years in the making. Read on to learn more about why the hip-hop world is so in love with Snoh, and what the singer has planned for 2015.

Okayplayer: Please introduce yourself to the nice people...

Snoh Aalegra: My name is Snoh Aalegra, I'm from Sweden. I grew up in a town of about 40,000 people about 40 minutes away from Stockholm. I went to high school and stuff in Stockholm, so I used to take the train everyday for about 40, 50 minutes there and then back to go to this musical high school there.

When I was younger--when I was about 14--I got signed to my first major deal in Sweden, so also then I was going back and forth to Stockholm. So I lived on the trains, that's what feels like home to me.

OKP: Did you get that deal based off of what you were doing in school, or was it related to something else?

SA: No, actually. I started singing and writing songs when I was 9. I was determined to be a singer. And then my mom told me--she was fully supporting me, and I was a kid--that if I still thought I wanted to be a singer when I was 14 that she would help me pursue it in some way or another. And when I was 13 I told her "Mom, I'm ready. I want to be a singer."

So right before I turned 14 she was calling around to labels in the yellow pages--there was no internet and no easy access to labels. She would call around and say "How can my daughter come see you and sing for you, do you have five minutes?" And she heard back "No, you have to send a demo." And I didn't have access to a studio to record or anything, and she was calling around and eventually one person said "Sure, come by." I found out later that he owned a studio with Sony.

I went there and I kind of auditioned for him, and he said "Wow, you're amazing. I would like to take you to Sony and introduce you to them, I think they would want to sign you." So that's how all of that happened.

OKP: So the first deal was with Sony Sweden?

SA: Yeah. I have contact with him to this day still, he's been supporting me. I had a publishing deal with them then, in Sweden. A development deal. I did my thing and after a while we went our separate ways. I was in school, stuff like that. And then I've been in bad deals--I really have done the long industry thing. I learned a lot, and it's really shaped me and prepared me for what i'm doing right now. It sounds like a cliché but it's really the truth. It's the only way to learn.

OKP: So would you say that your artistic persona has always been the same, or has it changed?

SA: It's changed a lot.

OKP: Were you signed under Snoh Aalegra, then?

SA: No.

OKP: You don't want to give your previous artist name?

SA: No.

OKP: Do you mind if I ask your given name?

SA: My name is Snoh, for real. But I made up Aalegra. I have an explanation for it. My name is Snoh, and then, I don't know if you remember a while ago there was this rapper from Canada named Snow with a "W"? It was legal stuff--he could have sued me for my name. Even if it's spelled differently, it was about how you pronounced it. So my label asked me to add another name, and I didn't want to do it at first. It took me such a long time to figure out what I wanted. I believe a lot in energies and that what you put out there, your words, are powerful, so I thought about "Aalegra." It means "joyful" in Italian, and I haven't been the happiest person growing up, and even when I walk in the room I'm not the bubbliest, loudest person. If you listen to my EP, you'll hear darkness.

I thought it would be a positive thing to add "Aalegra" to my name, thinking maybe I'll get more joy in my life. Not to sound weird but since I did it, my live has been more positive, I've met more positive people and I've been more positive.

OKP: Are you Italian?

SA: No, I'm Persian. But I was born and raised in Sweden.

OKP: Both your parents are Persian?

SA: Yes. I was born in a city called Uppsala, which is also close to Stockholm.

OKP: I'm curious--Aalegra to me suggests opera and Italian classical music. Do you have any background in classical music? When you say you were going to high school for music, what sort of stuff were you studying?

SA:I don't have any background in opera, no. I auditioned, singing, and so I just sang the soul, r&b-ish style I sing now, and I studied different things. I had to pick another instrument as well, so I picked drums and I drummed for two years. I used to play piano as a kid and I sucked. But then I learned how to conduct an orchestra and stuff like that, but we also read all the normal subjects as well. It was just more music-based. We did acting as well, it was an all around creative school.

OKP: Growing up in Sweden, what was your main influence?

SA: My mom played a lot of soul music in the house. A lot of Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Whitney Houston. And then later on I really got into Lauryn Hill. She's somebody I really am inspired by and look up to a lot.

OKP: Tell me a little about this EP and how it came together. Was the music on it recorded before the collaborations that we've heard?

SA: All the songs on my EP are about one to two years old, I've been working on my album for about 2-3 years. These songs are also going to be on my album--I just picked some songs that I thought would represent me as a good first impression.

OKP: So the album is all ready, you know what's going to be on it?

SA: It's all ready. But you never know, I still keep writing and I always aim to try to beat the songs that I have. But if somebody asked "Do you have an album ready for tomorrow?" then the answer is yes, I do.

The EP is called There Will Be Sunshine, and one of the songs is called "There Will Be Sunshine" as well. As I said, I've been through a lot of dark things in my life and I've chosen to write about my life so far. When you do your first album you have your whole life to write about. But the theme is still hopeful and full of light. Although it's been dark, I'm hopeful, and the theme will go into the album in a different title.

I worked with No I.D. and also with other co-producers and co-writers. I chose to work with a small group of people. I don't believe in working with a thousand different people, I don't believe you get a cohesive sound. I recorded all of these songs in LA and wrote some of them there and also in London.

OKP: You keep referring to some of the dark things that you've struggled with--can you give me an idea of what you're referring to?

SA: It's just been tough growing up in Sweden. There's some stuff I can't talk about. Just the struggle. Everybody goes through one and we all have our own story. I've been through a lot--I was bullied through all of school. I have divorced parents and went through all of that. I explain it better in my music than in interviews...

OKP: Do you feel that this is going to be a new chapter? That there will be sunshine?

SA: "There Will Be Sunshine" represents my life, what it's been so far. I'm trying to explain who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm about. I deal with different subject matters on the EP, and bad things are some of them.

There's a song called "Paradise" which is storytelling about my journey, trying to make it. I sing "I'm just a mile from paradise." I explain what my life was before, in school, in the first verse. And the second verse is about where I am right now in life. I think it's a mix of the past and right now. I'm just eager to get it out.

OKP: But even though you say it's about who you are in the past, the title is There Will Be...you didn't say "There was..."

SA: Exactly. I'm still working on it.

OKP: So with the song that Killer Mike and Common worked with you on, did you have a song written and they came into fit with what you had, or was it a pure collaboration from scratch?

SA: What happened was I worked with No I.D. on all my stuff and he was working with Common at the same time for Common's new album. We were all in the same studio. But when his feature happened I was in Sweden visiting my family.

Apparently Common walked in the room when No I.D. was working on the beat and the song was already done, it was finished. And Common was like "Wait a minute, what is this?" I love this beat and I love what she's singing. I love this subject, I wanna jump on this. So he jumped on it and I had no idea. They called me and said "Common, by the way, jumped on your song!"

I've always been told that No I.D. is the biggest hip-hop producer--he could easily just call somebody but he knows that's not what I'm about. I want everything to happen organically. I don't believe in forcing somebody to jump on my track, because then they're not going to give their best. I don't believe in produced collaborations. It was such an honor for me that he heard it and wanted to jump on it, so it was the right way.

OKP: And the Killer Mike verse?

SA: Kind of similar, yeah. I actually wanted a remix to the song, so it was a little bit more thought-out. But again it wasn't forced. He actually was in L.A. working with No I.D. and I came by to the studio and met him and sat and talked to him and he was such a cool and funny guy. We really vibed. I played him my songs and he really loved "Bad Things" and he's a fan of Common as well. He was like "Oh shit, how am I going to beat this...But yeah, I'll do it!" And he wanted to jump on it. I was there when he did it and it was really cool. I think he had a good take on the song, it's a different take than Common. I love both verses but they're just different.

OKP: Working with No I.D. and those collaborations that have come naturally--do you feel that you're a hip-hop artist in a sense? How do you think about the music that you make?

SA: No, I don't think I'm a hip-hop artist. I'm not a rapper. I know it's not the typical No I.D. collaboration, which I think is interesting. He does his thing and I do my thing but it still goes together which I find really beautiful and different from what we've both done before.

When people ask me what music I do I always say "alternative soul," but it definitely has that hip-hop foundation. When the drums are on, they're No I.D. drums, but what people don't know is that No I.D. arranged strings and puts what I want to have in the songs as well. I'm all about strings and choirs and he has a group of musicians around him that he's really good at producing with. So he really brings out what I love. He always jokes with me saying "You're producing in your mind" because I'm so hands-on and know what I want. He's all about letting the artist be their ultimate, exactly what they want to be.

OKP: Do you feel like you're now at home in L.A.? Or do you feel that Sweden is still home?

SA: On my EP my intro is called "Stockholm" and on that song I talk about that, not knowing where home is. It's not Stockholm anymore, but it's not L.A. yet. I don't know where home is. L.A. has definitely become my base. I'm not going to move back to Sweden; I'm going to visit. My family is there. Sweden is good, but for a long time it gets depressing. But it's beautiful. That's the goal. L.A. sometimes and New York. I love London, so much, too. And in a little while I'll be touring, so home will be a suitcase I guess.