Tommy Genesis straddles the line in all aspects of life, making the genre-blending rapper nearly impossible to box in or singularly define.

This week, TG trades her typical minimalist approach for unhinged maximalism, baring her soul for her most intimate album to date, which leaves her with nothing else to give. Genesis, her birthname, redefines Tommy while exploring identity, bisexuality, religion and not holding back her deepest and darkest thoughts, which she’s compared to “open heart surgery.”

“I’ve rapped about my pussy and I’ve rapped about my ex, but what would you do if I gave you me and just talked about Genesis?” she asks to close out raw album opener “Rainbow Child.”

Production duo Take a Daytrip is on board as executive producers for the new set, out today (July 25), while helping sonically guide Genesis to reclaim her power with self-reflexive spoken-word raps, inspired in part by Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged.

“I recorded and sat with it for like six months because it was so heavy,” she tells Billboard. “It was like pulling a tapeworm out when I first did it. I didn’t know if I hate this or love it.”

The project’s second single, “True Blue,” delved further into Tommy’s contradicting feelings of being too queer for church — as her family converted from Hinduism to Christianity — and grappling with being half-brown, half-white, while coming to terms with her demons. An accompanying Parris Goebel-directed visual sparked backlash ,as viewers condemned Genesis for appearing as Hindu goddess Kali and holding a cross.

TG tuned out the noise, touting she has the “best type of personality” when responding to online outrage, or lack thereof, as she probably went for a jog with her Doberman or penned another chapter in her upcoming sci-fi novel in response.

“I’ve always felt very comfortable in that position of if I’m paving a new highway here, then that’s what I’m doing. If I’m making women feel empowered, that makes me happy,” she says. “I think the rest is always just noise because you can never make everyone happy. If you care what people think about you, what’s the fun in that? Life is supposed to be fun.”

Genesis has a deluxe for the project in the works and is plotting a tour where she’ll perform one-night-only shows in select North American cities. Dive into her world below, as she heals her inner child and pulls back the curtain on the real Tommy Genesis.

What was the last year like for you going into the album to record that, and how did you get in that state of mind?

It was a few years loading. I got the first initial guitar production [that] I think I wrote 12 of the songs to in April 2022. I didn’t write them or record them right away. I don’t know how to feel or if I’m ready for this. I was like, “F—k it.” Recorded it in early 2023, the year all of the Lana [Del Rey] stuff happened. It grounded me. It was a really important project for me as a person. 

Was it hard to record, or cathartic — then tough to show people?

To start writing, I feel like I channeled 12 of the songs. It was almost like a download that hit me, and I had to find my phone to write it down as quickly as I could. I wrote it in the order of the album. I say it was like my angels came and delivered it to me, but it was just like it came through me and out. That was really easy, like touching it as it was falling. To record it, because I had waited so long, at that point, I had already called all my best friends like, “Come over, I’m gonna perform my album for you.” I had taken meetings with people and performed in person for them. I was doing weird a cappella live shows. I would play the guitar loop on my phone and rap it. 

When I finally went to record it, it was first takes. I just like threw it up and there it is. It was a pretty quick process to get the vocals out. I waited so long in between because of the energy. I was like, “I don’t know if I’m excited or deathly afraid, but let’s go.” 

What was Take a Daytrip’s involvement as executive producer?

Take A Daytrip is a duo, David [Baptiste]and Denzel [Biral]. David is one of my really good friends. I had written the project to a lot of production by Andre Denim. This album is all made with all my friends, I love it. We got it to a point where we liked it, but it needed energy and it was originally inspired by Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged. I was pretty into the whole stripped-back acoustic guitar poetry angle. I played it for David and I was like, “Do you want to executive produce it?”

It was a conversation where I’m always hesitant to ask my friends, because I love them so much. Work and friendship are so different for me. At the end of the day, I care the most about my friends and my family and work is just something I do for fun. So he got on it and I was like, “Channel your inner-child.” Because that’s all I did and he went insane. The sounds he brought in, I explain it as he reached into the underworld and grabbed a bunch of sounds and threw it at the wall and it felt so much bigger. I’m very grateful. 

What do you hope fans take from this album about you?

It’s so different than my other music. As an artist, I’m really interested in making art that feels reflective of who I am now. Otherwise, I feel dormant the more I play old songs. It’s like you’re stuck in a time loop. I love doing that for OG fans, but I’ve never been someone who’s for everyone.

I’ve always sat comfortably in a controversial space. I’m not really looking to convince anyone to like it. It’s more if it resonates with you and that’s what I want — to find my people. The people who resonate with it are gonna have maybe similar experiences because I talk a lot about my identity and my childhood. Everything is in there. Everything I could possibly say, I said. If you relate, you’re gonna relate really hard and that’s what I’m excited about. I think they’re gonna take away a piece of me because I gave everything. I have nothing left to give for now. 

Do you feel like your older music doesn’t represent you?

It definitely represents who I was. I was always true. It’s just that I’ve grown and years have passed. I’m not at that same place in my life. It’s cool to see art jump timelines. Even having Lana [Del Rey] take “Angelina” from 2015 and repurpose it on her [Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd] 2023 album. Suddenly, the song hits in a different way. When you made it, you put it out there and now it can have its own life. Maybe there’s a glitch or it will jump and go to bed forever. The act of getting it out is cathartic. 

You said “Genesis” was going to be the song that was most vulnerable for you. Were you talking to yourself in the third person? 

That song is me talking to myself. I kinda have this rule for myself with this album: where there are no rules. I say that a lot, but I took it to heart. I’m gonna say everything and explain to myself how much I love you in a weird way. I started off with, “How do I tell you you’re more elegant than this?” There’s always this push and pull inside me of, “I know who I am, but they don’t know who you are” — but that’s okay. They don’t know who you are, so let’s tell them. I get misrepresented a lot. My music is, in ways, empowering and free and explicit. Because of that there’s this misconception that I’m this freak — well, I am a freak — that’s open for business. I’ve had to tell fans that you can’t just grab me like that. 

The way I actually am is, I’m bi, but I do love actually being in love — and I have this tunnel vision and I’m really picky and I’m actually not attracted to many people, so when I am, I really am. My sexuality is very specific and connected to emotional attachment. There’s all these things about where, yeah, I am a freak, and that’s where I can pull all this energy from because I’m brave and blunt and I don’t give a f—k. But at the end of the day, I’m not how I’m always perceived.

It was fun for me to go into myself and be like, “This is how I feel about this. This is how I grew up.” I literally grew up under the Northern Lights. I also wasn’t born in Vancouver. People think I was, but I’ve just never corrected anyone. There’s so much about me people don’t know. In the album, I said, “Everything I’m comfortable saying to the max. At this point of my life, I’ve given everything I’m comfortable saying.” After that, there will be more because I’m gonna keep living. I usually give [the] minimum and I gave the maximum. I think that’s what art is. You can be a minimalist, you can be a maximalist. [On] this album, I was a maximalist.

I always felt like there was this wall between us and that was just shattered here. 

I literally just kicked it down. I was like, “It’s time.” 

Walk me through “True Blue” and your reaction initially to the backlash you received from it.

The song itself was about a relationship and my own identity and doing a lot of therapy and learning to take back my power. It bleeds into everything for me. It bleeds into my childhood, sexuality — everything. I’m just reflecting back, but also it comes full circle at the end when I say, “I’m not that little, I’m not that little.” I can be the adult version of myself for my inner child, who’s strong and can take control. 

The video really began with the color blue. What’s “True Blue” to me? What’s “True Blue” when I think about my identity and the album as a whole? This is why we dropped “Loops” after “True Blue.” This is my story and the story of my family and my lineage and where I come from. The video made a bigger impact than I was even anticipating. I kinda just drop things and walk away really easy. I’m not attached to things — I’m attached to my dogs. Everything else I’m like, “I made this song, I’ll put it out.” I’m very content to let things go. 

When there was a backlash, I think I’m the best type of personality for this stuff because I didn’t really react. I think, for me, the reason why was because it’s rooted in who I am. My family was Hindu and we converted to Christianity and I grew up in the church. I grew up queer in the church. When I was really, really young, I knew I was bi. My first memories, I knew. It was a very difficult time to be in the church when you’re little, having these thoughts. The whole album is about taking back my power. I’m in a place where I’m a brown woman doing something that brown women aren’t allowed to do in certain conversations.

Then you follow up with “Loops.” Was that recorded already or a response to everything?

It was already recorded. It was made at the time I made “True Blue” like two years ago. It’s so interesting, because there’s words in “Loops” like, “Women can’t be God, women can’t be solo, women can’t be rappers, women can’t talk about sexuality.” It’s bars in there that feel like they’re predestined and given to me for this moment of the “True Blue” video in some eerie, uncanny way. I’m telling you there was a glitch. I basically had a response track ready, and it’s after “True Blue” on the album as well. I even said to my manager, “I just wish they could hear ‘Loops.’” Then he was like, “Let’s just drop it.” So we dropped it.

“Eve Ate the Apple” was another standout for me.

The second verse always gets me emotional because I always wanted to be a mom. When I was 17, people would be like, “What do you want to want to do when you’re older?” I’d be like, “I just want to make art and I want to be a mom.” I always thought I’d have my kid by now. I thought I’d have a kid really young because that’s what I’ve always wanted. I didn’t have one in my 20s. This conversation with myself, “I thought I’d have a kid by now/ I’ll wait for you.” That triggers me every time I listen to it. If I’m in a room with someone and I listen to it, I always have to look away. It’s kind of my most deepest desire in a song.

“Girl’s Girl” has a hilarious way to start a song: “If your girl wants you to unfollow me, you better do it.” 

For me, I’m such a girl’s girl. I think about the male gaze all the time in my music. I think a lot of media performs for the male gaze and I’m such an interesting case study where I have one foot in the LGBTQIA+ world, where I am queer. I have this one line not on this album: “I’m too gay to be straight and too straight to be gay.” I’m right in the middle, and I have one foot in both worlds in every part of my life. I’m half white, half brown. I’m into girls and boys. I’m very sexual and spiritual. I straddle the line always. This song was for the girls. I don’t ever want anyone to be like, “Who’s that girl you just followed?” And it’s me. You better unfollow me, because I care about the girls more than you.

First of all, I want her to follow me. I don’t want you to follow me. I think it’s an interesting conversation and you hear a lot of songs that are the opposite of this point of view. As women, we’re told you can’t be insecure or jealous. These are all natural feelings and you just want to feel safe. Sometimes it’s just a conversation. In the second verse, I’m like, “What about, ‘Hey sorry, I didn’t know that affected you/ I’ll undo what I did do.” It’s not even that deep. It’s about the action you care that someone feels safe. Girls love this song because they feel safe in it. Men need to just take some pointers.

What else do we have coming up? Are you going to tour?

Yeah, we’re going to tour. We’re announcing it very soon. We’re gonna do one-night-onlys. There’s also a deluxe in the works. I’m excited. 

What are some Tommy Genesis hobbies?

My day consists of waking up and I really love my dogs. I’m such a dog person. I used to foster dogs. I have a Chiweenie and a Doberman. Ever since I got my Doberman, I’m like, “I actually need a new hobby.” I run with them. I jog. I’m not a fast runner, but I can jog for a pretty long time. That’s something that happened this year. I love life. I go wherever the day takes me. I like to draw. I like to paint. I’m always doing my own creative. I’m always writing. I wrote another album that I’m doing. I like drinking wine. 

Where’s Tommy Genesis in 10 years?

I have my kids and a ranch and maybe the ranch is by the ocean. I have a few more dogs and have made a few more albums. I’m writing a book. I’ll have my book out by then. Maybe there’s a sequel to my book. Can’t stop dreaming. I’m writing fiction. It’s a sci-fi. 

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond. 

This week, Drake and Central Cee offer a mid-summer single, Morgan Wallen corrals a pair of rap stars and Sombr keeps getting better. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Drake feat. Central Cee, “Which One” 

Comeback season continues for Drake: after scoring a surprise smash with “Nokia” and taking names on “What Did I Miss?,” he now returns to dancehall mode on “Which One,” a team-up with Central Cee built around a summer-ready beat, a nod to Rihanna’s “Work” and lyrics that are aimed at a significant other but could also apply to a resurgent Drizzy (“F–k anyone that’s bringing you down”). 

Morgan Wallen feat. Lil Wayne & Rick Ross, “Miami (Remix)” 

As Morgan Wallen has ascended to superstardom over the past half-decade, he’s added countless fans who wouldn’t consider themselves country music diehards; with a new remix of I’m the Problem track “Miami,” Wallen tries to add some more by bringing in an Auto-Tuned Lil Wayne and a grunting Rick Ross, who bulk up the song’s crossover appeal with veteran hip-hop panache.

Sombr, “12 to 12” 

Addison Rae co-starring in the music video for Sombr’s new single “12 to 12” has been worthy of headlines, but the top story here is Shane Boose’s continued growth as a pop-rock savant: here, he applies the fuzzed-out vocal longing of breakthrough hits “Back to Friends” and “Undressed” to shimmering dance music, and arrives at a sound at once propulsive and irresistible.

YoungBoy Never Broke Again, MASA 

A few months after President Trump pardoned YoungBoy Never Broke Again in March, the rap star tips his cap with the album title MASA (‘Make America Slime Again’) — although the gargantuan, 93-minute project is less of a political statement than a check-in from one of hip-hop’s most enigmatic personalities, who brings in Playboi Carti for the burbling “Fire Your Manager” but limits the guest list otherwise.

Lola Young, “d£aler” 

Since “Messy” brought her voice to the world, Lola Young has showcased different sides of her R&B-informed pop songwriting — and with her latest single from upcoming album I’m Only Fucking Myself, Young gives us a glimpse of her most skittish impulses, with her fear of being hurt morphing into a desire to run away and the bouncing synths soundtracking her vulnerability.

Tyla, WWP EP 

Summer wouldn’t feel complete without some new heat from Tyla, whose new EP WWP (‘We Wanna Party’) offers 11 minutes of movement built around sensual melodies; the previously released “Bliss” works well in context as the closing track here, while the Wizkid collaboration “Dynamite” sounds like a potential hit, the two voices intertwined and forming a flirtatious dance cut.

Tame Impala, “End of Summer” 

Anyone who’s ever boogied to “Let It Happen” or “Is It True” in a festival field understands that Tame Impala can deploy a danceable iteration of their psych-rock, but “End of Summer,” a seven-minute single that marks Kevin Parker’s Columbia Records debut, is a full-on club track, with a slow build that thumps harder than anything on The Slow Rush and an uptempo, downright sweaty payoff. 

Editor’s Pick: Tyler Childers, Snipe Hunter 

Within the first minute of Tyler Childers’ new album — the alt-country star’s voice rolling over syllables and quivering with passion on the opener “Eatin’ Big Time” — it’s clear that Snipe Hunter will ratchet up the stakes for Childers, whose audience has grown considerably as he’s moved adjacently to Nashville’s biggest trends and evolved his storytelling process. Read a full review of Snipe Hunter here.

A yellow-browed sparrowbird gently swoops into Caity Baser’s peripheral vision, perching on a wooden fence. At the sight of the small creature, the Southampton-raised singer-songwriter loses her train of thought, lifting a manicured finger in its direction and catching her breath. “Sorry, I need to look at this bird instead for a moment,” she says. “Isn’t it just beautiful?”

On the brink of releasing her sumptuous new EP There I Said It (due August 22 via Capitol U.K.), the 23-year-old is finding levity in the little things: nature-spotting to cycling down the Thames on a Lime bike, feeling the sun on her face as she listens to her latest project “on repeat.” For Baser, this past year has been a learning experience, a chance to reacquaint herself with her inner child in the midst of exhaustion. “I love animals,” she says. “I love the sea. In another life, I’d be working and swimming with sharks or whales.”

Sat on a picnic bench in a small central London green space, Baser is unmissable with her big, bright blonde curls and rainbow-accented nails. “Everyone expects me to be this man-eating, confident person, but I am actually quite sensitive,” she tells Billboard U.K., taking delivery of a large glass of Coca Cola. “That’s the side of me that I’m trying to show the world now.”

Merely a year ago, Baser was operating as a master of misdirection – a young, headstrong songwriter pulling pranks to cover just how hard she was working. As her status began to rise, her TikTok feed became a headspinning melange of jokes and dance challenges, featuring clips of her serenading unknowing members of the public with her songs on the Tube or sharing personal life updates with her audience via many a Taco Bell mukbang video.

Throughout “pretty much all of 2023 and early 2024”, Baser says she lived an unrelenting Groundhog Day existence of “wake up, [make social media] content, interview, content, nap, content, [put on] make-up, content”. This approach, though repetitive and full-on, led to her becoming a commanding new force in British pop. Last year, Baser’s online prominence metamorphosed into a BRIT Rising Star nomination, alongside Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds slots and a sold-out headline tour in the spring.

Her 13-track Still Learning mixtape peaked at No. 7 on the Official U.K. Album Charts in March 2024 – an assured effort, with ripe emotions bubbling beneath pogoing melodies and sassy, “I-don’t-need-you” one-liners. As its verses analyzed Baser’s own destructive behaviors as well as her wins, the collection considerably evolved the radio-ready precision of her Thanks For Nothing, See You Never EP, released a year prior. This blizzard of activity expanded further with dance-pop collaborations with the likes of Joel Corry and Alcemist, as well as an e.l.f Cosmetics campaign.

Baser’s previous artist image, defined by Cyberdog-style rave dresses and fluffy hats, screamed gaudy, explosive, Y2K-inspired maximalism. It wasn’t the product of trend-chasing A&R, she says, but a reflection of how she is “a crazy and loud person, 90% of the time.” There I Said It zooms in on that other, softer side: an emphatic paradigm shift for Baser in sound and aesthetic, the collection has allowed her to find artistic clarity when it comes to sharing her pain.

“I used to feel a bit like a robot. I was going into the studio to make songs for TikTok instead of making songs for me,” she says. “Music became a chore, which is something that I never, ever wanted it to be. I avoided the studio. I would be crying, feeling like nobody understood me.” She talks earnestly with enthusiasm, and at galloping speed. “But then I went on holiday and realized I hadn’t stopped working for two years straight. I needed time to be a human.”

There I Said It portrays Baser as a songwriter attuned to both the ugliness of the world outside and the more fragile self within. She has been through some incredibly painful times, and fully expects to experience more, but now she is open and unafraid to talk about any of them in her music. 

Over two exceedingly productive weeks in late 2024, Baser conceived a conceptual deep-dive into her family history and the ghosts from her past, interwoven with dreamlike nods to big band classics. A far cry from the zippy pop fireworks of old, stomping lead single “Watch That Girl (She’s Gonna Say It)” gives her occasion to lay out a manifesto for the EP over a brassy arrangement: “There’s a voice in me, I’ve got to make it loud,” she sings.

“I had a series of particular scenarios I wanted to speak about,” she explains. “I had most of the song titles ready before I’d even started working on them – I literally had everything!” Baser kickstarted the creative process by bringing a two-hour presentation to alt-pop duo Oh Wonder (husband-wife team Anthony and Josephine Vander West), her collaborators for the EP, replete with sprawling mind-maps of her desired lyrical themes and reference points. 

“I feel like it’s easier to tell people you don’t know about your trauma,” Baser says of her earliest sessions with Antony and Josephine. The pair, whose reflective 2015 self-titled debut was a Tumblr mainstay during the platform’s peak, encouraged Baser to “let it all out” in the studio. 

The EP features songs about her own experiences of assault (“Drank Me Dry,”), grief (“Good Man,” an ode to Baser’s late grandfather) and knotty familial ties (“The Story Of Her”). Another track, “As I Am”, finds Baser rhapsodising about how a new relationship is nourishing her day-to-day routine; she met her partner when he played her ‘boyfriend’ in one of her earliest music videos. 

Today, she is reluctant to speak further on some of the EP’s more devastating lyrical content. But Baser is effusive as she explains how she allows herself a little pride in the way she has built and maintained a new vision for her output. “I finally found what I wanted to say in my music,” she says. “It has felt like a nice ‘f–k you’ to some situations I have been through.

“When I made music before, I’d be obsessed with it for a week and then I’d be like, ‘Ew’. Some of it was so embarrassing,” she continues. “But with my new EP, I listen to it all the time: when I’m cleaning up [my flat], I practice singing it. That has been so rewarding for me.”

The clouds truly began to part, however, when Antony and Josephine gave Baser some advice that would go on to change the course of her career. “I was going through a difficult time with my management, and they were like, ‘The best thing we ever did was sack our first manager, despite it being difficult’,” Baser recalls. “And then we all went out for dinner one night, and I poured my heart out about how I was struggling, and they gave me the confidence to put that meeting in and end things.”

In the following days, Baser felt “relieved but terrified” about her future. As she began to put the finishing touches on There I Said It, she started to archive her old Instagram posts and connect with a new creative team. Her recent social media clips are more thoughtful, slower-paced and introspective, as she shares her hopes and fears à la the viral A View, From A Bridge page.

By setting the intention to draw boundaries in her work, Baser has felt a renewed sense of lightness within herself. When filming a video for recent single “Running From Myself” in Lanzarote, she was encouraged to run through a busy market and “cause chaos”. Having been emotionally scarred by previously “humiliating” herself in the name of viral content, Baser rejected the proposal – and didn’t receive any pushback from the production crew. “It felt amazing. My voice was being heard, finally,” she affirms.

Baser admits that, at times, she still feels hemmed in by the expectations of the wider industry or her fanbase, who first connected with her cool relatability. She alludes to streams of her newer material being less than expected – “nobody right now is really getting it, it’s not reaching people” – but says she firmly believes in the depth of the music she is putting out there.

“I’m having a bit of a moment this week where I just think, like, ‘What is the fucking point?’,” she says, shortly before our time draws to a close. “I’ve made the most amazing music, and nobody cares right now. But then again, conversations like this really give me kick up the ass, because I remember that I don’t want to ever stop doing music.” 

The day after we meet, Baser will go on to post a video via Instagram Stories to her 145,000-strong following, sharing her delight over owning a new shark-themed colouring book. Wide-eyed and laughing, her unbridled glee over something so simple speaks to the message at the core of “Beautiful Girl,” the heart-rending closer of There I Said It – a paean to acknowledging the passions and lessons from one’s youth to create a more positive future.

Over gentle strings, Baser extends a hand to her younger self, and celebrates how she has survived everything life has thrown her way. She “wore cute, tiny little bunches in her hair and a sports jersey,” Baser says, when asked to describe the girl she is singing to on the track. “And you know what? She was probably always chasing the birds in her garden.”