On a Friday evening in September, it seemed like all of Brooklyn turned out to support a baby genius.
For the first headlining hometown show by Laila!, Williamsburg venue Baby’s All Right was sold out, a packed house from stage to door. “I just couldn't believe that they were all there to see me, specifically,” the 18-year-old musician tells Teen Vogue. “That was the craziest moment for me… I was signing T-shirts and stuff. Kids were like, buying the posters. They were so excited. It was just so many people and I couldn't believe it. It's something that I'm going to remember for the rest of my life, because that was just so lit and so fun.”
A great deal of teenagers who choose to take a gap year after high school spend that time recharging. Laila! spent her time off recording her debut studio album and breaking onto the Billboard charts with her first full-length project, aptly titled Gap Year, which was released just in time for the back-to-school season on September 6.
The breakout viral single from Gap Year is “Like That,” the inescapable dreamy R&B hit that dominated FYPs and the TikTok charts over the summer. “Like That” was the perfect vehicle to thrust her into the mainstream, as the record serves as an introduction to her musical dexterity; Laila! can do it all and does it all.
The wunderkind — whose family and friends affectionately call her “baby genius” — writes, sings, raps, and produces all of her own music, a fitting skill set for a young woman who has been surrounded by music all of her life. The daughter of music legend Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), Laila! has said that her father has always supported her artistry apart from his own musical identity as a figurehead of New York rap.
“I was always singing and making noise and dancing when I was a little kid,” Laila! says. She didn’t make her first beat until she was 14 while temporarily living in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands during the height of the pandemic lockdown. By 16, she was taking her “experimenting” on her sampler seriously, posting her beats on Soundcloud. “That was around the time I made ‘Like That,’” she says. “I was just like, OK, I actually know what I like and what I want my music to sound like.”
Laila! was almost finished with her first mixtape by the winter of 2023, a 4-song EP titled IN CTRL! which she says was a nod to two contemporary R&B projects that hold a special place in her heart: SZA’s CTRL and Janet Jackson’s Control. “They capture so much of what I'm trying to say, too,” she adds. She also names Frank Ocean, Cleo Sol, Lauryn Hill, and Brent Faiyaz (whom she got to meet at Paris Fashion Week 2024) as inspirations, all artists who have pushed the boundaries of soul, R&B, and the limber sound we regard now as alternative R&B.
Her mixtape, released in February 2024, was ultimately “a collection” of “the best” records she had made thus far, and it would give her the training wheels to create her album. IN CTRL! taught Laila! how to do almost everything by herself, from creating and editing music videos and visualizers shot in her bedroom to producing, recording, engineering, and distributing her music on her own. Those training wheels came in handy just a few months later, when “Like That” went viral and put her on a fast track to stardom — and signing with Brooklyn-based indie label IIIXL.
“I just had [the] mindset [of], ‘I don't care, I'm just going to keep posting this until people actually see it,’” she says. “Because why not?”
The rewarding whim of why not led to the creation of Gap Year, a 17-track record that plays with ambience of bedroom pop while infusing it with the introspection of Hip Hop and the sincerity of R&B. Laila! leans into her youth as a motif for the album, with cover art that’s a recreation of her senior graduation portrait and an intro track that’s a recording of an actual performance of Laila!’s at her real high school talent show. “I wanted to put people in that room with me,” Laila! says of “Talent Show.” “Now the whole world is at this talent show. It's not just my high school, it's everybody.”
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Gap Year expertly captures the mercurial mood of adolescence and teenage love; Laila!’s lyrical vulnerability shines through in confessional tracks like “SINK 2 RISE,” “R U Down?” and “Blackberry (Date 4 Prom),” while the unapologetic three-track run of “We’re So Over!,” “IDONTNEEDUANYMORE,” and the standout track “Not My Problem” display her unique strengths: sensitivity, independence, flair, and precocious brilliance. All ingredients necessary for a Gen Z It Girl.
The singer’s “Not My Problem” was famously flipped for the super track “Problem” by Cash Cobain, which samples Laila!’s chorus and features Anycia, Chow Lee, Fabolous, Kenzo B, Big Sean, Flo Milli, 6LACK, Flee, YN Jay, Luh Tyler, Kaliii, Lay Bankz, Don Q, and Rob49.
“It [happened] very fast, but it was really cool,” says Laila! “It was my first time experiencing all these artists on my sample or whatever, so that was really cool. I had never been sampled before… [Cash] started sending his beat out. People started hopping on it.”
2024 has been a year of monumental firsts for Laila! — her Baby’s All Right performance was her first-ever headlining concert. While she wouldn’t call her nerves “stage fright” per se, the singer says her anxiety can alchemize her excitement into stress. Anxiety may be constricting Laila!’s current touring plans, but the freedom she exhibits on stage is a clear indicator that she’ll make it through. After all, you can’t hold a fly Brooklyn girl down.
“I feel really brave. Performing is one of the scariest things for me. I really have a hard time,” she says. “But I felt way better doing [my headlining] show because I know that they came just to see me. They were singing the songs and they were just happy to be there, and I was so happy to be there.”
And while she might have one of the biggest songs the FYP has ever seen, Laila! says that she wants her music to connect with young people like herself on an emotional level, well beyond the vertical borders of a cell phone. Her intention with Gap Year was to invite listeners into her world as a multifaceted musician.
“I deadass make music for real. I'm not just making songs for TikTok or whatever,” she says with conviction. “I actually really love making music. Long before I ever was really using TikTok, I've always been doing this… I really care about this and I take everything so seriously, and so into account when it comes to making music.”
Laila!’s choice to take a gap year after graduating from high school was largely due to her strained relationship with school. “I hated it,” she says. “In no way am I trying to be like, ‘f*ck school.’ It just wasn't for me.” Looking back on a gap year for the ages, I ask if she’s glad she trusted her instincts.
“I'm so glad that I [took a gap year], because it changed the trajectory of my whole life not being in school,” Laila! says. “For the first time, I felt like I was in the driver's seat. I was actually in the world. I wasn't just waiting for something to happen… You have to choose what happens next. Every day of [my] gap year was about me choosing. ‘What am I going to do next?’ I think that's what gave me the motivation to do a mixtape. Let me keep posting this. Let me just do what I like to do… I've been able to grow up so much.”
