When it came to her latest album, Baby Rose felt called on to be more expansive. On Through And Through, the singer (born Jasmine Rose Wilson) utilizes real life experiences to piece together ideals on self-reflection, finding new love, and living in the present moment. Each song on the album is marked by her earnest songwriting and backed up with delicate strings, warm bass tones, elegant piano keys and her hard-hitting vocals that push her firmly into the neo-soul lane. All of these elements make for a deeply relatable album. “When I get [in the studio], it's kind of a blank canvas and I'm reflecting on my perception of everything that I've been through,” the singer shared with BAZAAR. “A lot of the perception goes into where I'm at mentally, physically. Have I checked in with myself? Am I okay inside?”
The D.C. born and North Carolina-raised artist is known for her smoky contralto voice that places her in a lineage with the two singers who inspire her most: Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. Rose traces the beginning of her relationship with music to being a gifted piano player at the age of nine. By 13 she began recording music, “I always was more soulful and deeper,” she said. In a previous interview she recalls getting teased for her voice in middle school, but she always loved how unique it was. As she matured she felt her voice getting “stronger” and “wider,” so she embraced that. By 2017 after spending years tweaking and reconfiguring her voice she released a three-track playlist of songs featuring production by J. Dilla.
Since then, she’s become an in-demand artist. She was featured on Dreamville’s Grammy-nominated album Revenge of The Dreamers III in 2019 and that same year, she toured alongside Ari Lennox and released her riveting debut album To Myself. The singer/songwriter and producer displayed her masterful ability to create heart-wrenching music that moves her listeners on her debut. It’s not quite R&B because it sounds like music that belongs explicitly on vinyl. There’s a warmth that emanates from her songs through succinct background harmonies and live instruments.
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The core of Through And Through is the notion of grappling with feelings of heart ache and pulling herself up from low mental moments, with the project pushed forward by the singer’s spirit of resilience. “I took a lot of time to really do a lot of self-reflection in that time, and really got to take my time in making the album," she says. She temporarily relocated to Long Beach, California, started getting acupuncture, and began taking Tai Chi and yoga classes regularly. Her mindset in making the album was not just to reach into the depths of of her own inner distraught; it was about crafting a healthier version of herself and meeting the woman she'd become once on the other side.
Some songs on the album provide a close-up glimpse into her healing process. On “Stop The Bleeding,” a deeply emotional song she sings: “Pain is at my window/The storm is at my door/Your story is my weakness… You take my breathe away/You take my love away/Take all the best of me.” Rose says this track was her having a “whole breakdown.” The singer adds, “‘Stop The Bleeding’ was me pulling out all of my guts and everything and putting it on a song.” Elsewhere on the album is “I Won’t Tell” an upbeat track featuring the rapper Smino, was cooked up during a fun jam session in Los Angeles. It’s a thrilling cut that’s perfectly juxtaposed alongside Smino’s rap cadences which inject his infectious, playful flavor into the album. Baby Rose shares that this collaboration allowed her to embrace her own chaos.
Completed in Los Angeles, Through And Through serves as a colorful retelling of Rose’s internal growth over the course of the past three years. Throughout it she strips herself bare and has vulnerable moments that present her as a woman removing the training wheels of her adolescence and ushering in her adult years. By doing so she stands up for herself whilst shedding bits and pieces of herself that aren’t serving her: depression, anxiety, a breakup, and sadness. The creation of Through And Through allowed her to write her way through the dark, uninspiring periods of her life. Simultaneously, she’s left with a soulful and lyrically candid album that expounds upon the foundation that was set by the godmothers of soul who came before her. Ahead, Baby Rose talks about what it took to create Through and Through, finding balance in California, and leaning into heartbreak.
You began crafting this album at the beginning of the pandemic and here we are three years later. How did that period of time affect your recording process?
I feel like the pandemic was very life-changing in a lot of [ways]. I took a lot of time to really do a lot of self-reflection, and really got to take my time in making the album, and doing things like post-production, which I'd never done before, and really polishing music that I really, really, really believed in. So it was good. It was what I needed it to be.
What was it like transitioning from living in Atlanta to Long Beach, California ?
Last year especially, it felt like I was going through a really big transition. I needed a break away from Atlanta just to clear my mind, hear my own voice outside of everybody that I surrounded myself with. So for a minute, it was a period of grief, it was grieving and I had never been so still before. I would find solace just kind of sitting by the ocean, sitting with my thoughts, they had morning yoga, free yoga by the beach in the morning. So it was a couple months of just that.
Do you do anything to prepare yourself for songwriting, being in the studio and mentally getting in that vulnerable zone?
It's a lot of the work that I do outside of the studio, honestly, that prepares me for it. When I get in there, it's kind of a blank canvas and I'm reflecting on my perception of everything that I've been through. A lot of the perception goes into where I'm at mentally, physically. Have I checked in with myself? Am I okay inside? Am I able to look at this and honestly speak, honestly let it come out? So I found solace in a couple of things. I remember just scrolling [the internet] and finding out about acupuncture, not the one with the needles, but if you just press certain points of your body, it can release tension and send healing overall.
That led me into finding out about Tai Chi and slow movements. And so a couple of times a week I'll go to a little Tai Chi class in my neighborhood and that helps me. It's kind of like when you let things build up in your mind and just for some reason you just have this foggy [sense], and you don't know why. It helps me relieve all of that gunk that's kind of building up, that weight. I've been doing that a couple of times a week and then got back into having therapy weekly, which has been a new thing for me. This is something that I recently got into and it's helped me so much just to be able to have a stream of consciousness for 30 minutes and hear my thoughts back, really.
Did you have any musical or sonic inspirations that you were listening to when you were in album creation mode?
I did feel encouraged by certain albums that I know really went there like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It felt like she just left everything on the table. And there's others like, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. There are things that I was listening to that gave me encouragement to push past even the boundaries of what heartbreak is and more I think about things from a more grand scale of just humanity.
Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon – I heard that during the pandemic, it just hit, because I had never listened to Pink Floyd before, but I heard “Time” and I heard, “Great Gig in the Sky.” And then I listened to it from top to bottom and I was like, "This is crazy. This is a snapshot of what the human experience is like. Time, money, love, death, birth, and just such an objective view but psychedelic as hell. I really wanted to to tell my story, but I wanted to be the observer as well. And so it was finding that push and pull of telling my story.
Did you pull from any personal experiences or the experiences of those close to you for this album?
I feel like I'm a reflection of the people that I keep around me that are really close. We share a lot of similar experiences, but for me personally, I was writing from my own experiences and also knowing that I share them with my homegirl who's going through a breakup and other homies and shit like that. Those that feel lost or may just be going through their own transformations in life and what those look like. It's easier to give advice than it is usually to minister your own medicine to yourself. For me, I feel like I really just wanted to be very honest with where I was at the moment.
When you're creating, what allows you to feel like this is the most authentic version of yourself?
It's a feeling. It's definitely a feeling. I think I feel it first, and then I look around and the people that I trust, they feel it. I feel like it's just very sacred what I do. I'm not going to lie. Going into the studio, being able to write and make something from nothing. When I think about little me that was going to the studio at 12 years old, and that's back when you bounced the song, you had to put it on a CD. So I put in my mind, I'm leaving here with something, I'm leaving here with a complete song.
So all of that development, all of that time that went into me being able to be very, very methodical when I get into the studio, open, trusting, but also methodical, and I'm leaving here with something. I'm from around the way, having that same hunger in me. I'm moving from a place of freedom in my approach. I'm freeing people's minds, opening their minds, opening their hearts, and I'm also getting shit done.
Do you feel as if you're thoroughly apart of the R&B genre right now?
I mean, it's tricky. I do think that me being a young Black woman it's easy to just place me there. But I do think that I extend a little past that and I love those that are very true to the genre. I listen and I support and I love everybody that does that, but I also love those that expand beyond it as well. Black artists aren't a monolith, and so when we start to stretch the sonics past it, but it's just pushed back into that genre like, "Oh no, no, no, y'all are all in this box." It's a little frustrating. Not because R&B isn't beautiful and everything, but don't call something that isn't that, that.
What do you want this portion of your career to look and feel like?
I just want to be able to be present. I know that this is going to open a lot of doors for me and it already has, without me even forcing or trying anything. I [also] want to be able to maintain a sense of gratitude and balance, mainly balance. I'm always going to be grateful. As long as I got air to breathe and I'm here, I'm going to be grateful. But I think balance is something that I definitely, I want to make sure that I'm on that for sure, because it can get real quick, real fast. You never know how quickly God's going to turn up.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
