When Normani released “Motivation” in 2019, many believed her album was soon to follow. After a five-year delay, she’s finally gearing up for the day she’ll drop Dopamine. She tells The Cut that the wait was due to several reasons.
“I could’ve put three albums out by now in that duration. I’m not oblivious to that. But I felt like I owed it to myself to be able to take my time, and reinvent, and be experimental,” said Normani, who vowed to release music she could stand by following her experience with Fifth Harmony, which “had no artistic control over their own music.”
She also thought it was necessary to actually live life, considering she was sheltered and homeschooled, which caused “this anxiety when it comes to being seen too much or people seeing through me.”
“I felt like I needed to experience things to actually be able to talk about them on a record, whether it’s my parents, or heartbreak, or even just being in tune with myself as a 27-year-old woman,” Normani explained. “There’s so much life I’ve lived in the span of creating this body of work.”
Part of that time was spent with her mother and father, who’d respectively been diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and 2021.
“I needed to be at home, with my family,” Normani said of that time. The impetus to continue working on Dopamine, “named for the emotional roller coaster of her last several years,” came from her mom, who told her, “I’m still going to be here the day you put that body of work out. I’ll be here at the end.”
“And I held onto that,” Normani says.
Dopamine is expected to arrive on June 14.
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