Music

The last time Audrey Nuna released an album – 2021’s A Liquid Breakfast – the world was still largely in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, Olivia Rodrigo had just launched her Sour LP and Taylor Swift was the very beginning of her Taylor’s Versions campaign. Three years later, Nuna returns with a darker, grittier companion to A Liquid Breakfast titled Trench. 
Featuring a collaboration with Teezo Touchdown and an interpolation of Brandy and Monica’s timeless “The Boy Is Mine,” Trench showcases the marvelous sonic evolution Nuna has undergone since first signing to Arista half a decade ago. Foreboding synths anchor apocalyptic anthems like “Dance Dance Dance,” while forlorn acoustic guitar serves as the backbone for quieter, more jaded moments like the evocative “Joke’s on Me.” In the years between her debut and sophomore albums, Nuna moved to Los Angeles and experienced an unmistakable darkness rooted in the city’s synthetic nature around the same time her frontal lobe started to fully develop.  

Trench is born out of the tumult of those years, and throughout the record’s double-disc journey, Nuna comes out on the other side with a greater understanding of how to streamline her idiosyncrasies into a concise project. She raps and sings across the record’s moody, glitchy trap and R&B-informed soundscape, while still leaving room to incorporate notes of rock, folk and dance-pop. All of those styles were on full display at her electric album release show at Brooklyn’s Sultan Room on Oct. 15, which was packed wall to wall with adoring fans who perfectly matched Nuna’s thrilling stage show. 

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“I would say the tagline for this project is ‘soft skin, hard feelings,’” Nuna tells Billboard. “I think that really encapsulates the duality my whole shit is based on… this idea of blending things that don’t normally go together. I love beautiful chords and R&B, but I also love harsh sounds and really raw synths. The whole sound is a blend of our tastes – me and [my producer] Anwar [Sawyer,] and that whole first project really helped me carve out the sound naturally.” 

A Jersey kid and Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music dropout turned rising cross-genre star, Audrey Nuna is ready to enter the next phase of her career with Trench. In a heartfelt conversation with Billboard, Nuna details the making of Trench, how she understands herself as a Korean-American navigating hip-hop and R&B and how the ‘90s informed much of her approach to her art. 

You signed to Arista in 2019. How do you feel that your relationship with them has evolved over time — especially going into this new project? 

I think it’s like any relationship where we’ve been building a lot of trust. They signed me when I was pretty young, and it’s been five years. When they signed me, they were all super excited — and we have an unusual, unique artist-label relationship where we’re building it all together from the ground up. I’m grateful for the freedom to do what I want to do. I’m pretty blessed in the fact that I’ve never felt like I had to do things. I’ve always been able to maintain a sense of independence, which is a f—king blessing. 

Why is the album called Trench? How did you land on that title? 

I really love words. I just love that word, [“trench.”] First and foremost, I love that it’s double consonants in the back and front. I love that it sounds kind of harsh, but there’s also a bit of balance to it. There’s also this analogy of war and defense mechanisms and the hard, brutal reality of that. I think it’s really interesting that when you zero in on something so harsh, you will always see this warm flesh underneath. It’s that concept: we’re all human, but we go through all these hard things that kind of push us against our nature, which is warm. It was just really ironic to me, and that duality was something I wanted to present throughout the album. 

Why did you choose to present Trench as a double-disc album? 

I just felt it would be a great way to showcase the two sides of this character in this world. At the end of the day, while I was organizing the tracklist, I realized that they’re very much one and the same, but almost inverses of each other. I think that this idea of showcasing those. They’re inverse, but they’re also parallel. 

Talk to me about “Mine,” in which you interpolate Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine.” How did that one come together? 

I had the idea for that song because I love the romance of ‘90s R&B. The producer I worked with, Myles William, had the idea to reference such an iconic song, and I loved the idea because it was still so current sonically with the Jersey club in there. I think combining those two things was very fascinating to me. Even flipping the original meaning of the song where two characters are fighting over one guy into me making the guy cry instead – it’s more of that harshness that Trench is about. 

Being that you’re a Jersey kid, did you hear Jersey club a lot growing up? 

Actually, yeah! It’s so funny because in high school, and even before then, Jersey club was always circulating. Not as much on the radio or anything like that, but more on people’s phones on YouTube or if you were in the car with your friends. It was so specific in what it was that to now see it be such a big part of the mainstream is really mindblowing.  

You teamed up with Teezo Touchdown on “Starving.” How did that come together? 

I had that song starting with the demo. We were thinking about a feature that was. In the beginning, we were thinking of Steve Lacy or Fousheé. I think my A&R suggested Teezo because he’s been working with him, and it just made sense. “Starving” is also a very pop record, and kind of out of my comfort zone — which is interesting, because for most people a track like that is very left-field. I think having an artist [who] understands what it’s like to stay in a pocket of the most pop song on your record actually feeling like the B-side is really cool. 

It was just really cool to see him do his thing on there because he just brought a fresh energy that you wouldn’t normally expect someone to rap or sing with. He almost reminds me of André 3000, because of the way he makes anything sound good by how he wears his energy. Same with his fashion — the way he wears the clothes is what makes it work. 

What was on the mood board while you were creating Trench? 

The movie Akira. When I made “Nothing Feels the Same,” Akira was definitely in my head as this villain coming into herself – in the movie’s case, himself. It just felt like a soundtrack for a darker transformation for me. On the other side of that, I was also weirdly inspired by more bubblegum-esque aesthetics, and combing those two things. You can hear it on a song like “Sucking Up.” I’m really inspired by the ‘90s, like KRS-One, but also PinkPantheress and jazz influences like Chick Corea or Hudson Mohawke on the dance side and even Korean 90’s alternative artists. There’s a lot of different stuff. 

What was the entry point to hip-hop? 

I grew up pretty musically sheltered. My parents are immigrants, so they put me on to some Korean older folk music. Knowing popular music came very late. I specifically remember listening to [Ye’s] Yeezus sophomore year of high school for the first time. At that point in my household, cursing was bad. To hear something so vulgar and raw and different from anything I’ve ever heard before, that was a bit of an entry point for me. [I found a] space and form of expression where you can truly say what’s in your heart and not necessarily care about the world. I think that was very enticing to me.  

Meeting Anwar and listening to everything he put me onto and obsessing over Sade together [was also formative.] Sometimes, I feel like when you don’t know what your lineage is because of immigration and you don’t see a lot of people doing what you’re trying to do, you have more freedom because it’s a blank canvas.

How do you navigate conversations where your race is emphasized in relation to the kind of music you make? How do you understand yourself as a Korean-American operating in traditionally Black spaces like hip-hop and R&B? 

Being boxed into “Korean-American” is definitely a thing. In my case, I learned to acknowledge that I am who I am, and being an American is part of my identity, but it’s not necessarily the only thing that you want to be attached to your identity. At the end of the day, we’re human. Yes, I grew up eating kimchi jjigae, my parents spoke Korean to me, I was exposed to all of these other Korean things – that’s gonna bleed into everything I do, whether I want it to or not. 

At the beginning of my career, seeing the hyper-emphasis on [my race] was very interesting because growing up I never felt Korean-American, I never felt Korean enough. And now it’s like you have to be “very” Korean. It’s very extreme. At this point, I’m all about paying respect to where the genre comes from and understanding that I am a visitor and a guest. It’s about respecting the craft and studying it and not viewing it as anything other than what it is – something that is worthy of all of the respect in the world. Also keeping the conversation going and asking questions, I’m not gonna understand every last reference.  

I honestly feel it’s been an evolution. All these cultures are merging, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. Ultimately, I pray that that would give us more empathy and understanding as a human race. My biggest thing is encouraging people to educate me constantly and keeping the conversation open. On both sides, you can get boxed into a narrative, but at the same time, it’s all very gray. Generally, just do what inspires you in a conscientious way. Just do shit. 

You’re trying to break through in the wake of the Stateside K-pop boom. Has that phenomenon impacted the ways the market sees you and your music at all? 

The sentiment towards Asian culture in general has changed in the past three years. Growing up, it wasn’t “cool” to be Asian. But it’s like this hot commodity now, Korean culture especially is at the forefront right now. Sometimes, you do get boxed into this “everything Korean is K-pop” [mentality.] I’ve been listed in random articles as one of “10 K-Pop acts to know.” Even labels that approached me earlier in my career were like, “Well, we have all these K-Pop acts, so you would be very welcome here.” At the same time, my music is worlds away from K-Pop.  

It’s gray and it’s nuanced, but at the end of the day, I’m really proud to be Korean and proud that Koreans are being recognized for their excellence in music and visuals and fashion. When I see people who genuinely love the culture push and try to understand it outside of just the aesthetic, that brings me a lot of joy. 

What was your time in Fort Lee like? 

Fort Lee is like the K-Town of Jersey. It was kind of like a retreat. After I went to school for a year and then I dropped out and moved to Fort Lee. I stayed by all these Korean families, almost in the suburbs — but it was right outside the city, so there was a little bit more going on. That place is so warm and nostalgic in my heart because it’s the place where I really found my sound. It’s the most romantic place in my heart because all I did all day was make music. That was before I had a career; it was when I was doing it, not knowing if I was going to be able to do it. 

There’s something so special about that; I realized you really never get it back once that period is over. You can spend your whole life emulating that, but it will never be as pure. I always look up to my 19-year-old self and the fearlessness that came out of true naïveté. 

How do you view Trench in relation to A Liquid Breakfast? Is there a symbiotic relationship between the two records? 

I think they’re very symbiotic, and I love that word. They follow the same character, [she’s] just gone through a bit more shit. The first project is Fort Lee; it’s romantic, it’s curious, it’s pink and blue and springtime. In between [A Liquid Breakfast and Trench,] I moved to LA and as sunny as that city is, there’s a level of syntheticness and darkness that I experienced. [By Trench,] this character went underground for two years and didn’t see sunlight for a long time. 

 And who knows, maybe this is a “part two” and there’s one more part that ends this story. I definitely think [Trench] is the darker counterpart, sonically, lyrically and conceptually. It’s a bit more complex and experimental. At its core, it follows the same character as the last album. Since the last project, so much has changed and so much has stayed the same. 

I see a lot of the ‘90s in your approach to music videos. How did you develop your visual language, and did that intersect with and or influence your stage show at all? 

I’m very ‘90s-inspired for sure. One of the first videos I remember being very inspired by was the Jamiroquai video, “Virtual Insanity.” And then obviously Missy Elliott, and anything directed by Hype Williams. I don’t know what was going on. I just think it was a golden age of music videos. People put so much value into music videos, but they were also so new to the point where people were just trying anything. I think that balance of having the resources and also having an innocence, in a way, towards the craft was so special.  

And Thank God for the internet. I saw the shit that I had never seen before just browsing YouTube; seeing Spike Jonze’s work and the Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic.” Finding all of those different things and combining them kind of exploded my DNA. Also, my dad used to own a clothing factory in the Garment District. I was mostly around fashion, and I think that was very formative for me. 

Are you planning to tour behind Trench? 

Yes, next year. I’m still figuring out certain things, but I think that it’s essential for me to do this album live. I came up during the COVID era, and I haven’t had an opportunity to just perform for people as a headliner. I’m just very spiritually ready to present an album in that space. 

What song from the album are you most excited to perform live for the first time? 

I’d say, “Baby OG.” I just love it; it never gets old. I sampled my 19-year-old self on that song. There’s a demo from 2019 called “Need You,” and that never got put out. But we just sampled it one day and it ended up becoming “Baby OG.” The meanings of the songs were so parallel. I didn’t realize that until after I finished the song. It’s kind of a meeting of past and future self.  

Do you plan to return to Clive at any point or are you full steam ahead with your career? 

I can’t afford it. [Laughs.] I can’t afford that s–t! I think if I were to go back to school, I would not go to school for music. I’d want to study history or fashion design. 

In a past interview, you named Chihiro from Spirited Away as the fictional character you relate to the most. Is that still true, and have you heard the Billie Eilish song inspired by that character? 

I think that will always be true. I love Miyazaki’s protagonists because most of the time, they’re kids who are just so courageous and wise. I think that was super empowering to see as a kid. That was one of my earliest memories of digital cinema and animation. I have heard “Chihiro” from the new Billie album. She’s so sick. It’s so awesome to see her sonic progression.