F**k a Pop Star: Chxrry Is R&Bs Unapologetic Blockstar

Chxrry knows exactly who she is. “I am a confident person, and it actualizes in my music,” she tells Rated R&B over Zoom. “I write my music and people really f**k with that.”

At the time of our conversation, Chxrry is on the move as she prepares to deliver her aptly titled debut album, U, Me & My Ego, on May 29 via XO/Republic Records. “I’m so f**king tired from just getting ready for the album,” she admits. “We’ve been going coast to coast, just booked, busy and blessed, I guess.”

The Canadian-Ethiopian singer, 29, has been clawing for this moment since relocating from her hometown, Scarborough, to Atlanta in 2017 to embark on her musical journey. After signing with The Weeknd’s XO Records, Chxrry (formerly known as Chxrry22) released her debut EP, The Other Side, in 2022. The project drifted through the waves of moody R&B, as she chronicled the motions of love that left her in the toxic “Wasteland.”

Her second EP, Siren, made clear there’s more to her sound than what she introduced on The Other Side. Released in 2023, Siren brought sultriness to songs like the Offset-assisted “Favorite Girl,” but expanded the sonics with different textures on the synth-driven “Do It.” It signaled a more confident sound and approach to her music, though she sort of shrugs it off today. “With Siren, I was experimenting, but I feel like it was all over the place, working with different people and just figuring it out,” she reflects. “It felt like a bunch of songs I liked that felt like what I wanted to say at the time.”

With her debut album, U, Me & My Ego, there isn’t any uncertainty in what she wants to say. Chxrry leans fully into the confidence teased on Siren, with an approach she likens to The Other Side. “I feel like with making my debut EP and my debut album, I had zero expectations and zero idea of what I was doing,” she says. “It was all out of pure creativity and fun. The difference now is I feel like I carved out my lane with this album. Back then, I was teetering, ‘Do I go all the way?’ This time, I didn’t hold back.”

It took a slight detour to get to this lane, including scrapping the first version of the album, which she says was more collaborative, with different producers and writers on board. After releasing two singles — “Poppin Out (Mistakes)” and “Just Like Me” — and preparing to drop the third single, Chxrry felt like something was missing. “I was like, ‘Nothing is saying what I needed to say. This is going to be my final single. I have to say the thing.’”

After making her braggadocious anthem “Main Character,” she finally figured it out. “It was just so different,” she says of the bass-heavy banger. “I knew it was special, and when it came out, it did exactly what I thought it would do. So I wanted to follow that energy and was like, ‘I want to make a new album.’” When asked why she ultimately chose to scrap most of the album, she responds, “I think I knew I didn’t want my debut album to sound like that. With this album, my goal was to stamp my identity. ‘Main Character’ felt so much like me.”

She decided to work exclusively with rising producer Believve, who also produced the aforementioned standalone tracks, and they crafted the album together. “The serendipitous part about working together is that from the beginning, there was always an unspoken understanding,” says Chxrry. “He just gets me. He’s kind of the temperature checker of what we’re doing, where sometimes I’ll go off the rails, and he brings it back in. He’s my musical partner — the yin to my yang.”

Believve echoes Chxrry’s sentiments, telling Rated R&B, “The creative chemistry is kind of a reflection of our relationship. I knew from getting to know her early that we just clicked. Making music was just easy. Whichever direction she wanted to go in, I’d follow her in that direction. It felt pretty seamless, [which is] really a reflection of how well we get along.”

Chxrry’s musical partnership with the Birmingham, England, native began with “Poppin Out.” It was the first time she made a song that felt naturally aligned with her personality. “My previous music was a little more moody, and I’m not necessarily a moody person at all,” says Chxrry.

Together, she and Believve sculpted a cinematic sonic world where R&B and pop collide in a way reminiscent of the early 2010s, without feeling too on-the-nose. The 28-minute set is lean, yet there’s enough space for both the singer, born Lydia Habtemariam, and her alter ego, Chxrry, to coexist in their own truth.

U, Me & My Ego starts with a bang. “Blockstar” is a statement record that announces her arrival. The thunderous production, heightened by clashing synths, bodes well in Chxrry’s grand entrance, where she is ready to disrupt the scene on her own terms. “F**k a pop star, baby, I’m a cinema,” she proclaims, acknowledging her ascension into the mainstream with no interest in conforming to the status quo.

“It’s kind of a love letter to my fans in a weird way,” says Chxrry, “but also a nod to haters. I wanted to state who I was. ‘Blockstar’ came from me feeling like I don’t belong. I’m not necessarily the clean-cut pop star brand or whatever the f**k. I have fake tits, and I kind of have a potty mouth. I’m really not what a pop bitch is, but I feel like people still love me. I’m the people’s princess and the block loves me.”

“Blockstar” was one of the last songs worked on for the album. “We were missing a ‘here’s the first song’ feeling,” says Believve. “We wanted to come out of the gate — like bursting through the doors instead of trying to be pretty about it. I think it was easier to get that texture and energy knowing that the rest of the album was there.”

Chxrry’s confidence is inescapable in other songs such as “Badness,” featuring rapper Cash Cobain. It sounds like a cousin to “Main Character,” set to a club-ready production that brings the pulse of EDM with the rhythm of hip-hop. From the booming bass to the twerk-inducing handclaps, it’s fitting for a hazy dancefloor, where sweat and spilled liquor collide underneath moving feet. “She likes to exist in places that she actually exists in,” says Believve. “The closest thing we had to the club was ‘Main Character.’ So I think it was fitting that this song is for the nightlifers.”

Chxrry steps outside of the party scene and into her feelings on “Bible,” the album’s most vulnerable moment. It’s here where she helplessly lets down her guard while trying so hard not to — but that’s the way love goes. “Loving you makes me dumb, stupid / Don’t know how you did it, but you did / I go psycho, everything you say is like bible,” she sings.

Regarding “Bible,” Chxrry notes, “It’s not your average love song because love does make people very delusional, and although it’s the thing everyone’s supposed to want, it comes with so many feelings you can’t control. I wanted to write about that and how annoying it really is. It’s really not that great.”

Believve adds, “She was trying to capture as much vulnerability without sounding sad, that juxtaposition between being in love with somebody and hating the fact that you’re in love with them.” He continues, “That was one of the first mid-tempo songs we did. It’s nice for people to hear us sing with chord changes and to have more arrangement in terms of emotion and lyric.”

Chxrry doesn’t get too lost in love, especially after the sting it leaves. She picks herself up in “Bottles & Lights,” featuring Mariah The Scientist, whom she joined on tour earlier this year. Instead of allowing an unfaithful partner to get the best of her, Chxrry calls up her girls for a night on the town, while delivering the final blow: “I’m not your momma, I’ll leave ya / Just like your father, I’ll leave ya.”

“[The collaboration] came really naturally,” Chxrry says of working with Mariah The Scientist. “That friendship is three years in the making now. We were always going to have a song together. It was just about the right one. She’s a real bitch and she’s really my friend. When I played it for her, she was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll get on this.’”

Chxrry, who grew up singing in church, lets her voice shine on “Boring,” a stripped-down ballad set to cinematic strings and lush backgrounds, where she desires someone who can match her Aries fire, even if it’s at her own expense. “I’ll lower my standards as long as you ain’t boring,” she sings with honesty.

“I was dating a couple of people at the time, and I was just so f**king bored,” Chxrry says of “Boring.” “I wouldn’t even say somebody is necessarily boring. It’s the idea of things getting redundant. Sometimes men are really fun at first, and then it dies out, or maybe talks too much, now you’re bored. It could be anything. It’s kind of like the ick, but ick is boredom.”

For Chxrry, the most exciting part about making U, Me & My Ego was the freedom to express her complex self. “When we were done, we listened back and were like, ‘Wow, we really made a body of work that showcases almost all sides.’ Obviously, I’ve barely scratched the surface on all my stories, but that was the best part.”

The title track best showcases her different sides in one. Her gossamer vocal delivery soars over a dreamy, electronic R&B soundscape, where she makes a nonnegotiable commitment to be her whole self — the personal Lydia and the ego, Chxrry — while demanding that a potential lover make room for both. “It’s a package deal, oh, I go where she go,” she sings.

While it may be easy to get tripped up over the ego talk, it’s more layered than it sounds. “I wrote ‘U, Me & My Ego’ right after ‘Main Character,’” she reveals. “I knew I wanted to say something clever. I feel like ego is a word that’s looked down on and so taboo, and I wanted to play into that.” It’s less about ego and more about the unwavering refusal to shrink herself to meet someone else’s standards. Believve chimes in, “It’s not necessarily cocky, it’s just honest. I think across the album, we tried to make sure she is as transparent and as honest as she can be. That was the first song where I felt like we really honed in.”

If there’s one thing she wants listeners to take away from U, Me & My Ego, it’s this: “I want my fans to know that I don’t give a f**k, so they shouldn’t give a f**k about anybody or anything. They should just be themselves because whoever’s meant to find you is going to find you. That’s all I want them to get from this album — and to have fun. Some days you might want to be sad, and you put on somebody else, but then there are days where you’re going out, you just feel like a bad bitch and want to put Chxrry on. That’s what I’m here for.”

Featured Image Photo: Ro.Lexx

Stream Chxrry’sU, Me & My Ego here.