Halle Bailey is gearing up to release her first solo album and in her Cosmopolitan cover story she shared her inspiration behind the album.
According to People the cover story published on Tuesday, the singer/actress, 23, said her solo project was heavily influenced by being in love for the first time.
Sharing that her relationship with DDG is partially where she got her “creativity from” in order to make the project.
The Little Mermaid star told the publication in their September/October STYLE issue that her debut solo album will “definitely” drop “before the end of this year.”
The Chloe x Halle performer, who has been dating rapper DDG (real name Darryl Dwayne Granberry Jr.) since early 2022, also said “love” has been “a really big” source of musical inspiration.
The “Angel” singer explained that starring in movies like the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid and the upcoming movie-musical adaptation of The Color Purple informed her songwriting, but made a point to share how her relationship has, as well. “
All musical inspiration really just comes from life experiences,” the recording artist told Cosmopolitan.
“Love has been a really big one for me too, because that’s something I’m experiencing for the first time, and it’s, like, ‘whoa’ in your brain. It’s just fireworks, a spark for creativity.”
She went on to emphasize the significance of her current relationship, which became Instagram official when DDG posted a birthday tribute to Bailey in March 2023.
The singer-songwriter added, “You know, you have puppy love experiences, you think that’s love. But this is my first deep, deep, real love.”
While she preferred to keep details about her personal life private, she did say, “I will tell you where I get my creativity from.”
“This has been a really beautiful transformative time for me. I have all this new material to write about,” the R&B star continued. “It’s like, What the heck did I just experience and go through? A whirlwind of amazingness. You never know what you’re capable of until you’re put through it. I was very creatively inspired, and then from there, I fell in love. And so I really just played with those themes in my music.”
The “Ungodly Hour” singer added that her upcoming album, which is currently unnamed, incorporates modern R&B sounds and has elements of both jazz and pop. Fans have gotten a glimpse at the sound with the lead single “Angel,” which dropped in early August.
She also explained the audience she had in mind while creating it.
“My music is definitely for the young girl who doesn’t know herself completely yet, who’s growing every day and learning about who she is and about her power,” Bailey shared. “It’s an emotional, vulnerable kind of music. It’s also a love letter to myself and my younger self and my future self.”
Bailey and DDG have stepped out together multiple times over the course of their year-and-a-half-long romance and spoken highly of each other in interviews.
The Disney princess recently spoke to PEOPLE about the Zooted Music record label founder in May. When asked if she would call her beau a real Prince Charming, she said, “Yeah. I would say that.”
She opened up about their fairy tale romance more by saying:
“I think the best thing about young love is that you’re able to continue to find yourself through this journey of loving somebody else. And you’re discovering new parts of yourself and maybe things that you didn’t notice before about your heart.”
Bailey continued, “I feel like things change when love gets more involved in your life. I have definitely discovered more within myself as a woman. …It’s a really cool thing to go through, but a transformative experience.”
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