Kali Uchis’ new album ‘Sincerely,’ is a love letter to mothers everywhere

To celebrate her latest album release, Kali Uchis hosted a tea party in Hollywood.

It was by no means a modest affair. Scores of glamorous women draped in lace, silks and pearls descended upon the event space Citizen News last Friday night to ring in the arrival of the singer-songwriter’s fifth studio album, “Sincerely,” released May 9 on Capitol Records.

A collection of spectral R&B-pop songs sung in the key of life, Uchis’ new record echoed through the halls of the venue as the star herself — dressed in frilly white chiffon with a Rococo-style corset and pink satin platform boots — snapped photos with fans and friends.

Special guests included rapper Saweetie and drag superstar Valentina, with whom Uchis judged a ballroom competition between the formidable vogue dancers from the House of FUBU and the rivaling House of Telfar. The judges liberally doled out scores of 10 to the performers, who swanned deftly across the parquet flooring in colorful, “Alice in Wonderland”-inspired costumes.

The tea party was a unique, if not rare, public appearance for the Grammy-winning artist, who these days much prefers to stay at home in Los Angeles with family and a select few confidantes. (So much so that she even named her skincare line “Homebody.”)

Yet the collective spirit of the event — an exaltation of the feminine in its many expressions — felt authentic to Uchis’ work as an artist. And in the making of “Sincerely,” which beholds her most revealing lyrics yet, authenticity was key.

“My main intention with the album was to make it autobiographical,” Uchis told De Los a few days before her album release, inside her hotel room at the Hollywood Roosevelt. “Each song was a letter — to my homegirl, to my man, to my baby, to the world. I felt that with all my albums, like ‘Orquídeas,’ I was just having fun. I never made an album where I just talked about my life story — instead of a general, ‘Ooh, I look cute, I look good, my p— good’ type of music.”

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For her previous album “Orquídeas,” a collection of dance floor-ready, Spanish-language songs released in 2024, Uchis recruited guest vocalists from across Latin America — from Karol G to Peso Pluma — to join her in girly-pop revelry.

Yet that was all before last March, when the artist gave birth to her son, whom she shares with her partner, Houston-born rapper Don Toliver. It was also around then that Uchis, now 30, began an intense process of reconciling with her once-estranged mother, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer.

After a series of healing heart-to-heart conversations, Uchis’ mom worked for her daughters’ forgiveness — and spent ample time with her grandson before she tragically died in April. It’s in part why Uchis dedicated “Sincerely,” released the Friday before Mother’s Day, to her late mom.

“I tried to go out and do stuff while not telling anyone [she died],” said Uchis. “It just felt disrespectful to her life and her legacy … Because it’s the first thing that’s on [my] mind as soon as [I] wake up and as soon as [I] go to sleep. My mom was really proud, and dedicating the album to her felt like the right thing to do.”

Uchis sampled her mother’s voice from a home movie in “Sunshine & Rain…,” the album’s sanguine lead single. “Good morning, sunshine!” chirps her mother in lo-fi, as a sitar shrugs along, giving the soul ballad a psychedelic touch.

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

Born Karly-Marina Loaiza in Alexandria, Va., Uchis was the youngest of five children in a Colombian American family, which split time between the U.S. and her father’s hometown in Pereira, Colombia. She had a fraught relationship with her parents, who put their children to work on construction in the apartment building her father managed.

Uchis was a sensitive child who would rather write poetry and play saxophone in a jazz band with her classmates; she was still in high school when she left home. It was while living on her own that she recorded and produced what eventually became her buzzy 2012 mixtape, an R&B experiment she uploaded to the internet called “Drunken Babble.”

“I had a lot of odds stacked against me,” she said, reflecting on her early days. “I didn’t come from money ... I never got any vocal training. The main thing that people used to say when I was starting was just, ‘Well, your voice is very unique.’ I didn’t know if that was a dig, but I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to lean on that. Because it’s true.’”

Uchis built rapports with a number of artists over the years, including eccentric L.A. rapper Tyler, the Creator, as well as producers like BadBadNotGood and Kaytranada, who all appeared on her 2015 EP, “Por Vida.” In 2017, Uchis racked up collaborations with Gorillaz and Juanes; the following year she opened for Lana Del Rey on tour, signed a record deal with Virgin EMI (under Universal Music Group) and released her debut album, “Isolation.”

Her star rose even brighter in late 2020, when she released her first Spanish-language album, “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)” — from which the single “Telepatía” climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Songs chart and No. 25 on the Hot 100 in 2021. Her next albums, 2023’s “Red Moon in Venus” and “Orquídeas,” would inch up the Billboard 200 charts to No. 4 and No. 2, respectively.

Her first album since Capitol Records merged with Interscope in March, “Sincerely,” had been in the works for two years before its release. Uchis wrote the opening track, “Heaven Is a Home,” in 2023, just after she discovered she was pregnant. And, as the gravitas of motherhood had started to weigh on her, she decided to set forth her intentions in the song — to undo the generational trauma she’d incurred through her immigrant family and create what she calls her own “bubble of protection and light.”

Creating life, as it would turn out, stimulated the same part of her brain that created art. She began writing the ballad “ILYSMIH (I Love You So Much It Hurts)” at the hospital, on the very day her baby boy was born. Uchis later decided to sample her son’s bubbly laughter for the song, which would then qualify him for a song credit: He’s listed on Spotify as “Pooks.”

“I want him to have his moment — and to have publishing [rights],” she explained.

“After he started talking, I was like, ‘Oh — I have to get a voice note of him!’” she recalled with a laugh. “But it wasn’t until a few months ago that he really started talking, like a lot. I wanted to get him to say ‘mama’ for [the song], so it’s very recent.”

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

Even before she became a mother, Uchis was happiest working remotely with collaborators. After spending her 20s tirelessly hopping from studio to studio to build her portfolio, she now insists on writing, recording and producing at home.

“I started in the shower, I finished it in the car,” she said, using “ILYSMIH” as an example. “Existing in my life, working off of my phone and taking inspiration as it [comes] to me, is a lot more honest and intuitive than sitting in a studio and trying to come up with something.”

Recorded primarily in English, Uchis retains her 1960s soul and doo-wop roots in “Sincerely,” — namely in sparkling cuts like “All I Can Say” and “Daggers!” Yet she detours into alt territory in the second half of “Lose My Cool” and the next track, “It’s Just Us.” Adrift in a 1990s-esque dream-pop reverie, Uchis coasts through a tunnel of love, her ethereal voice cradled by reverberations of electric guitars. “There was like a full week where I was just trying to make something bar-for-bar inspired by Cocteau Twins,” she said, which gave way to this romantic sequence.

Uchis has a laundry list of foremothers for every album; her past muses have ranged from La Lupe to Nancy Sinatra. “I’ve been very inspired by women who have a little bit more depth to their writing, like Fiona Apple, Sade, Amy [Winehouse] ... the Cranberries and Brenda Lee as well,” she said of her latest record.

She wrote and executive produced the entirety of “Sincerely,” — a necessity for the artist, for whom multigenre exploration, at risk of alienating fans, has always been the utmost priority. It’s how Uchis has excelled in what so many pop artists struggle with: She remains the main celestial body for the sounds she experiments with to orbit, and not the other way around.

“It’s been so many times where fans have been mad, or the label has been mad, or whatever,” she said with a shrug. “Not everybody has that experience of growing up in two cultures and having the influences I have. The main thing I want young artists to take from me is to lean on what makes them different. I never compromised on who I am or tried to make myself fit into one box.”

Other artists can’t help but show their admiration; British hyperpop queen Charli XCX recently paid tribute to the singer by projecting the words “Kali Uchis Summer” onscreen during her set at this year’s Coachella.

Uchis indeed has big plans for this summer, including a North American arena tour, which kicks off Aug. 14 in Portland, Ore. and includes an Aug. 20 stop at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles.

It would be her first tour as a mother; and as with her music, it’s just one more experiment she’s ready to take on.

“I was already an emotional person, [but] since my pregnancy I’ve been able to feel a lot deeper,” she said. “We all see mothers and know that they exist, but you don’t really understand until you are one. When your child is born, you’re reborn in a lot of ways. It’s a death and a rebirth of yourself. But I think a lot of joy and hope comes with that.”