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There is a beautiful and complex polarity to the artist we know as 070 Shake. The New Jersey born-and-raised musician has received nothing but accolades since emerging with her first EP, Glitter, in 2018—from a feature on Kanye West’s album Ye, and a contract with West’s label G.O.O.D. Music, to collaborations with industry royalty like Madonna and Pusha T. But despite how quickly she’s risen to the top—or in spite of it—Shake has yet to let fame get to her head.

From the creative process itself, to her life offstage, Shake has found ways to stay grounded. She’s a self-described introvert at her core, yet with unparalleled performance energy—a dichotomy that clearly works well for her and has attributed to her success thus far. And it’s something that I noticed myself, off the bat, when she spoke to me from her apartment in Los Angeles. Though Shake easily leaves ego out of the room, I do happen to notice a glass display case joining us. It features an AK-47 carrier bag inscribed with You Can’t Kill Me—the title of Shake’s upcoming album. When asked about its meaning, the artist is quick with another paradox for me, “It’s cool because it represents that even with a gun, you can’t kill me. Because we’re infinite.”

How long have you been based in Los Angeles?

For like a year and a half now.

Do you like it?

Yeah. But I’m pretty much focused. I’m not here with the mindset of enjoying my time and stuff. Really just working, you know?

Over the course of making your new album, did you have the experience of working out of both New Jersey and LA?

I started working on this album in Arizona, actually. I lived there for half a year, and started the project there before moving it on to LA.

You talked about focus—do you feel like it has been hard for you to re-center and focus when you’re moving around? Or are you unaffected by your surroundings?

I mean, just the physical part of it—like actually moving stuff is probably the only distracting thing, but mentally I can adjust pretty quickly. I’m really like a hermit crab, you know? Like I could really just adjust to a bunch of different environments.

Have you always been like that?

Well, I never traveled before. I grew up in Jersey, and I was there ‘til I was 20-something when I left for the first time—besides going back and forth to the Dominican Republic. But after I left for the first time, when I was like 19 or 20 since then I’ve kinda just been moving.

Are you someone who stays pretty much in your own bubble, wherever you are?

Yeah, for sure.

Were you like that as a kid? Did you keep to yourself?

No, actually as a kid I was very extroverted. But since I never left Jersey, I was always used to being with the same people. Even now, I’m still with people from Jersey, you know? I think, as I grew up, I became more introverted. I pretty much don’t have any new LA friends besides my girlfriend’s friends.

If at all, how has your creative process changed from the first album to You Can’t Kill Me?

It’s changed because I’ve learned more about music and about life in general. So, this new information—I’ve put that into the work. And I don’t really know why, but I feel more attached to this, because the process has been very long, and I put a lot of care and time into it, very carefully structuring everything and building it from nothing, from the ground up.

How do you create a cohesive body of work? Was there an initial concept for the album that you started with, and wanted to build on—how was it all born?

No, I don’t go into projects sticking to a concept because I think that’s disingenuous in a way. You don’t know what you’re going to feel tomorrow, so that would be putting myself in a box, trying to follow a concept, and maybe even go against my feeling by trying to make it cohesive with that one idea. I really let the story tell itself. It’s like painting blindly—when you take the blindfold off and see what you created, it’s become a reflection of what you were feeling throughout that time.

And especially if you took significant time to make the work, the narrative will have changed and progressed?

Exactly. There are so many different feelings there. At one point I say, ‘stay,’ and at the other point I’m like, ‘leave.’ You are really going through my life experience with me.

Do you feel like the work you do as 070 Shake, the artist and performer, is separate from you as a person? For example, if I am listening to your albums and watching you on stage—is that expression a character or alter ego, or the person I am talking to right now?

It’s an unspoken thing within me that is like a character, but it’s not like I say, ‘Here, now I’m going to be this character.’ It naturally happens. I become something different when I’m on stage—I become the most powerful version of myself. And the people watching become the most powerful versions of themselves, because we’re all sharing all of this energy. I think there’s something so powerful about everybody being somewhere because they share something in common. My energy is being directed to them, and theirs to me. This frequency has spoken to them, because that’s really what music is. There are some people that might like hip-hop, some people like country music. These frequencies are speaking to people differently. You can’t really see music. You can’t hold on to music. It’s something in the air and you don’t know why, but sometimes it brings tears to your eyes, you know? I think that’s a very powerful place to be. So, yeah, I think naturally you just become—not even something else, but just a different form of yourself.

It’s interesting that you said before you’re like a hermit crab, and you are still hanging out with people from Jersey in LA, but now describing what it’s like when you’re on stage, it sounds like the true opposite—you connect with everyone.

Yeah, I’m a totally different person.

What do you think is something specifically different about this album compared to any of the work you’ve put out before?

I’ll start by saying, just as far as the pace of my career, and as far as my albums go, it’s gonna be a growing process. So on each album, I’m going to be growing, and you’re going to feel as if you’re growing with me through it. That’s really what it feels like, and I think that’s what it should feel like. That’s why this is a different process. It’s a different process for every artist. But there are some artists whose first album is their best album. And then after that, they’re kind of chasing that. They’re trying to—how do I get that feeling again? And now it’s like you’re kind of working backwards. Whereas here, you can really just see the gradual growth. I’m not trying to be anything else. As a human, I’m just growing. And I feel like even with that, the music, it’s way more. I’ve become more confident in my ideas and in my leadership. I think I was a little more scared during Modus. I didn’t realize that I was a leader to the full extent that I know I am now. Whereas for this album, there was a little less fear this time around. And I think the next time around there will be even less fear than You Can’t Kill Me. It really is that, I think—the process of letting go of fear through each body of work in different ways.

Where did the title come from?

The title came from just literally that—letting go of fear. And knowing that we’re infinite, our souls never die. I try not to take too many things personally because, I don’t know, it’s just temporary. A lot of things are temporary in the life we exist in right now. Being in touch with the part of myself that’s infinite was a very strong message for me, and I guess the best way to communicate that was ‘you can’t kill me.’ The things you do and the things you say—I understand enough to not let it hurt me.

How, why, and where did you come to find that belief about infiniteness?

It’s very spiritual. It definitely came through meditation. There was a long time period where I was dedicating a lot to meditation and even making this album, like when I was in Arizona, we would wake up and meditate in the morning. Even taking classes—I’ve had a very balanced, spiritual life. I grew up in church and was introduced to God at a very young age, and that’s definitely stuck with me and has been something that I’ve always exercised. Meditating, I’ve literally felt myself be infinite. I’ve seen the infinite and felt the infinite part of me. I shoot out of my body, and my eyes are closed—I don’t feel like I’m this, you know? I feel like air.

The whole out-of-body experience sounds a lot like when you were talking about being on stage and that connection with others through music. Both are ways you’re dissociating from self, stripping ego.

We become one thing. It’s really beautiful.

What is your lyrical process? What was it like writing this album?

We’ll be making the music once we find those chords that we like. And the first thing I’ll do is I’ll start freestyling to it, and that’ll just let that initial response flow. I won’t influence it in any way or try to manipulate it or anything. I just let it be whatever it is that’s coming. And it’ll be gibberish—sometimes it’s words already, sometimes it’s all songs. Because I want to really express myself and be completely honest. And then after that I fill it in with the words that I feel fit best, or a story that I feel fits best. Really the feeling comes first and the words come second.

Do you think they’re always personal narratives?

Not always. Sometimes I might get inspired by an experience that maybe my friend is having. One time my friend— his girlfriend broke up with him after like two years. And then we were in the studio, and I was feeling him the whole day, you know? He’s venting to me, and I’m just receiving all of it, and then that night I made a song. I’m talking about this crazy breakup and how this person left me—and it never happened to me, but it was for him. I was feeling what he was feeling, through him, and I wasn’t experiencing it myself, but it felt like he had to speak through me. Sometimes that happens where I feel like something else is speaking through me. But for the most part, it is about my personal experiences.

What do you think about the idea that the best art comes from pain? Do you agree? Disagree?

I mean, that could get so deep. In the sense of being in pain and being healed—it’s essentially the same thing.

What do you mean?

Because you can’t feel one without the other. They essentially become the same thing. Because even when you’re making art about happiness, the reason why you want to express this happiness is because you’ve felt pain. You’re appreciating this happy feeling that you have. I feel like maybe it’s expressed best through moments of pain, but I think the best art comes from—it’s just both the same thing—from being healed and from being in pain. Experience. But maybe it is better translated when you’re in pain.