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After years of releasing music that quietly constructed its personal gravity, Aiyana-Lee kicked the door in as soon as this new yr started. Between starring in Highest 2 Lowest, delivering a efficiency that brings Denzel Washington’s character to tears, and writing two of the movie’s defining songs, it’s been a full-on reintroduction to the world. In a dialog with Kyle Meredith, Aiyana-Lee unpacks how a bed room tune become a DM from Spike Lee, how authenticity survives business stress, and what occurs subsequent when the breakthrough lastly hits. Take heed to the episode above or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Aiyana-Lee’s entry level into Spike Lee’s world feels virtually too on-the-nose for this particular film: a direct message on Instagram, despatched after he found her tune “My Idols Lied to Me.” “I believed there was no means it was actual,” she laughs, recalling waking her mother at six within the morning to analyze. Nevertheless it was legit; they met that very same day, and the collaboration rapidly turned one thing deeper than a single placement. “He’s meticulous,” she says of Lee’s course of. “We have been on the cellphone each day. It took ten songs to get to the one.” That insistence on precision reshaped her method to the Highest 2 Lowest title observe, particularly when Lee pushed again on repeating choruses. “Each refrain needed to change. We needed to inform the complete story,” she says. “It compelled me to sharpen the pen.”
That demand for honesty runs straight via her personal catalog, particularly the 2025 single “Metropolis of Lies,” a blunt reckoning with previous business battles and misplaced time. “That tune was me closing a chapter,” Aiyana-Lee explains. “I needed folks to grasp why I disappeared — not as a result of the music wasn’t there, however as a result of I wasn’t allowed to launch it.” Raised round songwriting royalty and music historical past, Lee nonetheless needed to combat to be taken critically as a author and producer. “I used to be informed, ‘You possibly can sing, you’re fairly — that’s it,’” she says. Working with Spike Lee flipped that script. “It was the primary time somebody mentioned, ‘Your voice issues.’ That sort of perception modifications every part.”
Take heed to Aiyana-Lee speak about Highest 2 Lowest, her new music, and extra within the new episode above or by watching the video under. Sustain on all the most recent episodes by following Kyle Meredith With… on your favourite podcast platform; plus, try all of the sequence on the ipromiseyoumedia Podcast Community.
Highest 2 Lowest is streaming now on Apple TV.
