Before we begin – before we get into Dopamine, the effervescent, years-in-the-making debut album by pop superstar Normani, and all she had to endure to get here – let's get one thing straight. “Motivation”? That song that dropped in 2019 and felt, in some way, like a cultural reset? The track that, in all likelihood, has soundtracked many of your summers and still opens your running playlists? Normani thought it was mid when it came out. And she still thinks it's kinda mid.
“I didn't like that song, I'm gonna be honest. It just felt really easy – it felt like the right thing to do, but it didn't necessarily feel authentic,” she says over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles, her mouth curling into a wry smile. The huge reception to the song – top 40 chart placements in the US and UK, ‘Best of 2019’ placements everywhere from Pitchfork to The Guardian – justified the decision to release it, but she never quite shook the feeling this wasn't the right song for her first statement as a solo artist. “We knew that it would work, but even with me having that knowledge, I was still like, it's just as important for me to feel represented. I legit was like, ‘OK, I guess if y'all are happy…’”
That Normani feels like she can really own her own work is crucial. The now-28-year-old singer, dancer and actress spent six years of her life – ages 16 to 22, arguably the most formative – in the girl group Fifth Harmony, an experience that has taken a long time to arrive – and it absolutely , given that Normani's first solo single, the Khalid collab “Love Lies”, dropped in 2018 – it's because Normani has had lost time to make up for, in terms of life experience and creative identity.
