They were shocked in the beginning, but they accepted me.”
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People didn’t know what I looked like until my first show. “I didn’t put up a proper photo of myself - it was cropped, up until my nose. “I struggled with that.” Instead, Yuna shrouded her image in mystery, letting her music speak for her. Malaysia may be predominantly Muslim, but much like in America, “women singers are seen as sexy here - you have to let your hair out and be beautiful,” she says. At first, she felt like an outsider in the country’s music biz. Music started taking priority a year before she graduated from university in 2009, when she self-released EPs to local acclaim and won second place in a national songwriting contest. As a hobby, in between poring over textbooks, she taught herself guitar watching YouTube, writing songs in both Malay and English, inspired by her heroes Lauryn Hill (“she was life-changing for me”) and Feist. “It was a very conservative environment - we watched what we said.” Yuna spent her childhood focused on her education, set on becoming a lawyer. ?Yuna was raised in Alor Setar, Malaysia, by her legal-adviser father and chemistry-teacher mother. “Trump’s out there promoting hate,” says Yuna. “A lot of people said, ‘Your problem is always holding back.’ I didn’t want to hold back anymore.” “I was a timid girl before,” says Yuna hours earlier, perched at a table in a warehouse photo studio and dressed in all black. The songs - including “Crush,” her first Billboard chart hit - are inspired by a wrecked relationship and powered by Yuna’s new confidence in herself and her opinions.
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Today, she’s markedly different: Her third and best album, Chapters (May 20), is edgy alt-soul featuring Usher, Jhene Aiko and DJ Premier. The 29-year-old born Yunalis Zarai is a long plane ride from her homeland, where not so long ago she posted shy folk-pop songs to MySpace and, warmed by the feedback, hit the reset button to move to America and meet her mentor, Pharrell Williams.
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Los Angeles looks good on Yuna, even if she doesn’t fit the Hollywood standard for pop star - hair always wrapped in a hijab (she’s a devout Muslim) a stylishly chaste wardrobe that covers her from turtleneck on down a label home, Verve, known for legacy jazz and adult contemporary artists like Barry Manilow.