It’s an interesting time to be a multihyphenate entertainer and creator, mostly because technology and the bounds of what’s possible are readily available and limitless. And when you’ve been in the entertainment business for decades, an appreciation for the process from yesteryear can be prevalent. That’s largely the experience of Tatyana Ali.

The actress and singer has long dabbled in both the silver screen and music recording mediums since she regularly appeared on Seseme Street and later portrayed Ashley Banks in the legendary NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air beginning at the age of 12. Perhaps not so ironically, it was those shows that helped spark her love for both singing and acting – two talents she still holds dear to this day.

More recently, Ali has been in her acting bag, taking on the role of Ms. Hughes in the Peacock Original Series Bel-Air before portraying the central figure Ni'cola Mitchell in the TV movie Giving Hope: The Ni'cola Mitchell Story. In early October, however, she perhaps made one of the biggest revelations in her extensive entertainment career by hinting she’d be returning to the recording studio as herself and accompanied by that boisterous voice fans very much loved during the ‘90s.

Via Twitter, Ali captioned a picture of herself in front of the RIAA certified Gold plaque she earned for her 1998 debut album Kiss the Sky, “Back to where I left off,” accompanied by quiet face and musical note emojis. Suffice to say, it caused a lot of excitement among her fans.

“Oh wowwww. We're ready!” one user tweeted back to her. “Let me write you a song or two,” another wrote.

Ali notes that the reaction got her even more excited about her return to music, a notion she confirmed with us. She also explains how she feels a lot freer when hitting the studio due to the autonomy modern technology, recording practices, and years of maturity have brought her.

“It means so much to me because when I did music, I was like I was still a teenager and filled with all the teenage anxiety – Is this good enough? Do people like it? All that kind of stuff,” she told BET during an interview earlier this week. “It just means a lot it means a lot. It means everything.”

While Ali is very proud of Kiss the Sky and the guidance of legendary figures who helped her put together the LP consisting of the singles "Daydreamin'" and the Will Smith-featured "Boy You Knock Me Out," she was somewhat a victim of the day. Recording an R&B album during the late 1990s was a compromised undertaking consisting of analog recording equipment, commanding producers and engineers, and the pressure of fitting in with the contemporary sound of the day to lift sales. The result was a record that generated over half a million physical purchases, but not the product of something she called all the shots for.

25 years later, Ali is applying the lessons and insight she learned from the likes of Shawn Stockman and Rodney Jerkins, among others, to create a new musical work. Two years ago, she fortuitously linked with Julliard professor and composer Damien Sneed to create All I Have, a holiday LP with her as the featured voice and a carefully arranged orchestra of singers and instrumentalists to accompany her.

The collaboration stemmed from a holiday concert Sneed was conducting in the San Fransisco Bay Area where Ali lives—prompted to be a part of a spontaneous singing performance on-stage that would stun the audience, the wheels of their new sonic venture were unknowingly born that day.

“After that, it was like, ‘We should do something,’’ she explains. “I love the holidays, so we decided to do something like that.” During a return trip to the Bay, Sneed joined Ali at her home and began devising what they wanted to create.

“We just sat in the living room and figured out what we wanted to do,” she notes. Then just recently, everybody was available – the musicians he wanted to be a part, other vocalists were finally all able to get together [to record] and it ended up being this magical three/four days.”

The full result is an EP consisting of Christmas standards based on Ali’s cultural lineage, including a salsa interpretation of the Peruvian classic “Los Peces en El Rio” and Trinidadian Soca reimagination of “Little Drummer Boy” inspired by her mother and father’s Panamanian and Trinidadian heritages, respectfully. It’s something the 44-year-old says pays homage to her family while bringing out much of her love of holiday music.

“It's all live instrumentation,” she explains. “The background vocalists are the same people I sang with that night on the stage. I've gotten to know them over the years, and it just has this feeling – a vibe and a feeling.

“I've never really had that experience in the studio before,” Ali adds. “We all really trusted each other and there weren't any rules. It was just a safe place to play and totally different.”

While no release date has yet been determined for All I Have, it’s a cathartic creative release for Tatyana Ali – one where she can express herself through the medium she says allows her to be “empowered” and intentional.

“At its best there’s something so honest about [recording your own music]. Your ability to touch people; I experienced that with acting too, but music, there's something about it that's just more direct,” she describes. “I think of certain songs in my life and it's almost like smell. I can pinpoint where I was, what I was doing, how I was feeling, and I can go back to those songs to feel that way again to remember people in my life and experiences that I've had.”