The day-to-day life of rising R&B singer Laila! has taken a 180 turn since she decided to forgo college after graduating high school. Online interest in her music, including her past EP In Ctrl!, has increased. She’s preparing for her first headlining show. Her TikTok following count has grown longer than her cutely designed nails. But the decision for Laila! to not enroll in college captures the eternal youthfulness of her debut album, GAP YEAR!, released on September 6th.

“I guess I just was experiencing a moment where I felt kind of lost because I was like, ‘I don’t really have a plan for what I'm gonna do,’” she tells BET.com. “And I know that I love making music and that was my ultimate goal. I just felt lost but then I also felt really inspired at the same time. It was just fun to see what I was able to create. Everything was super in the moment.”

In late August, the Brooklyn native, born Laila Smith, spoke to BET.com, while her viral tracks “Not My Problem” and “Like That” continued to make waves on TikTok. But Laila! confesses that her songs being on the internet’s constant rotation wasn’t quite in her plans. 

“The viral moments happen and they're super cool. But you can never really be like, ‘This is gonna go viral,’” she tells BET.com. “If one of them does, then that is amazing, but I can never make something hoping just for a specific outcome. I just made the music that I wanted to and the songs that I love.”

And the songs that are true to Laila! coming of age can be found on GAP YEAR!, which she recorded in the interim between graduating high school and striking big as one of the buzziest new artists of 2024. On the 17-track LP is an acoustic Miseducation-like introduction (“Talent Show”), a spacey groove where the cherub 18-year-old raps that she’s “cute in the face” and makes “hard beats” (“Want 2”), and a gentle-yet-firm goodbye to a romantic interest that isn’t on her level (“We’re So Over!”). In its essence, GAP YEAR! shows that Laila!’s just a girl on the path to finding herself.

When the time came to choose the album’s title, and therefore, a statement on her journey, GAP YEAR! was most fitting. “It just felt super authentic to what I was actually experiencing and actually going through, and it was the best of what I've created during this time of my life, like fresh out of high school,” Laila! says. 

“When I was making those songs, I wasn’t thinking conceptually about a project. Naturally, I just make a lot of music. I guess every creative person has that where it’s like, if you feel inspired, you just create something. So I feel like, as I was just creating stuff, I was like, ‘Okay, this makes sense to just put it all together. This is what I've been doing.’”

Although Laila!’s a 2000s baby, her inspirations reach back to 1990s and early-2000s R&B, specifically the throwback catalogs of music icons Aaliyah and Brandy. This nostalgia is present in Laila!’s honeyed vocals and diaristic songwriting, which center themes of carefreeness, young love, and longing.

“I love their music so much because of the beauty and the melody and the way that there are certain choices vocally–it just allows you to become sucked into their world of who they are and what their message is,” Laila! says of Aaliyah and Brandy. 

“I don’t know; it’s really profound to me,” she continues. “I love when I can listen to some things and feel like I'm completely immersed in what this artist has to say; you can feel how they feel, too. So that's something that I want to be able to do with my music; bring people into my world and make something that makes people feel.”

Where Laila! fondly muses about beatific romance, refreshing at a time in contemporary R&B where some artists are unfiltered, Laila! instead opts for innocence, and it wouldn’t be farfetched to say that she considers herself a certified lover girl.

“I just love love and I just love singing about love; it just feels good to sing about love,” she affirms. “In my personal experience, I don't know anything about all the toxic stuff. That's just not something I would want to perpetuate. I love all the good feels. That’s the beauty about love, because it feels good but it's also exciting at the same time.”

Laila! has a sound all her own, but nearly 25 years ago, her father, Brooklynite rap exemplar Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), centered Black love on his solo debut Black on Both Sides. Laila! counts one of the album’s deep cuts, the Vinia Mojica-assisted “Climb” as her favorite. “I just love that song and I just like when my dad sings, because I like when he uses melodies. I just like melodies a lot. That’s a really great song by him,’” she says.

Laila!’s admiration for vocal melodies translates to the dreaminess of her musical production, which she’s self-perfected. The Gen Zer, who’s faithfully used GarageBand since she was 14, takes so much pride in the artist-producer title that her official Instagram handle is @prodlaila.

“Producing my entire album–I'm very proud of that because I am a producer. I feel like sometimes it could get lost in the sauce and people don't really pay attention to the fact that I'm a producer,” she says. “But I want to make it entirely known that I’m also making beats too and I love making beats.” 

Currently, Laila!’s comfortable with her production style and namedrops SZA, Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, Brent Faiyaz, and Steve Lacy as dream collaborators. She hasn’t written off co-production, but for now, the driven Aries wants the authenticity of her DIY beats to speak for itself.

“I feel like I'm the type of person who kind of loves doing things myself, and I'm also very impatient, so I wouldn't want to wait for anyone to do anything for me,” she says. 

Over the summer, Laila!’s “Not My Problem” hook was prominently sampled on the all-star “Problem” remix, led by Bronx rhymer Cash Cobain, which Laila! calls “a fun moment in culture.” But among Laila!’s beat-making heroes are producers grounded in sonic futurities, like Missy Elliott, J Dilla, Budgie, and underground virtuoso ICYTWAT.

“I’m so inspired by ‘90s and 2000s music–the Neptunes and the Darkchilds and Timberland–those vibes. But then I also put my own twist on it. I just use what I have,” Laila! says. 

Laila!’s sound might be retro-lite, but she represents the new school and wants her music to resonate with different generations. In her GAP YEAR!, Laila! finds confidence in her musical identity, which she demonstrates in a wondrous introduction to her career. Class is in session.

“I think that this project is just for everyone who's ever felt love or disappointment or insecurity or unhappiness or happiness or pride,” she says. “It's for everyone and I just want people to be able to listen to this project and take away something, to feel something, to feel comforted to feel like they're seen and heard in the music.”