Samara Cyn: in pursuit of freedom and growth in a grim world

Samara Cyn has entered what she dubs her “try new things era”. Her main new discovery has been bungee, a core-crunching fitness class that involves doing press-ups and burpees while strapped into a harness attached to the ceiling. Bedazzling a new headboard for her bed and taking up pottery have also been on the agenda, but more significantly, her music, a sharp and potent mix of lyrical hip-hop and neo-soul, has also responded to her recent adventurousness.

That’s what led to ‘Detour’, her essential new EP, released last week (March 20). Across seven wildly eclectic tracks, Cyn finds comfort and small joys in pursuing liberation and a more physical form of expression. That transition is smoothed by bold and punchy production aimed directly at the dancefloor. “Normally I’m very conceptual but these songs are just a good time,” she says. “And I think that’s OK.”

Samara Cyn on The Cover of NME. Credit: Brianna Alysse for NME

On her debut release, 2024’s ‘The Drive Home,’ Cyn’s smart wordplay, densely layered storytelling, and laidback flows mapped a path through self-doubt and toward a place of healing. Her early freestyles caught the attention of Erykah Badu, while her melodic flow and diaristic storytelling placed her in conversation with peers Doechii and Doja Cat. Collaborations with tourmate Smino and former NME Cover star Amelia Moore soon followed.

When wildfires ripped through California last January, Cyn focused her energy into the project ‘Backroads.’ Forced to sit in silence while her Los Angeles base burned, she confronted the ways in which technology desensitises and distracts from real-life issues. Songs like ‘Pop N Olive’ and ‘Brand New Teeth’ added festival-sized sonics to the mix while asking probing questions about how much we are willing to sacrifice to be comfortable.

‘Detour’ is lighter by design. The EP is the product of a five-day stint in which Cyn and her friends, including production duo Two Fresh and rapper Ovrkast, locked in and made music with one goal: “To challenge myself and recondition my thinking strategies.” “The whole idea of ‘Detour’ was to do something that you maybe might not expect from me,” Cyn explains, speaking to NME over video call from her LA home. “The project is about freedom. Overthinking is not the vibe.” Holed up together for one week, the group held each other accountable and made sure they stuck with their first thoughts. “I wasn’t thinking about fans or how the music would be received,” she says. “It was just ‘how do we have a good time in here right now?’”

Credit: Brianna Alysse for NME

Born in Tennessee, Cyn started rapping while studying at Arizona State University. It was at an open mic night that she realised she could use the poems in her notebook over a beat to make music. “Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop,” she says. It wasn’t until a “miserable” 2021 internship at software company Intel that Cyn decided that corporate life would never give her the freedom she craved.

‘Sinner’, her 2024 breakout song, is delivered with a fearlessness (“Don’t fuck with me ’less you ready for this problem”) accessed through long periods of darkness and a determination to make her voice heard. The track earned her a reputation as a rapper willing to tackle knotty issues with an emotional and unvarnished clarity – something she’s continued to build upon in her releases since.

“Overthinking is not the vibe”

It would have been easy for Cyn to continue with her proven formula: late-night keys, warm basslines and soulful samples that combine into spacious, floaty instrumentals. But repetition doesn’t appeal to her. “I wanted to come in and genre-bend, you know?” she says of the new EP. “I like making alternative music, I like making pop music, and I like rapping. This was a challenge for me.”

Take ‘Oooshxt!,’ an instant headknocker and the first song released from ‘Detour’. Cyn flexes over a skeletal beat (“Walk in so ill, that swole from afar / Sell hard, so they stuntin’ my steeze”) and warns others to move out of her path. “That song just gets everybody grooving,” she explains. “It was really obvious it had to be the first single.”

Credit: Brianna Alysse for NME

Elsewhere on the project, Cyn delivers spoken-word soliloquies (‘Nomad’), screams over drum’n’bass breaks (‘Free’) and gets in her alt-R&B bag on ‘Good Is A Lie.’ Neither shouting nor singing come naturally to Cyn, whose move from closely sculpted poetry to rap was a natural one. “I was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone making these songs,” she says. “Yelling indoors to make ‘Free’ was absolutely insane.” Knocking back shots of tequila helped her loosen up and distil the embarrassment she felt recording those vocals – a byproduct of “grow[ing] up being conditioned to not be loud or take up space”.

Performance anxiety doesn’t fit into the flow state Cyn and her collaborators were aiming for, which was all about “letting authenticity win”. Old insecurities filter into the music, though: ‘Good Is A Lie’ is about trying to get somebody’s attention and being crushed when it doesn’t happen. That song involved Cyn switching between rap and singing, revealing a warm voice with a tender rasp to it. She’s serious about singing, too, with pre-tour vocal lessons already underway.

This isn’t to say ‘Detour’ is an exercise in letting go and nothing more. Cyn offers that “considering everything that’s happening in the world, we kind of need a moment of escape.”

Credit: Brianna ALysse for NME

“The state of the world is very grim,” she continues. “I’m sure a lot of people feel this way, but the state of the country, a lot of people’s countries, honestly, is…” She tails off as she laments “the constant overfeeding of everything” and how “overwhelming” things feel right now. Inevitably, this leads to doomscrolling. “You get the notification that’s like, ‘last week you had nine hours of screen time a day. And I’m like, ‘ew, what do you mean?’”

In October last year, Cyn tried to take the doom out of the equation by inviting her fans to a Digital Detox event in Los Angeles. She remembers the no-phones hangout fondly; it coincided with the one-year anniversary of ‘The Drive Home’, and fans brought their own favourite vinyl records to play on the speakers. Together they built Legos and made candles. “Touch grass” is an oft-used, mocking response to someone who needs a screen break, but Cyn’s event was decidedly positive, inviting attendees to reconnect with our offline world in unison.

It’s impressive that the day wasn’t turned into content for her own social channels. You can see the TikToks now: “GRWM for a day with no phones.” “There was a push for that, obviously,” she laughs, thinking back to the planning stages. “People were asking, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to capture this?’ I was like, ‘Can we just give this space and enjoy it for ourselves?’”

“I wanted to come in and genre-bend”

At the same time, Cyn acknowledges the importance of keeping up with what’s happening around the world, saying she has a “responsibility to be informed”. In January, like millions of others, she was appalled as she watched the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti through her phone, both murders part of the totalitarian actions of ICE in Minneapolis and across the United States more widely. “We’ve allowed far too much destruction from our government,” she wrote in an Instagram caption urging her followers to take part in a national strike in protest.

Asked where her politics come from, Cyn answers with clarity. “One, I’m a Black woman, so I’ve seen a lot of different things. I have seen the way the world reacts to me and to other people in my community. Injustice is something we should be speaking up about and fighting against at all times. Also, I value freedom and people being able to live the way that they see fit.”

Cyn’s mother, an English teacher who first introduced her to poetry, instilled a “do no harm, take no shit” mentality in her. “As a Black woman, I have to advocate for myself, and I hate a bully,” she says. “So when you see what happened in Minneapolis, I will always advocate for whoever is being bullied.”

Credit: Brianna Alysse for NME

Ultimately, she says, it’s about freedom. “How great would it be if we could just agree that anybody can be who they are, and it’s none of our business? I just don’t understand why that concept is not a global thing. Why did we make the world like this? What a waste of the time that we could have spent together instead.”

Time well spent is something Cyn also thinks about in terms of her own development. She knows people expect a debut album from her to come soon, but she refuses to be rushed. “It’s still so early,” she says, pointing out that it has been just two years since ‘The Drive Home’ and, as of this month, she has a grand total of three projects to her name.

“All of my EPs and songs are contributing to a skillset that the first album is going to master,” she says. “Rushing into things doesn’t benefit artists. Also, the mixtape phase is so important. Kendrick, J. Cole, Drake, Tyler: all of these people had an era before they dropped their debut album.”

For now, Cyn is content in her “era of figuring it out”, gathering fresh skills, knowledge and perspective that she’ll eventually feed into something bigger. “People might want the album from me now, but it’s very fast,” she says. “Give me a little [time], and I know the first album will be incredible.”

Samara Cyn’s ‘Detour’ is out now via VANTA Music.

Listen to Samara Cyn’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.

Words: David Renshaw
Photography: Brianna Alysse
Creative Direction: Toy Oridami
Styling: Tuli Balie
Hair: Susy Oludele
Makeup: Kandi Hernandez
Label: VANTA Music

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