Roc Nation star Normani recently sat down for an interview with Cosmopolitan, where she revealed that she wanted her iconic visuals for “Motivation” to be as “Black as possible.”
“I told the director, ‘I want this to be as black as possible,'” she told Cosmo. “I was like, let’s show black culture. Why does pop music have to be so white? Why don’t we make it a little bit more me?”
She then named several artists she credits with influencing her musically, including Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Tina Turner, and Diana Ross.
“Those women before me, I wanna finish what they started,” she told Cosmo. “I’m gonna make whatever I do black. … You’ll know that I’m a black girl, even if it’s on the quote unquote ‘whitest record ever.'”
It’s been a great year for Normani, who was recently named Savage X Fenty’s first-ever brand ambassador and was personally hand-picked by Rihanna.