Snoh Aalegra Put Her Secrets Into New Album, “Legendary Love” New York Times (Online) Melena Ryzik The elusive Snoh Aalegra was hiding in plain sight, perched at the outdoor bar of one of her favorite restaurants in Los Angeles. Seeing her emerge that recent balmy evening, I felt like I was about to uncover a mysterious cultural force: a 5-foot-10 arrestingly beautiful artist with a sumptuous voice and savvy supporters, who had somehow managed to slip herself away. The Iranian-Swedish singer-songwriter, an if-you-know-you-know music industry favorite for her dreamy neo-soul take on romance and its disconnects, has not released an album in more than five years. Since she got her start as a teenager in Stockholm, she's amassed A-list collaborators including Pharrell Williams, Tyler, the Creator, and the producer No I.D.; bewitched Prince; and had a breakout R&B chart-topper with “I Want You Around” — back in 2019. Her fans despaired: Where was Snoh? A 2023 single was called, tantalizingly, “ Wait a Little Longer. ” Now Aalegra has returned, on her own terms, still carrying secrets. She approaches each project as a new artist — “I always start over,” she told me, during a dinner in which she was both strikingly blunt and lastingly enigmatic. “I wasn't away on purpose,” she said, explaining (or not) her absence. But, she added, “It took time for me to find myself.” Her fourth LP, “Legendary Love,” out Nov. 13, is her most intimate yet — it's a heartbreak album that charts a brief, seismic relationship with an unnamed (but famous?) paramour. The vibe and production is vintage R&B, down to the real '80s synths and drum machines. Enduring music legends like Raphael Saadiq and Nile Rodgers appear on several tracks; Stevie Wonder himself gave his blessing for a rare sample of “I Believe (When I Fall in Love With You It Will Be Forever).” The record's nostalgic and windswept first teaser, “Run Free,” released last week, was greeted with intense adulation (“The Queen is back!”) by her audience. “It's time sister,” Kehlani wrote in the comments of an Instagram post. Normani: “YESSSSSS.” Even without significant commercial success, Aalegra has long built buzz in creative circles. “She is one of those artists that I think a number of producers and writers always have major respect for, because, you know, she's a real one,” said Babyface, the hit-making, Grammy-winning songwriter and producer , who worked on her new album. When she reached out about collaborating, “It was an immediate yes,” he said. They'd only met in passing, but he'd been a fan for years, after he saw her play at a small club in Toronto. He was taken with her “incredible voice,” he recalled, “and how honest it felt.” “You can feel the pain,” Babyface said. When we met in late September, Aalegra, 39, looked every bit the carefree Angeleno, in a V-neck and white jeans. But she is no party girl, preferring mostly to spend her time in the studio. She holed up for more than two years, starting in 2023, to write “Legendary Love.” “She's relentless” in her drive to achieve the sound she wants, said Josh Grant, a lesser-known producer she plucked to be her main collaborator, alongside starrier names like the R&B songwriters Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. “And she has the best ears of anyone I've ever come across.” She's often been compared to Sade, the Nigerian-British singer, both for her sultry vocals and her styling, with straight dark hair tautly pulled back. But these days, Aalegra has an avalanche of loose curls — her natural self, she said. It gave her a different sense of power than her sleek look: “I really get into my feminine more when I have my hair down.” The knockout cover image for “Legendary Love” has her in low-cut sequins, wearing two watches — representing, she said, “two lifetimes” — and gazing in a mirror with a far-off look. “There's a bit of sadness in my eyes, even if I'm very posed up,” she offered. Writing and recording the album, in real time while she was in the whirlwind affair and its aftermath, was transformative, personally and creatively. Her ex “was a catalyst for me kind of like falling in love with myself,” she said, because of how seen she said she felt by him. (He's an entertainer, she said, but declined to name him; she is so fiercely private that even her closest collaborators on the album said they don't know his identity.) The first time she voiced how she really felt, it was in a shimmering track called “I Love You,” which repeats that refrain 17 times. The relationship ran its course, though he's heard the music. “I feel like my chapter is over with this person,” she told me in a follow-up conversation this month. But in the studio — and even in our first interview a few weeks ago — things were more murky. “It's an album about deep, deep, deep limerence — just, what if? What if?,” she said. Aalegra's natural emotional state is moody. (In our recent video chat, she wore a baseball hat that read “Yes” on one side, and “No” on the other — that's her, confounding even via her accessories.) Her “sad girl, emo girl, layered melancholy,” as she called it, is inspired in part by the Farsi poetry her mother still writes to her, and by her transcontinental experiences. “I dream in English, I think and count in Swedish, and I feel everything in Farsi,” she said, describing a long-held sense of cultural displacement. She was born in Uppsala, Sweden, the daughter of Iranian immigrants who arrived there as part of a wave of refugees fleeing the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. By the time she was around 2, her parents had divorced, and she spent her early years in a smaller town, Enkoping . As a kindergartner, she was the only non-blue-eyed, non-blond kid in class, she said, and though her area eventually diversified, “me and all the immigrants, we would still face a lot of racism,” she said. That bullying still shadows her. Like a paper that's been crumpled, “It doesn't matter how much you flatten it out, it will never be straight again. And I will carry those insecurities with me and those scars with me.” She found solace in music. As a child, hearing “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston, “I got goose bumps,” she recalled. “I said, whatever this is, I want to learn how to do this.” By age 7, she had announced her intentions to be a singer; her family moved to Stockholm so she could work with a local producer and attend a music high school. She signed a publishing deal with a major label, Sony, at 13. In the two-and-a-half decades since, Aalegra hopped between Stockholm and London and Los Angeles, where she has now lived for about 12 years, and where she landed on the couch of her first cousin, Izabelle Pourreza Wilson, who became her manager. Under Wilson (and her husband, Dion Wilson, the producer known as No I.D.), Aalegra began defining her career, building her devoted fan base “brick by brick,” she said, and selling out two nights at Radio City in 2022. (She has since moved on to other management — no ill will, but the shift was partly responsible for the new album's delay.) Like many nontraditional artists, she has been buffeted by label changes and industry pressures. One bit of early label feedback was that she “looked too polished for my voice, that it didn't match. I was told, 'Don't be so done up, don't be so glam.'” She rejected that — “I'm kind of superficial,” she said laughing. “I'm very much into glam. And they were wrong.” Before long, she was photographed for Vogue ; she still styles herself. Michael Ostin, a veteran music executive who became a mentor and sometime manager — and who connected her with artists like Nile Rodgers and Q-Tip — was impressed with her spine. “She's not going to do something just for commerce or because someone thinks it will be a better opportunity,” he said. “She's only going to do it if it's artistically in line with her vision. And I admire that.” Prince, too, found in her a kindred spirit. “He was a big fan,” Ostin said. He sought her out when she moved to the States, just a few years before his death in 2016 , Aalegra said, and soon she was jamming with him at Paisley Park, being flown to his concerts, and getting advice (in true iconoclastic Prince fashion, he counseled that she should get out of her corporate label deal). “He told me he thought I had an analog voice,” Aalegra said, lighting up when talking about him. Though she fits the mold of a “Prince girl,” their connection was not romantic, she was quick to add — “too old for me. He was my dad's age!” But his influence lingers — in song titles on the album (“Nothing Compares”) and in the beats and instrumentation, using the same type of gear, like the LinnDrum machine that he favored. “There's never a performance where I don't think of him or try to make him proud,” she said. Does she aspire to be a global superstar? Not necessarily; she still needs a little mystery. “I don't want to be the biggest artist in the world,” she said. “My ambition is to do whatever I want — you know, my rules.” And after all this time away, she was most eager to get back in front of an audience, to make fans feel what she does when she sings: “like you're floating.” “Performing is my final boss,” she said. “On the stage, I feel like I belong.”