The FADER's longstanding series GEN F profiles emerging artists to know now.

Laila!’s five-inch yellow acrylic nails are gripping the pole of a chrome merry-go-round horse. Sitting on the horse right behind her is Emma Chamberlain, the famous YouTube vlogger whom Laila! grew up watching. Chamberlain’s in the middle of shooting a documentary and has just invited Laila! to make a guest appearance.

“Shit, I’m down,” Laila! shouts, hopping off her horse to apply a shiny layer of lipgloss. Ultimately, the plans fall through as Chamberlain’s team says their schedule for the day is too busy. But that doesn’t phase Laila! She’s already bounced back and is on to her next destination.

It’s an unseasonably warm October day, and on the sidewalks of DUMBO I’m watching the Brooklyn-born Laila! — a singer, songwriter, and producer — juggle a handful of things. She’s carrying two purses, wheeling a pink-and-red strawberry patterned suitcase stuffed with three outfits she styled herself, requesting more personality shots from the photographer, buying a $10 ice cream cone because she thinks it’ll make for a fun prop, and directing her friend on how to capture candid iPhone photos for her personal Instagram. Later, as I watch her bump into her childhood Dominican hairstylist and then smoothly switch to Spanish to guide a turned-around tourist, I almost forget that she’s only 20.

“I’m very specific about my shit,” Laila! says, fluffing her honey-brown curls, her eyes twinkling. “I like having my hands in everything.”

Laila! only popped onto the scene two years ago but she’s already built an enviable career. In 2024, she released her self-produced debut album, Gap Year which featured a yearbook-style cover photo of her beaming with a wide, dimpled smile. It was home to her uber-viral single “Not My Problem” that was remixed by almost everyone online including New York City’s sexy drill CEO, Cash Cobain. Then came whirlwind touring, opening with Kali Uchis and Mariah The Scientist.

In a week (October 23), Laila! releases her sophomore offering, We'll Never Be This Young Again, a 12-track document of her life over the past two years. Filled with electric guitar riffs, laughter, flirty banter, ‘90s R&B interpolations, and mid-track production switch ups, it’s a time capsule of her youth, conveyed through curiosity, humility, and playful experimentation. She has bold ambitions for this record and references its black-and-white cover of her mean-mugging as one example of the intentions she poured into it.

“I thought about all the other album covers that I love that are in black and white like Sade’s Love Deluxe album cover, Janet Jackson's Janet album cover,” she says. “I love portraits of women that look strong and bold like they have shit to say — ‘cause I got shit to say.”

When Laila! was just an infant, her parents gave her the nickname “baby genius” on account of all the baby milestones she breezed through, and perhaps in anticipation of the musical talents that would later reveal themselves. (The nickname is still referenced throughout her music.) Still, her childhood and teenage years were fairly normal, she says, with family vacations, style experiments, and finding herself through the “identity crisis” middle school years.

The one wrinkle that’s followed Laila! in her career is the fact that her father is hip-hop legend and former FADER cover star Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), whom she barely speaks about during our time together except when I ask her how she feels about the term “nepo baby.”

Taking a deep breath, she launches into her thoughts: “Why is everyone so obsessed with this concept of the struggle come-up, especially for Black artists? Like it's not impressive unless you have to fight tooth and nail. If we’re gonna big up anybody, let’s big up my mama! My dad is very uninvolved in my professional career, for lack of better words. I just feel like it doesn't apply to me 'cause that's not what happened.”

Laila! triples-down on crediting her mother for her career and instincts — “She is just a no-nonsense, no-bullshit kind of person. That's been instilled in me my whole life, to not let people try to cheat you” — as well as a genuine hunger for musical knowledge for the opportunities she’s received so far. “If I’m in the room with big dog music intellectuals, I feel like I don't know shit!” she laughs. “You have to be a student of music. I'm just trying to be a sponge."

While quarantining in 2020, a then-14-year-old Laila! was cooped up in her bedroom and picked up beat-making software out of pure necessity, and started posting tracks to SoundCloud under the name “baby genius.” She had a mere 3,000 followers (a number that has since boomed past 275,000) when independent label IIIXL found her online and signed her as an in-house beatmaker, until she clarified that she wrote, sang, and produced all her own records.

If Laila! wasn’t sitting right in front of me, placing her age based on her musical taste would be difficult. Her SoundCloud likes reveal a timeless archive: Babyxsosa, Michael Jackson, MF DOOM, Hiroshi Yoshimura, SALIMATA, Faith Evans, Brent Faiyaz, Janet Jackson, Brandy, and SZA. Bumping SZA’s CTRL as an 11-year-old, she recalls being mesmerized. “The material that [SZA’s] talking about was definitely not anything I could relate to, but it was just a sonic thing, I just loved how everything sounded,” she says. “It felt like I was listening to my older sister or cousin rant about some shit I don't understand, and I'm like, 'Holy shit, this is what being grown is about.”

A decade after jamming to her inspiration in bed, Laila had the opportunity to play We'll Never Be This Young Again for SZA in person. “It was just crazy to be like, Holy shit, you fuck with my album?” That validation is hitting Laila! as she’s stepping into young adulthood and reveling in her career’s ascension.

As we make our rounds back toward DUMBO House, Laila! breaks down her hectic schedule leading up to release day: “no sleep, club, another club, no sleep.” Yet despite the exhaustion, her eyes are just as excited as they were when she was sitting atop the silver horse at the beginning of the day.

“There are so many songs where I'm like, 'I have such beautiful memories to this song, this is the soundtrack of a part of my life,” she gushes, imagining how her new music will be received. “Being the soundtrack to somebody's life is fucking lit.”

We'll Never Be This Young Again by Laila! is out October 23. Pre-save here.