Zouaï says the concept for Playgirl was really inspired by none other than Bay Area rapper Too $hort. I wanted the sound to reflect that, and I feel like it’s just an elevated version of myself.” I spent a lot of time learning about songwriting and getting better at it. “I need all of the sides to feel like a complete person,” she says. The life-changing experience with one of the world’s biggest pop stars proved to Zouaï that her “hard work was paying off.” “But I felt very, very confident that this album was going to do something for me in life.” It did: Her song “Desert Rose” went viral on TikTok and Spotify and she was hand-picked to join Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia tour. “I was going through it,” says Zouaï, who was raised in San Francisco by an Algerian father and French mother. On some songs she snuck in sounds and language that tapped into her Algerian roots on others she sang in French, including the LP’s closer “Beaucoup.” The LP gave listeners an introduction to the complicated, multi-layered person that Zouaï (pronounced zoo-eye) is. What came of those early days was her debut, the High Highs and Low Lows, released in 2019. “I was thinking about what my book would be called. “I remember I wrote a note in my phone: ‘from milkshakes to millions,’” Zouaï says with a laugh. She wanted a future when she could fully focus on her craft instead of making milkshakes for customers. The last time Lolo Zouaï made an album, she was “super-hardcore dreaming” from behind the host stand during her shifts at Bareburger in New York City.

Playgirl magazine video releases