Zora Grey has a story to tell. It’s a dark tale, full of spine-chilling frights and taboo thrills, unfolding from the moment you hit play on the Minneapolis singer, rapper, and producer’s second album, BELLAdonna, out Jan. 17 on Get Better Records. The buzzing synths and bass boom you’re hearing all come straight from the mind of Zora, the triple threat whose 2022 debut, Z1, brought her fans and press coverage (including a Rolling Stone Artist You Need To Know profile). But this time, there’s a twist: Her vocals come in character.
“If she existed, she would be in the movie The Craft,” Zora, 25, says, describing the supernaturally-tinged character she created for BELLAdonna. “She looks like me. She’s really gothic and has Doc Martens and is edgy, and she has wings on the back of her. And she’s terrifying, but she can disguise herself to be the most beautiful woman ever.”
A wild concept album inspired in equal part by character-driven LPs like Tyler, the Creator’s IGOR and late-night grindhouse cinema, BELLAdonna takes Zora’s story to the next level. Though she began creating some of its tracks as far back as 2017, the idea came into focus after the release of her debut three years ago. “After Z1, I knew that I wanted to make a horror-inspired album, and I knew that I wanted to do a femme fatale story,” she says.
Zora has always been a horror-movie fan. “I used to be terrified of Chucky, which is what sparked my interest,” she says. She got deeper into the genre after streaming director Abel Ferrara’s cult-classic 1981 thriller Ms. 45, about a woman who goes on a revenge-killing spree after being sexually assaulted.
“It was very relatable to me,” she says. “Because at the time I was dealing with getting over a sexual assault, and I needed an exorcism.”
Speaking over Zoom, her tone grows serious as she recalls the real-life traumatic incident that set this album in motion. It took place not long after her first album, she says, at a nightclub. “All of the people that I called friends at that time who were around me didn’t do anything, because they thought I could handle myself,” Zora says. “They thought that I was the one who was initiating. That is what really drew the origin of this story: Y’all do not treat trans women right, because you will literally see us actively going through something right in front of your eyes, and you will just not do anything. You’ll just think that it’s our fault.”
Those intense feelings found another outlet as she started listening more to horror-tinged Memphis rap acts from the Nineties like early Three 6 Mafia and Children of the Corn (a.k.a. Graveyard Productions). Going down rabbit holes on YouTube, she grew intrigued by the idea of sigils — urban-legend cassettes from that era that were said to double as cursed objects, literally haunting the listener. “I listened to the whole project,” she says of one Children of the Corn tape, “and it actually genuinely was so scary to listen to that it was inspiring: ‘I want to do something as creepy as this.’”
As she put together the story of BELLAdonna, she developed a sound to match, trading out the alt-rock influences of Z1 to emphasize the hip-hop and electronic side of her music in even higher contrast. “Everything was a lot more sharp and aggressive and hard-hitting when it came to the actual production than in my previous projects,” she says. She tapped into heroes like Timbaland and the Neptunes, along with electronic-pop sounds from the 2010s. “A.G. Cook and Sophie are my left and right brains, literally,” she says. “It’s just the way that they have pushed the boundaries of music.” (And yes, she loved last summer’s biggest pop storyline: “Oh my God. I’ve been brat since 2014. Charli XCX was the reason why I wanted to be a pop star.”)
BELLAdonna shows off new production techniques, too — like on “Hush,” where she wrote and recorded an entire “fake Eighties R&B song” in order to sample it and make a new beat. “From a production standpoint, I feel like I leveled up and I did a lot of stuff that I didn’t know I could do,” she says. “It’s been a lot of fun to work on.”
In the second half of the album, the tone of the music gets suddenly lighter, with a stronger influence from pop and R&B acts like Control-era Janet Jackson. Guest vocals also enter the picture, with social media stars Jaemy Paris and Duhgreatone making a memorable appearance on the bubbly bedroom anthem “sick sex.” “We are sisters, femme queen solidarity!” Zora says. “I’ve been obsessed with them for a long time on TikTok, because they’re icons. They’re incredibly funny women, and they always bring such a smile to my face.” (Other key vocal assists come from Zora’s friend Myia Thornton, who gets an interlude for her attitude-filled bars, and from “absolutely fabulous” Minnesota rapper Destiny Spike on the single “The Bitch Is Back (Press).”)
That shift in the album’s sound ties into the narrative arc Zora crafted, and the surprising reveal she dreamed up for its final act. “The point is that there’s a woman who is convinced that she’s poisonous and lures these men with her trap — when it actually turns out that there’s nothing wrong with her, and it’s the men that are the problem, and how the world sees her,” she says. “And finally, as the album ends, she ends up meeting someone just like her, which is me meeting my fiancé. So it’s like a monster-story retelling of what’s going on in my life.”
Ultimately, she says, she wants her story and this album’s story to be about more than trauma. “I don’t consider myself a victim,” Zora says. “I consider myself a survivor and powerful. And I feel like this album is a testament to that.” She adds: “I want [BELLAdonna] to be someone that other women — and other trans women specifically — can look at and be like, ‘I can relate to this woman. This is what I needed to hear in this moment.’”
It’s not lost on Zora that she’s releasing this album just days before the inauguration of someone who rode a wave of anti-trans hate to get back in the White House. “I feel a little nervous, if I’m being honest, to release it in this political climate,” she says. “But I also feel like it’s needed — because they need to know that we’re not backing down. We’re not going anywhere.”
Most of all, though, she’s enjoying the idea of her fans getting deep into the lore she’s assembled for BELLAdonna. “I feel like this is the perfect time in my career to release an album that you have to dig for to be like, ‘Oh, it’s actually a sigil, and now you’re cursed for eternity. So, have fun!’” she says, laughing. “I think it’s hilarious.”
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