Jessie Murph<\/a> returns home to northern Alabama, she heads to the gas station for an oversize cup of boiled peanuts. It\u2019s one of several rituals she now enjoys when she comes back to the region that Murph despised growing up in and fled as a teenager.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cMy relationship with home has changed so much since I\u2019ve left,\u201d says Murph, who grew up in a town called Athens (home to the Alabama Shakes). \u201cI really remember being 15, 16, even younger, and just knowing<\/em> that I was not meant to be there. I didn\u2019t feel right there. But I go back and I\u2019m so grateful to be there. There\u2019s something so sweet, something very nostalgic and beautiful, about the South.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tMurph can\u2019t find boiled peanuts in Los Angeles, where over the past few years she\u2019s launched her career as a fast-rising pop star who\u2019s collaborated with Jelly Roll, Diplo and BigXthaPlug. That rise will only accelerate with Sex Hysteria<\/em>, her bold second album, due later this week. The record hops from Amy Winehouse-inspired classic R&B (\u201c1965,\u201d \u201cTouch Me Like a Gangster\u201d) to pop-rap earworms (the Top 20 hit \u201cBlue Strips\u201d) to downcast balladry that channels one of Murph\u2019s heroes, Lana Del Rey (\u201cHeroin\u201d). The album, which she says she boiled down from 100 or so songs she wrote for the record, features two of Murph\u2019s favorite artists, Lil Baby and Gucci Mane.<\/p>\n\n\tMurph hopes that her daring new collection \u2014 with its \u201c\u2018fuck it and we\u2019ll see what happens\u2019 energy,\u201d as she puts it \u2014\u00a0displays more sides of herself than she\u2019s previously shown, including her chops as a songwriter. The past year, she says, has been one of her most creative: She says she both wrote and<\/em> recorded two of the album\u2019s tracks \u2014 \u201cA Little Too Drunk\u201d and \u201cBlue Strips\u201d\u2014 in a half-hour. \u201cI feel very misunderstood sometimes,\u201d says Murph. \u201cI don\u2019t think people have seen the half of what I\u2019m capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tPart of that is because, as Murph says herself, she\u2019s been reluctant to share all that much about her own life, including an Alabama upbringing that she\u2019s alluded to as having been very dark. She\u2019s thus far much preferred leaving her most vulnerable moments for her songs.<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tMurph writes about this dynamic in \u201cGucci Mane,\u201d the album\u2019s opening track. The song alludes to the \u201cfucked up things\u201d the narrator\u2019s father once did. \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about it,\u201d Murph sings in the chorus. \u201cI wanna write my way around it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe most vulnerable moment on the record is \u201cThe Man That Came Back,\u201d a piano ballad addressed to a character who is seemingly a broken father who tries to redeem himself after inflicting pain and violence on his family. In it, Murph sings about a \u201cdaughter who grew up trusting no one\u201d left to deal with \u201cthe bruises on her skin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tMurph wrote the song about three years ago. \u201cI\u2019ve refused to put it out because it was too vulnerable, and this is the first time I\u2019ve had enough balls to put it on a project,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about things I would otherwise never talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring a recent interview in Rolling Stone<\/em>, Murph was guarded but self-reflective. But she\u2019s learning to <\/strong>take that armor off, at least in her music. \u201cYou do receive pressure from the label and people on your team to be more autobiographical,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I had some talks before this album and that was a concern: \u2018You don\u2019t really talk about yourself.\u2019 And I realized they were right. I never really talked about the past, and I\u2019ve had an interesting upbringing, so that\u2019s something I felt pressure to do a little bit on this album. Once I did, I realized it was something I was holding myself back from out of fear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tGROWING UP IN north Alabama, Murph was always finding a bogus rule she needed to break. \u201cEven when I was very little, in elementary school, I remember always being so pissed off about dress codes,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought they were so stupid and so catered towards [men.]\u201d She was forced to run laps when she posted songs online with curses. Adults around her policed the clothes she wore to gym as a teenage girl. All her friends around her dreamed of becoming housewives the moment they graduated high school. The Southern, conservative culture she grew up amid was, she felt from an early age, full of hypocrisy and double standards. She bristled against all of it, \u201canything that felt like a dress code, is what I\u2019m trying to say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tMurph fled town as a teenager, eventually making her way to Nashville. She\u2019d grown up on Drake and Mac Miller and started incorporating rap and hip-hop into her music. Today, Murph is adjacent to contemporary country music, has collaborated with many of the genre\u2019s contemporary hitmakers, and, like Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll, is a white Southern artist singing music that borrows heavily from Black forms like R&B and sonic innovations like trap drums.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut Murph is not a country artist: Though she briefly lived in Nashville, and had quite a bit of fun there, it was not, ultimately, for her. She didn\u2019t relate to the industry\u2019s standard of going to an office every day to write a new song with an anonymous songwriter, and she found some of those collaborators to be unwelcoming. \u201cIn the bro country scene, sometimes they\u2019re a little hectic with women,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve definitely met rude people in sessions, and you can tell they just don\u2019t respect women. That\u2019s definitely a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMurph is no longer in Nashville, but as she quickly emerges into the public\u2019s consciousness (\u201cBlue Strips\u201d is her first solo hit), she\u2019s now dealing with a whole new host of dress codes and expectations placed upon her as a young woman in the music industry. \u201cI started out at 16 or 17, and a big thing has been people being like, \u2018I miss the old Jessie\u2019 or shit like that,\u201d she says. \u201cSome people want that version of you which is unhealthy and realistic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was really<\/em> fucked up when I was 17,\u201d she continues. \u201cI was very severely depressed, dealing with a lot of shit. I was really struggling and I think people like to have music they can relate to. I\u2019m very grateful for the music I put out during that\u2019s just not \u2026 \u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tMurph trails off before collecting her thoughts. \u201cThank God I\u2019m past some of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tInstead, Murph is already looking ahead at the future, at what she hopes will be a long career in which she\u2019s allowed to evolve. She wants to one day make a record that belongs alongside her shelf of vinyl albums by her favorites like Alicia Keys, J. Cole, Taylor Swift, SZA, Noah Kahan, and, of course, Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey. \u201cI want to make something that is completely and utterly timeless, like it could have been made 50 years ago,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m very inspired by Elton John, Don McLean, Adele, stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor now, Murph says, \u201cI\u2019m having fun and experiencing life, but eventually I want to drop a very serious [record]. Not that this new one isn\u2019t serious, but I feel like I have a lot to show the world that people haven\u2019t seen yet. I think it\u2019ll come with time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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