When you look at your album cover or how you approach even singing falsetto, there’s a clear Prince influence. It feels very intentional and honest. Can you explain how he has further influenced y

our work?

The cover for Agüita is a nod to Prince’s Lovesexy, like down to the pinky. Prince is a figure who is really the book on how to do it correctly. As I started discovering this urge to play all the instruments in the rhythm section, I started identifying references, and Prince to me is the perfect crystallization. He owned his business and created a literal factory. To me, P is the baddest of them all, down to the splits, the heels, the three-outfit changes a day, making one record, and playing all the instruments.

Prince was able to embody femininity in his presentation that didn’t feel like a gimmick or a schtick. We see a lot of male artists today not able to have that authenticity and then do things that feel less about who they are and more about marketing, trying to have it both ways and being “edgy.’ They’ll answer questions about their sexuality but say a lot to say nothing. Earlier you identified yourself as a “so-called straight man.” What does that mean?

It means that I love women... I’ve had experiences with men and they don’t feel the same way. I fall in love with men and women. My experiences have been mostly with women. I lived in a world that taught me I was a straight white man and that my deviance from whatever that looked like, to whomever decided, would mark my path. I made the choices I made, I continue to and I do it easily. When I look back at the community I was raised in New York, it was a community of loving crazy people, it was sex-positive, it was all different types of people. A lot of my mom’s friends were gay Black men and were a big part of this flavor that informed my household culture in addition to being French, Colombian, and having my mother speak five languages and touring the world. When people say, “What... do you identify with?” Well, I feel like an outsider until I get to school. And then like, all my boys in the dance conservatory are finally kissing me in the face and hugging and it's all good, you know? And they just see the look in my eye and it's not this crazy, violent thing that I've seen in a lot of my confused boyfriends who really just resemble this heteronormative image that we were asked to chase.