The French-Algerian singer Lolo Zouaï is a rare breed: A contemporary pop star with San Francisco roots who very much claims the city. Though she’s in New York now, she’s mentioned in interviews that she grew up in the Sunset and went to Lowell. Her recent single “3AM in San Francisco,” a late-night, bilingual come-on, suggests to an FWB-slash-situationship that they “come and meet me in the San Francisco hills.” It’s probably the highest-profile (and sultriest) song to allude to our fine city’s 48 hills.
Her upcoming album Reverie, out next Friday, is Zouaï’s first since leaving the major-label churn. While she’s always had an electricity around her — I saw her open for Dua Lipa a few years ago, and she carried herself with the surety of a headliner — there is a newfound sense of autonomy on this album, an unwillingness to be tethered to a single language or musical style.
The four years between her last album and Reverie were spent collaborating with rising pop It Girl Slayyyter, guesting with tastemaker-y club producers, and flirting with K-pop. Those musical excursions have strengthened her own point of view. She flips freely between French and English, and plays with R&B, chanson, psych-rock, and Afrobeats without any of it ever feeling like costuming.
For this edition of Guest List, Zouaï has shared what she describes as “an eclectic mix of the songs I blasted in my Red Honda as a teenager in San Francisco." It splits the difference between twilit 2010s alternative R&B and hyphy cuts familiar to anyone who’s been to a local function. And it features the most Bay Area-coded love song of the 21st century: “Love” by Keyshia Cole.
Listen to Lolo Zouaï's Guest List below:
Reverie is out April 24 via Because Music.
