It’s two days after the one-night-only concert celebrating the 20th anniversary of Amy Winehouse’s seminal album Back to Black at The Roundhouse in London (Oct. 23) — and Baby Rose is still pinching herself.
“It was amazing,” says a reverent Rose during a Zoom interview with Billboard. “The way they put it together was just insane … everything from the original band to the original album producers [Mark Ronson, Salaam Remi]. And the venue was the last place Amy performed at before she passed. It was just beautiful to be on one accord with all the women [who performed]. We may be from all over, but the one thing we have in common is how much Amy affected us.”
Baby Rose was among a handpicked group of singers — including Corinne Bailey Rae, Jessie Reyez, FLO and Jorja Smith — paired with a track from the album to perform. Working with Paul Duffy, another producer on the Winehouse album, Rose was asked to sing the devastating ballad “Wake Up Alone.”
This was just one in a series of breakout moments in what’s been a whirlwind year of leveling up for Baby Rose. Raised between Washington D.C. and Fayetteville, North Carolina, the rising star won her first Grammy for her collaboration on the track “I Used To.” It was her contribution to Leon Thomas’ album MUTT that won the 2026 award for best R&B album. From there, the July release of third studio album Yearnalism (via Secretly Canadian) found the singer-songwriter zeroing in on honesty, freedom, self-love and other desires after moving beyond a low period. Aiding in that transformation: the 12-track album’s alternative mélange of R&B/soul, jazz, gospel and rock and other genres, a contemporary homage described in press materials as “infused with the spirits of Muscle Shoals.”
Leading the charge for the project was a reunion with Thomas on first single “Friends Again.” With the critically acclaimed album’s release came the invitation to open for Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving arena tour this summer. Since then, Rose has logged two-night stints at both Blue Note clubs in Los Angeles and New York. And she’s already booked next year to support Harry Styles for two nights (Aug. 18 & 20) in Dublin on his Together Together tour.
These career milestones are part of a steady climb that began in 2019 with the release of her debut album To Myself. After a couple of EPs, sophomore set Through and Through followed in 2023. Rose’s 2024 collaborative EP Slow Burn with Canadian band BADBADNOTGOOD further fostered co-signs from the likes of SZA, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar and Kehlani.
Taking a minute to reflect on the nearly 10 years since releasing her first album, an exuberant Baby Rose says, “I love this whole freaking journey that I’m on. There’s this trope about wanting something when you want it. But that something happens when God wants it for you because then it will be tailored to exactly all the things you need to see and experience.”
See Baby Rose take Billboard further through that journey below.
How else has Winehouse’s music inspired you?
Her music made such an impression on me. She’s a contralto, very very deep, which made me not to be afraid of exploring the depths of my vocals. Also, being a contralto, the jazz elements that bleed in through her music are also things that I love. There are so many things about her just being herself that opened doors [for me] to see that OK, it can be done.
Like the way in which I try to be very present with whatever I’m going through; just kind of raw with it. That you can blend R&B/soul, hip-hop, jazz, gospel, rock and other elements as well as cheekiness and a hilarious way of storytelling about subject matters that are very heavy. Like, “Rehab” is not a joke. But she had this lightheartedness around things that weigh a lot. And then there’s her legacy: that album is as relevant today as it was two decades ago. That’s what we all aim to do with our music.
How does Yearnalism differ from your first two albums in terms of creative growth?
Yearnalism explores a lot more, specifically when it comes to desire. In the past, my music lent itself more to things just happening to me; processing from this mindset of everything being out of my control. There’s a bit of that in this body of work. But there’s also a level of awareness that I wanted to bring that took time for me to get to as in songs like “Sunday” or “Believe Me.” I’m owning up now to what I can do. Where does yearning stop being about external things and start being about something that only I can find inside of me?
Having a redemption arc in my music is something new that I’m still exploring, because I want to put it down better. I’m starting to realize that these are all concepts that put power back into me and into listeners as well. With my prior bodies of work — as beautiful and as lovely as they are — it’s hard for me to listen to them sometimes because I realize the place I was in when I made them. But they’re all meant to be lessons selfishly for me; to remember these are the things that I’ve gone through to get here. I also know that the more specific you get in writing — and I’ve learned this from people I’ve looked up to — the more it can relate to other people and meet them where they are instead of just being general.
Talk about the creative synergy you between you and Leon Thomas.
Leon is a student like I am a student: we are layered onions of artists. I could tell that just from watching him work; his curiosity and childlike approach to it. In creating MUTT, for instance, it was very much let’s just try something. I’m freestyling, and he’s like, “Oh, I kind of have something.” I love how effortless it was, literally creating from scratch. I’m the same type of way. I love to approach things as a blank slate, being very raw and intentional.
When I look back at Yearnalism, a lot of its songs are first or second takes. Maybe we decorated around some in post-production. But the rawness of those original takes is my secret sauce because they have something that I can’t even recreate. I’m not a perfectionist in that. I’m more “You gotta feel it.” That’s what matters to me most. With “Friends,” I just wanted to challenge myself to write a song that was a very specific type of mess: We’re not together but can we be friends again? A very awkward disposition to be in. I completed the song and sent it to Leon without the second verse. And he completely understood what to do.
This is the type of arc like with Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. They were able to have these conversations via music and inspire real-life conversations between partners in love. There’s a lot of one-sided discourse happening now. It’s exhausting and detrimental to love in general. Communication is key. So I’m glad we were able to make a song that let me challenge myself and has completely surprised me. To see it on [Barack] Obama’s summer playlist and hear it on A Different World [reboot] … I’m like damn this is crazy how applicable it is and how people love it.
What was it like opening for Olivia Dean on her arena tour?
She’d come to see me at the Jazz Café in London two years prior as she was a big fan of “Slow Burn.” That’s where we first met. But I’d never done anything on this scale before. Going from theaters to sold-out arenas is insanity for anybody. Like on day one of my album release, I’m touring the project out of the gate in arenas. It definitely made me understand that while performing is about entertaining, it’s also about connecting — even on the most massive of scales.
Olivia and I were like professors. She’s the art of loving; I’m yearnalism 101. And we were teaching people a course we developed about the different sides of love, yearning and things of that nature. But that tour experience also gave me so much hope for real writing. To know that you can get up onstage and give an incredible show based on merit and songs that are really connecting with people. I’m just trying to provie a safe space for people to have their own discussions about very dense topics; to be a soundtrack for their own natural evolution. Music can be extremely powerful in that way.
Just as powerful is your striking contralto. Where did that voice come from?
I get it from my ancestors like my great aunt. She is very instrumental in my being in love with artists like Nina Simons, Sam Cooke, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra and Mahalia Jackson. There’s my mom, very into hip-hop like OutKast and mydad being very into psychedelics like acid jazz. All of that bleeds into what creates my sound.
But as far as my instrument is concerned, there’s my Grandma Rose. I never met her, but I took the name Baby Rose in her honor. She played piano, and her favorite song was Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.” Prior to becoming Grandma Rose — she had five kids, the oldest being my dad — she had dreams of being a singer. So music runs in the DNA of my family. They helped me see artists who had the audacity to use the full range of their vocals. Like Joplin; hearing her early on was crazy and, as I said, Amy solidified that for me.
Looking ahead, there’s your gig with Harry Styles. But is a deluxe version of Yearnalism in the works?
I have music that I’ve been working on while I’ve been out on the road. However, we just have to wait and see about a deluxe. But the tour with Harry is going to be a vibe because it’s a stadium run. I’m going up even more of a notch, which is crazy! [Laughs.]
