Pop History Lessons & Record Shopping With Jae Stephens

Jae Stephens is committed to the hot-girl lifestyle. When we meet in mid-July, the forecast predicts a high of 92 degrees, but that doesn’t stop Stephens, who is currently going through a leather phase, showing up in a red leather one-piece and black cowboy boots. One problem: The AC at our meeting spot, A-1 Record Shop in the East Village, is broken. “I’m finding this is the wrong time and place for [leather],” Stephens, 29, tells NYLON. “Thank God this album’s coming out in the fall.”

The album in question is Stephens’ debut effort Audacity, out Sept. 25, but the 29-year-old has been making her way toward this moment for years. Born in Dallas and raised in Los Angeles, Stephens grew up in the entertainment world, formally studying vocal performance at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and accruing an early Internet Tumblr following on the side. Under the name “beyoncebeytwice,” she quickly amassed more than 200,000 followers posting covers, memes, aspirationally reblog-worthy photos, and SoundCloud links to her own original music she began releasing in 2017.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with her solo work, you’ve probably already heard her music, as Stephens has penned tracks for artists like Jennifer Lopez, Normani, Latto, Chxrry, Ne-Yo, and Kylie Cantrall. After years of writing for other artists, Stephens stepped out into the spotlight herself, releasing High My Name Is in 2022 before 2025’s Total Sellout, a series of EPs that spawned songs like “Body Favors,” “Kiss It,” and her TikTok-viral hit “Afterbody.”

That same unrivaled ear for melody and mastery of catchy hooks is all over Audacity, only this time, Stephens is giving herself the freedom to go all the way. Her debut album was born out of a desire to break free from the constraints that’ve been placed upon her. “I felt very misunderstood, very caged, very just, like, ‘I want to be free; I want to be hot; I want to be bad,’” she says. “[Audacity] was me voicing all of those frustrations and those desires to just do more, be more, be loud. That's why the album is so noisy and maximalist. I just really wanted to throw everything at the wall.”

Being the melodic and lyrical savant that she is, you would think a record store would be the ideal place to pick her brain about music. Come to find out, Stephens doesn’t even own a record player. She does, however, own a test-pressing of her debut on vinyl, and that’s good enough for her. “I get to hold it, I get to see the album cover,” Stephens says. “My ass is out on the cover. That's going to be super fun to hang up on my wall for a guest to come in.”

While digging through the surplus of crates, Stephens stumbles upon Janet Jackson’s Control, an album she feels shares a spiritual similarity to Audacity. “The sheer noise of it all… It’s such a maximal, pots-and-pans album. I really love it,” she says. At the risk of sounding too self-congratulatory, she admits the same could also be said of Britney Spears’ Blackout, an album that, even as a child, she knew was “tea.”

“Whether people want to admit it or not, she shook the table with that one,” Stephens says. “I do believe that the best disruptors are always undervalued and underappreciated at their time, and look at Blackout now. She birthed a lot of b*tches. She added a bit of a dark edge to pop that was missing. She made it OK to be a bit of a mess. It was really beautiful.”

When she’s not listening to the pop classics (or her own mixes), you can catch the burgeoning pop diva streaming Olivia Dean, Naomi Scott, Tyla, Olivia Rodrigo, or Underscores, the latter of whom Stephens is actively trying to work with. “I've been all up in her DMs,” she says. Then of course, there’s PinkPantheress, or as Stephens calls her, cousin Vicky. “The day that I met her, she just came up to me and was like, ‘Should we dance?’” says Stephens. “I was like, ‘Have we met before? You're just talking to me like you know me. I definitely know you, but do you know me?’ She was like, ‘Whatever,’ and I was like, ‘OK, I guess we're friends now.’ She was going to the Grammys the next day, and you just would've never known that. I really love that essence about her, that she's just so down to earth and just like, ‘Let's have a ki.’”

If someday she does buy a turntable, the next record getting added to her collection is Beyoncé’s Renaissance — fitting, considering the first album she remembers listening to is Bey’s 2003 debut Dangerously in Love. “I feel like that album just spawned in my room when I was a child,” she says. As for the first project she bought with her own money, that honor goes to Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad. “My mom was looking at the track list, like, ‘There's a song on here called ‘Sell Me Candy.’ What is that?’ I was like, ‘Mom, it's research. It's fine,’” she recalls. “Those [albums] were my beginnings.”

Photographs by Jillian Giandurco