There’s one thing about INJI that hits like a confetti cannon mid-existential disaster — brilliant, glittering, filled with pop precision, however grounded in an artist who is aware of precisely how she acquired right here (even when she stumbled into it by chance).
We caught up backstage at a DC venue the place the inexperienced room felt much less like a DIY mop closet and extra like a boutique resort — cupcakes, tacos, showers that didn’t make you query your life decisions. “This looks like heaven,” she tells me, her voice each ethereal and assertive. “Final 12 months I performed the membership subsequent door, opening for Disco Traces. It is a glow-up.”
The glow-up looks like an applicable metaphor for INJI’s whole musical trajectory — a leap from jazz recitals and conservatory-level classical piano to fizzy, hyper-fun dance tracks that really feel like a bunch chat come to life. If Charli XCX is a daring Bordeaux, INJI is straight-up Prosecco with Pop Rocks. A bubbly burst of power you didn’t know you wanted — and abruptly can’t cease replaying.
However don’t get it twisted — this isn’t simply candy-coated chaos. Her basis is stable: ten years of classical piano coaching, jazz vocals, and the type of music concept chops that make even her danciest tracks really feel tightly composed. “I used to be in conservatory coaching from 8 to 18,” she tells me. “However I wasn’t adequate to go professional — and truthfully, I didn’t wish to. That world is so intense. Training all day. Competing always. Everybody else would get ‘fourth place’ as a participation trophy — and that was at all times me.”
Publish-piano, she pivoted to jazz singing, dipping her toes into efficiency at school frat get together recitals along with her jazz combo band. “That was my entry into ‘actual enjoyable’ music,” she laughs. However EDM? Complete accident.
A sick drummer, a substitute beat-maker, and a campus crush who rapped led her down a brand new path. “I favored clubbing and I favored the beat this man gave me. It was referred to as ‘Home Beat 120.’ That was actually the file identify,” she grins. “I wished an excuse to speak to this rapper I favored, so I requested him to show me tips on how to write a music. We ended up making this monitor collectively — and that was the primary INJI music.”
Sure, she acquired the man. Sure, they’re nonetheless making music collectively. No, she by no means anticipated any of this to work. “If I had tried to make music ‘on goal,’ it in all probability would’ve been boring R&B,” she admits. “However as a substitute, I landed on this bizarre, joyful house the place I rap over dance beats and get to giggle with the web.”
There’s a refreshing lack of ego in how she talks about all of it — however don’t mistake that for passivity. INJI is extremely intentional about how she reveals up within the dance music house, particularly as a lady. “EDM is hard for ladies since you’re usually sidelined because the ‘vocalist’ whereas another person — normally a person — is credited because the producer and major artist,” she says. “I’ve been very deliberate about establishing that INJI is the challenge. I’m not only a featured voice. That is mine.”
She’s additionally letting her roots present extra: layering in jazz, funk, and vocal-forward tracks on her newest work. “That is the primary time I’m actually singing on the challenge,” she says. “And I need individuals to listen to that and really feel one thing — however nonetheless wish to dance.”
The end result? Music that makes you snicker, really feel scorching, and textual content your ex a meme (however like, in a self-aware method). Her songs really feel like a bunch of pals hyping you up within the lavatory mirror. There’s pleasure, there’s sass, there’s confident enjoyable — and she or he’s a fan of artists doing the identical. “I really like Chappell Roan. I really like that these playful, wild, female initiatives are lastly getting enormous,” she says. “I don’t assume we had that type of music even a 12 months in the past.”
The present pop panorama is shifting from breakup ballads to “unhealthy bitch anthems” — music that’s not afraid to be unserious, to be humorous, to be fiercely feminine with no need to bleed for it. “I really like Lizzo, even earlier than her massive blow-up,” she says. “Typically you simply wish to giggle and dance and be comfortable.”
That’s the magic of INJI — she makes music that allows you to do precisely that.
pictures/ Tori Spadaro
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ON TOUR
Jun 1- Mighty Hoopla, London, United Kingdom
Jul 12- Lollapalooza, Berlin, Germany
Jul 18- Lollapalooza Paris, Paris, France
Jul 20- Capitol Hill Block Occasion, Seattle, Washington, United States
Aug 1- Hinterland Music Competition, Saint Charles, IA, United States
Aug 3- Osheaga Music and Arts Competition, Montreal, Canada
Aug 8- Exterior Lands Competition 2025, San Francisco, CA, United States
