ALA.NI and Adrian Younge team up for new collaborative album, Proud of Me

Proud of Me was a labour of love for the two artists, who spent nearly a decade working on the album. The songs follow several years of ALA.NI's life in Los Angeles, revealing her experiences of love, longing, grief, and self-discovery. Title track "Proud of Me" arrives today as the first preview of the album. It was written after ALA.NI found out that her father had been diagnosed with cancer, serving as a vulnerable introduction, as she explains: “I used music to ground and support whatever I was going through at the time. Or to block it.”

The collaboration between ALA.NI and Younge began in 2018, when ALA.NI's publisher invited the pair for a studio session in Los Angeles. While Younge worked on the instrumental sound during the day, ALA.NI would spend her evenings writing lyrics based on the mood of the songs, and record the next day — a process that led them to finish off five songs in their first week. “The first half of the album was very much a dialogue with what I was experiencing at that moment,” ALA.NI recalls.

The second half of the album was completed during a second session in 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, with Younge later adding expansive string arrangements at his Linear Labs studio. Much of this process took place in the weeks after ALA.NI's father passed away, leading the songs to take on a more honest and personal emotional perspective.

Proud of Me artwork