Fresh off her standout feature on Baby Keem’s “Good Flirts” featuring Kendrick Lamar, singer-songwriter Momo Boyd released her new single, “Strong,” which explores the emotional imbalance that often defines complicated relationships or, in more contemporary terms, situationships. “I guess it’s a little bit more personal in the sense of touching on relationship dynamics where it’s like that push and pull and that on and off,” she says over Zoom. “Whenever a situation is like that, I don’t think the footing is ever equal. So there’s always someone who feels it a little bit more than the other person.”
Sonically, “Strong” reflects Boyd’s wide range of musical inspirations, drawing on shoegaze-y drum textures while maintaining the melodic instincts that have defined her work with all-sibling alt rock band Infinity Song. “I’m very inspired by shoegaze, by rock, by a lot of those great nineties and 2000s bands,” she explains. “The Cranberries, these bands that really left a mark in the alternative space and really inspire me.”
Those influences came together quickly during the writing process, which Boyd says happened as a burst of creative momentum alongside producer Mikey Freedom Hart. “I wrote it in just a couple of hours with the producer, and I just came up with two chords that felt really good and felt like they could inspire me to melodically come up with something.” For Boyd, the session reinforced an artistic philosophy she’s recently come to embrace. “When we allow things to flow, I think that’s really when you can kind of strike gold,” she says
Boyd recently made an appearance on Baby Keem’s new album CA$INO, with a breakout feature on “Good Flirts,” featuring Kendrick Lamar, where she slots effortlessly into Keem’s sonic universe with a breezy hook that turns the song into a simmering slow burn. The track even finds Boyd trading a quick back-and-forth with Kendrick Lamar. “I think people really loved the work that I did on the song, and I think they also started to really like me a little bit as well, which was cool,” she says.
The opportunity itself arrived during a hectic stretch of life on the road. Boyd was touring when Keem, already a fan via her earlier work, reached out to be on the song. To make matters worse, she had just come down with the flu. “Tour can be very demanding physically and mentally, and just very taxing, and you don’t have that much time,” she recalls. “And then I also happened to be very sick. I also had a fever. So when the opportunity came, it was a little bit stressful, but I knew it would all turn out really, really well.”
With the Baby Keem feature bringing new listeners into her orbit, Boyd admits she’s aware that some audiences may encounter her music with expectations shaped by that collaboration. “I feel a bit of pressure specifically because some people are getting introduced to me for the first time, so they don’t necessarily know that this is the wheelhouse that I live in, this alternative sound,” she says. “Because when you’re introduced to somebody, you might expect them to stay where you fell in love with them.”
With a breakout feature and a new single, Boyd has also been stepping into a solo identity that exists alongside her work in Infinity Song, the four-piece rock outfit comprised of Boyd and her three brothers. The process has been both exciting and emotionally complicated, especially after years of creating music within a tight-knit family unit. “It’s really been a test in faith and belief in self,” she says. “When you’re so used to having these people by your side, like my siblings, and having a bit of a team in the artistic field, it can feel like you’re leaving home for the first time and you’re going off to college and you don’t have these same people there to be with you in those moments.”
Even as Boyd builds out her own solo career, support from her family remains central to the process. “My siblings, my family, my dad, they’re all so supportive, and they cheer me on, and they want me to just express myself in any way that I see fit.”
Boyd says she stays grounded by focusing on making the music that she genuinely wants to make.“I can only focus on what I do, what I love to do, how I love to sound and present my voice,” she says. “Just putting the work first and putting authenticity first and allowing that to speak for itself.”
That philosophy will shape Boyd’s first solo project, which she says will arrive as an EP rather than a full-length album. “It’s an EP just to start the conversation and get something out there for people to fall in love with and for people to hold onto,” she says. “Through the music, I always just try to do honest writing, honest to where I am in the moment, honest to where I am in life, and to who I am.”
