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L<\/span>ast November, Lola Young was finally having her moment. Messy, a track from her second album, This Wasn\u2019t Meant for You Anyway, was blowing up on TikTok. Celebrities such as Kylie Jenner were using the track in their clips, and it had quickly permeated the barrier to the real world, becoming a staple of Uber rides and Christmas shopping trips in a matter of days. Even if you wouldn\u2019t recognise Young if she passed you on the street, you\u2019d know the song and its ironclad hook: \u201cCause I\u2019m too messy! And then I\u2019m too fucking clean \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n Other stars might have taken a moment to enjoy the spoils, or strategise on how best to capitalise on the newfound success. But as Messy was rising in the charts, Young was checking into a rehab facility to deal with a cocaine addiction that had dogged her for \u201ca long time\u201d. By January, she was back doing Pop Star Things: performing on Graham Norton and Jimmy Fallon, performing a cover of a Cure song for an Australian radio station, and so on.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a struggle \u2013 I\u2019ve definitely had to work on some internal healing while grappling with touring and stuff,\u201d she says quietly on a muggy afternoon in late August. \u201cI\u2019ve had to be away for a bit while battling with things. But it teaches you a lot, being addicted to substances. It makes you more empathetic about other people that have gone through that. It\u2019s just a constant journey.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Sex was my way of masking pain and aggression\u2019 \u2026 Young at Coachella in Indio, California, earlier this year. <\/span> Photograph: Frazer Harrison\/Getty Images for Coachella<\/p>\n Sitting across from me in a private room at Hide, a fancy restaurant in Mayfair, London, Young is an endearing mess of contradictions: she is timid, stuttering through the occasional phrase, and slightly combative, abruptly asking to change the subject whenever she feels she has said too much about a topic, even if she has barely spoken on it. She pairs her grey hoodie and gigantic camo cargo pants with a face that\u2019s luminously made-up and studded in places I didn\u2019t know you could get pierced. It is oddly fitting that we have met at a restaurant that plays Television\u2019s 70s punk classic Marquee Moon over the speakers and serves a \u00a390 prawn starter \u2013 and that, despite the restaurant\u2019s Michelin star, we both stick to coffee.<\/p>\n If a man can say he\u2019s only here for one thing, so can I<\/p>\n This kind of contradiction is the lifeblood of Young\u2019s third album I\u2019m Only F**king Myself (asterisks hers). Released next week, it is a raw and raucous coming-of-ager that finds Young, 24, in a darkly comic battle with her vices: drugs, sex or simply talking too much shit. The frank sexuality of songs such as One Thing \u2013 a gentle, ribald afrobeat number \u2013 clashes with more raw fare such as D\u00a3aler, a skeletal road song about the alienation of addiction. Young says writing so openly about sex \u201cwas my way of masking\u201d the hurt in the record. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of, this is my alter ego, the sex thing \u2013 but underneath it is pain and aggression and things I was going through that were more difficult,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The result is a set of barnstormers such as the second track F**k Everyone, about wanting to \u201cfuck guys who don\u2019t like me\u201d, that could set pop radio alight even as they touch on intense fear and self-loathing. \u201cIt can take you on a journey of like, OK, so she\u2019s fucking everyone, but really, what does that entail? What does that really mean?\u201d<\/p>\n Young grew up in Beckenham, south London. She played piano and guitar from her early years, and remembers \u201cwriting songs from a really early age\u201d. She found school difficult, in part because of a schizoaffective disorder that she would be diagnosed with at the age of 17, and in part because of her time at her school, which she describes as \u201cpretty, really, actually, really<\/em> rough\u201d. Young\u2019s mother is white and her father is Jamaican-Chinese, and she was one of the only white-passing kids in her class. \u201cI would fight to be like, \u2018Look, I\u2019m mixed-race,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s complex being mixed race anyway, because you feel conflicted, and I\u2019m very much aware of my privilege, not appearing as a person of colour. But it\u2019s just been weird navigating it \u2013 I went through periods of hating my hair texture and being embarrassed of the food I was eating at home. It was a journey.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Young at the MTV awards in New York this month. <\/span> Photograph: Leonardo Mu\u00f1oz\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n A lot of that journey was informed by Young\u2019s sister Becky, a campaigner with the music industry environmental charity EarthPercent who runs an anti-fatphobia Instagram page called Anti-Diet Riot Club. \u201cShe inspired me in every way \u2013 in like, what is feminism? What does it mean to be mixed race? What does it mean to be a woman living in London? I used to get my hair braided, and she was like, \u2018No, you can\u2019t do this,\u2019\u201d Young says. \u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot from her.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past, Young says, she has felt the need to \u201cprove\u201d her mixed-race identity, which she doesn\u2019t feel any more. \u201cThis is something that is so ingrained in me that I don\u2019t feel the need to necessarily shout about it, you know? I\u2019m Jamaican-Chinese. I\u2019m very proud to be that,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing aware of someone and noticing the difference is different to not accepting them, you know? I don\u2019t give a fuck who you are, where you come from, what size, shape, colour you are. But I am aware of it, and what that means to them in society.\u201d<\/p>\n In her teens, Young was accepted into the Brit school, the famed performing arts school attended by FKA twigs and Adele among others. She says it \u201chad an incredible community and sense of friendship\u201d that she had never experienced before. \u201cI was coming from a school that was very like, the bullies were there: I was a bully, I\u2019d been bullied. And I was walking into a school where that wasn\u2019t an option,\u201d she says. Even so, she still struggled with the formal environment. \u201cI think people have this idea of Brit where it\u2019s like, you\u2019re standing on stage, it\u2019s like Fame, and it\u2019s just not like that. I still did all my regular subjects and was still shit at all of them and still fucking fought with teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point, Young had been busking and performing at open mic nights from the age of 14, but at the Brit school she realised that she loved being in the studio and working behind the scenes. For a moment, she thought she might want to be a songwriter rather than a performer. \u201cI was like, you know what? I could do this \u2013 I could create and I could make people feel things through music,\u201d she recalls. \u201cIf I can record a take 1,000 times, maybe this is me.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of that desire, she realises now, comes down to the fact that it was the late 2010s, when it was woefully uncool to suggest that you wanted to get famous. \u201cIt was almost a bit arrogant, and growing up in London, British culture is quite like, you\u2019ve got to dumb yourself down a bit. When I go to America, it\u2019s like \u2018Yeah, bro, I want to be famous\u2019, and you see a nice car and it\u2019s not a wanker [driving it],\u201d she says. \u201cBut then I was like, you know what? Being famous is a byproduct of doing something well, in any field. Obviously, it\u2019s been different than what I expected it to be, but I continue on the journey because I love doing what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018It\u2019s hard to be a female, let alone be a female in the industry.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Conor Cunningham<\/p>\n Young seems hyper aware of this kind of stigma: she answers certain questions, including the ones about the Brit school, with the semi-defensive pose of an internet-born star who\u2019s become used to receiving criticism about anything and everything. She says she \u201cgot loads of slander\u201d about going to Brit even though \u201cit\u2019s in Thornton Heath! You just get in if you audition!\u201d She\u2019s realised that, as she becomes more famous, \u201cYou\u2019re still just you, and nothing actually changes apart from online scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n Coming out as ADHD and being diagnosed has been hard to deal with<\/p>\n Earlier, I had asked how she felt about being called a \u201cnepo baby\u201d because her aunt Julia Donaldson wrote The Gruffalo. She declined to speak about it initially, but now she brings it up. \u201c[People are] calling me a nepo baby even though they have no fucking clue who I am, they don\u2019t know who I am, they don\u2019t know what level of wealth I\u2019ve come from, just because my aunt wrote The Gruffalo. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a reason that I\u2019m a nepo baby.\u201d<\/p>\n Young was spotted by manager Nick Shymansky when playing open mic nights, and signed to Island in 2019. Shymansky managed Amy Winehouse until 2006, when \u201cmental health wasn\u2019t a conversation, addiction wasn\u2019t a public conversation, and so people end up dying because they\u2019re not open, they\u2019re not able to seek help,\u201d says Young. She says she feels \u201cvery grateful and appreciative\u201d of the fact that she was able to work through her addiction with the help of a team that wasn\u2019t judgmental of her, and with treatment facilities she could easily access. \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t have the privilege of being able to do that. A lot of people suffer from addiction, and a lot of people are in that personal journey [to recovery]. Anyone who knows that feeling will know it\u2019s not linear, it\u2019s always up and down, but it\u2019s down to dysregulation of dopamine \u2026 coming out as ADHD as well and being diagnosed, that\u2019s been hard to deal with,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n I suggest that casual drug use is normalised in the music industry. \u201cYeah, even more so it\u2019s normalised in big cities \u2013 I don\u2019t even think it\u2019s just within the music industry,\u201d she says. \u201cIt depends who you surround yourself with \u2013 you can always find [drugs], you know? It can be dark, it\u2019s not always fun and party.\u201d<\/p>\n Young says that the industry \u201ccan be a really dangerous place\u201d for women. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to be a female, let alone be a female in the industry \u2026 being in the spotlight, and having people, A&Rs or label execs wanting to mould you,\u201d she says. She brings up Chappell Roan, who has faced criticism for trying to set boundaries around the way she expects to be treated by fans and paparazzi. \u201cEverything she\u2019s doing is perfectly feasible and right, and she got a lot of hate for being like, \u2018Actually, you know what? I don\u2019t want to do that, that\u2019s not OK.\u2019 People will respond by going, \u2018Well, you wanted to be in the limelight\u2019. But you don\u2019t sign up to have cameras in your face 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as addiction, I\u2019m Only F**king Myself is preoccupied with sex \u2013 Young sings about hookups with a witty bluntness that feels more indebted to bawdy rappers such as CupcakKe or the hornbag producer Cash Cobain than any of her British pop peers. On One Thing, a skeletal earworm that\u2019s vastly different from anything she\u2019s made previously, she treats a man like her plaything, but in an endearingly casual way. \u201cIt was like, if a man can say \u2018I\u2019m only here for one thing\u2019, so can I. But I also wanted to embody that feeling of not being constrained and constricted within sex,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of me exploring things within myself and feeling sexy, but then also finding it hard to just have casual sex and it be brushed off.\u201d<\/p>\n Right now, Young isn\u2019t dating \u2013 she has just come out of a long-term relationship and is far too busy to consider it. She has already started working on the deluxe edition of I\u2019m Only F**king Myself. After this bloodletting, fearless album \u2013 especially for an artist who\u2019s in such an early stage of her career \u2013 she is \u201cvery excited to start talking about things that feel slightly more metaphorical\u201d rather than stories that come directly from her diary. \u201cI want to flip it on its head for the next one and create something that feels back to my roots of being a singer-songwriter,\u201d she says, setting up her next contradiction.<\/p>\n I\u2019m Only F**king Myself is released via Island Records on 19 September<\/p>\n