Saweetie Covers Teen VOGUE's June Cover

Source: Shaniqua Jarvis / Teen Vogue

On achieving stardom before the COVID-19 pandemic:

“I realized that I never equated attention with happiness, so all that attention I was getting was overwhelming for me and I didn’t know how to handle it. Which is why — fast forward to last year and this year in quarantine — I had a lot of time to reflect, and that made me want to take back my power of being confident and made me want to rethink my career.”

She makes really good points here. We all have seen it happen so many times with artists hitting it big with their first single and then struggling to manage their overnight notoriety.

Source: Shaniqua Jarvis / Teen Vogue

On creative freedom:

“I went from only wanting to write freestyles to having to create a hit. Now I know how to make the hits. I need to let people know that I’m a West Coast girl. I’m tri-racial. I come from a poppin’, big, male-dominated family, which explains my masculine energy at times. People were only seeing ‘icy girl,’ but who was the girl under the blonde wig?”

It turns out the girl under the wig actually was a great football player as well. One of our favorite parts of this feature was reading about Saweetie’s love for football — which makes perfect sense because her grandfather played for the 49ers and her pops was a college football star.

Source: Shaniqua Jarvis / Teen Vogue

On being her persona, Saweetie:

“I think that I use different personas as coping methods for how much I work. Saweetie is going onstage; Diamonté is reading contracts. I feel like Diamonté don’t take no sh*t and Saweetie is carefree.”

This must be a common thing for artists — remember when Beyoncé let the world in on who Sasha Fierce is?

Hit the flip for more from Saweetie about her values and how her cultural heritage is important to her.