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"  Natalia Cappuccini is killing it. The Brit-born singer-songwriter, known on stage as Natalia Kills, signed to Interscope after an accidental visit with will.i.am and last year released her second album, Trouble, whose angsty earworms we&amp;#039;re still listening to. Kills draws on the full pop spectrum: a dash of Katy Perry, whom she toured with; an aesthetic that references Nicki Minaj; and definitely some rebel-minded Gwen Stefani at her core. She plays with those levels between tracks like the more alternative &amp;quot;Television&amp;quot; and the poppier &amp;quot;Trouble,&amp;quot; whose music video Kills released last week. But if you think you hear the ghost of an Eminem-listening wild child throughout them, you&amp;#039;re not wrong. Trouble is written about &amp;quot;the worst possible moments of my life,&amp;quot; Kills tells BAZAAR, which include a childhood in in Bradford, West Yorkshire (&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s basically the town that god forgot about&amp;quot;); her father&amp;#039;s imprisonment; induction to a cult, and a period of homelessness. This all before the Horatio Alger myth that landed her in Hollywood, making music in will.i.am&amp;#039;s basement. Kills dialed in to tell us how she lifted herself up by the bootstraps--and now relishes in both her bad-girl vibe and her Carrie Bradshaw-worthy shoe collection. HB: The theme of your album is pretty dark. Was it tough to share your darkest memories with your listeners? NK: I wanted to give my own perspective on the kind of stifling parameters of youth that I experienced in contrary to what a lot of songs I&amp;#039;d been hearing were about. I wasn&amp;#039;t 21 and having the time of my life. I was trying to figure out where food and transport and opportunities were coming from without being arrested. It&amp;#039;s not that I don&amp;#039;t enjoy the happy songs. I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s necessary to sing about pain to be authentic. I went on tour with Katy Perry and she&amp;#039;s really a fun, upbeat, awesome person. But I kind of wanted to make my album about those feelings of having no control. HB: Speaking of Katy Perry, you&amp;#039;ve collaborated with a host of artists at this point. Who was your favorite to perform with? NK: I really liked the Katy Perry tour because we had so much fun. We went to Aztec ruins in Mexico; climbed up this big, scenic mountain; and then we went to Six Flags and got drunk and rode rollercoasters all day long. HB: Are you watching anything on TV right now? NK: I&amp;#039;ve been watching &amp;quot;The Walking Dead&amp;quot; since it came out. Have you seen it? Zombies taking over the world--it&amp;#039;s the best show ever. My dream in life now is not actually to make it as a writer or a singer, it&amp;#039;s to be an extra on &amp;quot;The Walking Dead.&amp;quot; HB: You should let them know, I feel like that could possibly be arranged. NK: I&amp;#039;d die if it could. Oh my god, all puns intended. HB: What&amp;#039;s on your playlist?  NK: I don&amp;#039;t listen to music, actually. Obviously I go to clubs; I stand in elevators; a lot of my friends are musicians; I hear music all the time. But I don&amp;#039;t have my own collection of music. When I was in my early teens I joined a cult. And we weren&amp;#039;t allowed to listen to secular music or anything that wasn&amp;#039;t made by us. So I spent a lot of time not listening to music, and by the time I could, I just didn&amp;#039;t get into it.  HB: How did you get involved in a cult? NK: My family was falling apart, and they put my dad in jail and seized all the assets--you know, houses, speedboat, staff, mansions, everything, all gone--and that was it, no happy ending. My mother came with me the first time. I would have been probably 13. She was looking for answers but was kind of like, &amp;quot;Wait, give them all your money and don&amp;#039;t talk to anyone? Fuck that!&amp;quot; She red-flagged it\u2026but after a while I was on my own and looking for guidance or something. HB: So when did you leave and become Natalia Kills? NK: At 19, 20 I was thinking I was going to start a new life somewhere where I hadn&amp;#039;t fucked everything up. I got a plane ticket, and I went to Hollywood and lived in these $25-a-night motels for over a year, on-and-off. I&amp;#039;d tell people I was who I wanted to be, as if I was already that person. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a songwriter from England. Yeah, I&amp;#039;ve got a manager. Yeah, I&amp;#039;m making my album.&amp;quot; It was all stuff I planned to do in the near future but just had no way to do it. HB: It was 2008 when you signed with will.i.am. There&amp;#039;s a rumor that you had cold feel about it.  NK: No, I think fans keep updating Wikipedia with stuff that&amp;#039;s not true. HB: Well, let&amp;#039;s set the record straight, then. NK: Okay, hold on. I&amp;#039;m going on Wikipedia right now. English singer-songwriter, that&amp;#039;s right. Natalia Kills, yep. I&amp;#039;ve got a bunch of names I never went by on my background information. If you make a joke in an interview but they print it without a &amp;quot;haha,&amp;quot; it goes down as fact forever. I could make a joke about being an alien, and people would think that&amp;#039;s what I believe. HB: We can test that theory. I&amp;#039;ll print it; we&amp;#039;ll see what happens.  NK: Can&amp;#039;t wait! Well, that&amp;#039;s true: my dad is Jamaican. My mother is from Uruguay, that&amp;#039;s right. I was born in Bradford. I did go to London. I&amp;#039;m not 5&amp;#039;4. My real name is Natalia Cappuccini. HB: How tall are you for real? NK: I&amp;#039;m 5&amp;#039;1. It&amp;#039;s really not close to 5&amp;#039;4. You&amp;#039;ve got to have a lot of heel height for that. But I do wear heels every day. HB: Who makes your favorite shoe? NK: I have these incredible Prada flats--they&amp;#039;re the only flats I have--that have daisies all over them. I have a few Walter Steiger, Armani, YSL--I have quite a lot. I have a floor-to-ceiling library in my apartment, and I took all the books out, just in one of the rooms, and filled it full of shoes. HB: So let&amp;#039;s set the record straight, once and for all. How did the will.i.am deal really go down? NK: I used to go to all these fancy shops in Hollywood and try on expensive clothes I really couldn&amp;#039;t afford. I&amp;#039;d been living on floors and couches, so I was sort of practicing for when I was going to be rich. I was doing that, and a man walked up to me and goes, &amp;quot;You look like a big movie star or something. What do you do?&amp;quot; So I gave him a demo, my link, and my email, and later he emails me going, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re really good. I want to introduce you to a DJ.&amp;quot; So I go with him to meet a DJ, who says he wants to play my songs for his friend. I get in his car, and we drive into Hollywood Hills to this big house. There&amp;#039;s a guy at the table on his phone, and when he looks up I&amp;#039;m like &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re fucking--you&amp;#039;re will.i.am. What are doing here?!&amp;quot; And he says, &amp;quot;This is my house. What are you doing here?&amp;quot; After a few months flying around the world writing songs together, I was like, &amp;quot;Hey, I kind of wish I was a singer.&amp;quot; After negotiations and this and that, I was signed to Interscope, which will.i.am&amp;#039;s label is under. And that&amp;#039;s it. There was no cold feet. In fact there was asking for it. I&amp;#039;m not shy to ask for an opportunity--and how can you say no to such a cute face? It&amp;#039;s not nice. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/interviews/a1757/a-moment-with-natalia-kills/>