You might recognize Summer Walker for her smooth and seductive vocals, but the R&B star is not someone who speaks a lot. In truth, the Atlanta artist is pretty reserved. And while many people struggle to draw the 29-year-old out of her quiet nature, Paris Hilton, who sat down with Summer before she dropped her third album, Finally Over It, connected with her over an unexpected shared love of farm animals, especially turtles, goats, and Silkie chickens. But life is far from simple for Summer. As she explains to her fellow mom and musician, trying to manage her home life while keeping up with the demands of her music career is a constant challenge.

SUMMER WALKER: You know what? I might have fucked up. She said talk for 40 minutes but I’m such a bad talker.

PARIS HILTON: [Laughs] 

WALKER: How are you?

HILTON: Good. I just got back to town. It’s so good to be home with the baby and the puppies. Where are you?

WALKER: I’m in Atlanta. You have a brand new baby?

HILTON: My daughter, London, just turned two on 11/11, and then my son, Phoenix, is going to be three in January. And you have three?

WALKER: Yeah. Two boys. They are about to be three. And then I have a 4-year-old daughter.

HILTON: So cute having them around the same age.

WALKER: Yeah. How’s motherhood been for you?

HILTON: I love it. I just feel like my life is finally complete. It’s definitely a lot to balance with everything, but I always put my babies first. I try to bring them with me everywhere.

WALKER: I feel you. I think my life would suck without them. I used to try to bring them everywhere, but trying to bring them on tour was really hard.

HILTON: I bet. Especially with twin boys.

WALKER: So what’s your favorite color?

HILTON: [Laughs] Pink. You?

WALKER: I should have known that. Um, pink. My bathroom and my whole room looks like a young girl’s princess party.

HILTON: Same. [Laughs] I love it. What sign are you?

WALKER: Aries.

HILTON: Nice. I’m an Aquarius.

WALKER: Oh, I love Aquarius. They’re really tactical and smart and calm and intuitive. So what do you do for fun?

HILTON: I work all the time, but if I’m not working, my favorite thing is just to be at home with babies and my pets and cook and do art and chill and write music and just play in the backyard. I love being outdoors. What about you?

WALKER: Literally the same thing. I just don’t have as much time, but I would really, really like to do more staying home, cooking, just being with the kids, painting, decorating the house, shopping, and building stuff outside. I just built a chicken coop.

HILTON: Like, for eggs?

WALKER: Yes. I’m excited to just have chickens for eggs and just chickens that are just cute—like, you know the Silkie chickens?

HILTON: Yes! That’s what my husband and I want. Are they sweet?

WALKER: I mean, I chilled with one for five seconds. We called him Teriyaki and he was nice.

HILTON: [Laughs] The way their little feathers look is so funny. I wanted to get a couple of them because I heard it’s so much healthier to grow your own eggs.

WALKER: Absolutely. I want the whole thing, the goats and all the animals.

HILTON: I used to have a goat, I got it in Vegas. I named it Billy.

WALKER: How was that?

HILTON: It was a little miniature one. It was so cute and sweet but then it got older and grew horns and udders. Then it was trying to butt everyone in the head, like, chasing people.

WALKER: Not so cute anymore.

HILTON: [Laughs] Yeah. We sent it to my ranch. It got a little crazy living in Beverly Hills. I should have got a girl.

WALKER: Yeah, I’m going to look into that. I just got my little greenhouse so I can start gardening. All of this requires me to stay home, so I don’t know what the hell I think I’m about to do.

HILTON: [Laughs] Hopefully you’ll have someone to help you with that because with the amount we both have to travel, it’s hard to keep all of that up.

WALKER: Absolutely. Do you have any fish?

HILTON: I used to have an aquarium but then I moved houses. Do you?

WALKER: No, I think I want a turtle though.

HILTON: They’re cute. I used to have the little ones. I love animals.

WALKER: I heard.

HILTON: I just got a new dog named Iconic Princess Hilton. She’s like a little mini teacup chihuahua. 

WALKER: Iconic Princess Hilton. Period. 

HILTON: [Laughs] Yes.

WALKER: She’s a diva.

HILTON: She’s a little baby icon. By the way, you looked so beautiful at the VMAs in New York.

WALKER: Thank you. So did you. I was like, “Wow, did I just talk to Paris Hilton?”

HILTON: I loved when you came up and said hello. I loved your hat. I loved your outfit. It looked so gorgeous.

WALKER: Thank you. Yeah, it was a fun little time. I love dressing up.

HILTON: Me too. 

WALKER: Speaking of cooking, I was in the store a while ago and I seen your cookware.

HILTON: Were you at Walmart?

WALKER: Maybe. It had the crystals on it. I was like, “Oh my god, I got to get this.”

HILTON: I’ll send you a whole package of stuff. All the new products are so cute.

WALKER: Really? I don’t mind buying it.

HILTON: I would love just to send it to you as a present to say congratulations on the new album.

WALKER: Thank you. It’s Christmas.

HILTON: I know. I cannot believe it’s the end of the year already. It’s so crazy how time has flown so fast.

WALKER: I mean, I think NASA actually said that time did speed up, you can really feel it though.

HILTON: Life is so precious. We have to enjoy every moment.

WALKER: Definitely. So how is your mom?

HILTON: My mom is amazing. She just called me last night. She’s in Vegas for BravoCon with all the other housewives and my sister, and they were just having a time. I love her so much.

WALKER: I love when people are really close with their parents even when they’re grown as hell.

HILTON: Yeah, family is everything. What was your day to day before getting into music and releasing albums? 

WALKER: Honestly, painting and just playing the guitar. Just doing art, basically.

HILTON: When did you start singing?

WALKER: I was maybe 13. I was in the church choir—I have a question for you.

HILTON: Yes.

WALKER: What was the first business you opened?

HILTON: When I lived in the Malibu colony, my sister and I would have a lemonade stand, so I was an entrepreneur at a young age. [Laughs] And then I did my first perfume in 2004 when The Simple Life came out. I just released my 30th fragrance.

WALKER: Congratulations. 30 is crazy.

HILTON: Thank you. It’s called Iconic, I’ll send you that as well—

WALKER: Love. Okay, so we have the dog name, Iconic, and we have a perfume named Iconic. Is anyone else named Iconic?

HILTON: If I have another daughter, I’ll name her Iconic.

WALKER: Period. 

HILTON: [Laughs] Oh, yeah, my new music documentary is called Infinite Icon. So that’s iconic too.

WALKER: Dope. So what’s your favorite type of genre?

HILTON: I love dance, EDM, and pop. 

WALKER: So you want to put me on? Give me your favorite EDM artist.

HILTON: I love Martin Garrix, David Guetta, like when he does remixes, they’re so sick. He’s so talented. Kygo is amazing, and Avicii was incredible. I always loved his music.

WALKER: Is that what inspired you to DJ?

HILTON: I just have loved going to raves and music festivals since I was a teenager and then 15 years ago, I got offered to do this huge music festival in Brazil and close out for JLo, even though I’d never DJed before. My team was like, “It’s a huge offer. Will you do it?” So I was like, “Okay, fine.” So I did it and I loved it so much. And then from there I just started getting offered DJ residencies in Ibiza and Las Vegas and all around the world. 

WALKER: Yeah, why not make money off doing what you love?

HILTON: Yeah, exactly. I was the first one who invented getting paid to party in Vegas, doing club appearances. But then I noticed around that time when I started DJing, that it was more about the DJs, so I hired the best people in the business to come to my house and train me, because it’s very technical. It took a minute to learn everything. Being a girl in that business, you really have to prove yourself. So I just wanted everything to be perfect.

WALKER: I love that. I think when I finally learn how to DJ, I will officially stop singing.

HILTON: Do you ever get nervous when you go on stage?

WALKER: A little. It’s not as bad as it used to be.

HILTON: Same. I used to get so nervous, but I spoke to other artists like Sia and Miley [Cyrus] about it, and they’re like, “It’s normal. You’re only nervous because you care so much.”

WALKER: I feel like that’s something Miley definitely agrees with because she gets on stage and be doing anything. It’s hilarious. 

HILTON: She slays. I love her. Soafter this trilogy, what’s next?

WALKER: Probably funk. I like old school stuff, disco.

HILTON: I love disco. Who are some of the artists that you were inspired by when you were a little girl?

WALKER: Erykah Badu. What about you?

HILTON: I always loved Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney  [Spears], Alanis Morissette—who else? Paula Abdul. 

WALKER: The pop legends.

HILTON: Yeah. Do you come to L.A. a lot?

WALKER: Yeah, unfortunately.

HILTON: Why?

WALKER: I don’t know. I’m a down South girl, so L.A. is just so different. I always have trouble adapting.

HILTON: Why?

WALKER: Why? You really want me to get into it? [Laughs] I can’t ever seem to find really good food without going to a five star restaurant and spending $500 to $1000 just to eat a meal. And then the traffic is so bad, it’s so crazy. It’s kind of a little bit bougie, but maybe I’m going to the wrong places. And the air has a lot of smog, and I just be like–

HILTON: “Take me home.” [Laughs]

WALKER: Yeah. And I think it’s like that southern hospitality, like people open doors, and they say, “Yes ma’am,” or “No, ma’am.” I think in New York and LA everything’s just moving so fast that people just be like, “Get the fuck out the way.” 

HILTON: [Laughs] Yeah. I love Southern food. 

WALKER: What is your favorite type?

HILTON: Biscuits and gravy–everything just feels so cozy and yummy. I love anything that’s fried. I’m not really a healthy eater. 

WALKER: Life is short. Enjoy yourself.

HILTON: I love Taco Bell.

WALKER: Period. Yeah, I think Atlanta needs to chill with the lemon pepper though. You can’t have lemon pepper with everything.

HILTON: [Laughs] What do you like to do when you relax?

WALKER: When I like to relax, I like to get a massage. I don’t even know how many times I get a massage in a month. That’s my shit. Hopefully one day I can open up a spa because that is my passion and then I can just sit there all day.

HILTON: Do you like facials?

WALKER: Yes, I love any type of red light therapy, any type of healing things you can do.

HILTON: Yeah, I’m obsessed with all that. I’m building a crazy spa at my house right now that has all of the most insane medical devices and facial things that you would see in a real spa or a doctor’s office because I’m obsessed with longevity and wellness and looking hot forever.

WALKER: Speaking of looking hot forever, there’s this machine and it’s super cold, and they put it on your face and do that lymphatic drainage, but it snatches your face and you look like Michael Jackson after. You know what I’m talking about?

HILTON: I have a couple different ones. I have an actual cryotherapy machine called CryoBuilt that you walk in. Four people can fit in it.

WALKER: Oh, wow.

HILTON: But then I also have the face ones. This other new thing they just came out with as well, it’s called the Sherpa CryoBuilt and it’s like a cryo facial that blasts this freezing air on you. And then there’s another one that’s like a metal thing, and it’s like a circle, and it just gets so cold, and it makes your face look snatched. I love it.

WALKER: Yes. I need to learn about some more machines. My facial lady is crazy. It looks like a mad scientist room in there. It’s like 50 machines.

HILTON: Yeah, that’s how I am too. I get three facials a week for three hours each time, and I feel like I’m working because she hooks up all these little sticky things on my body with the electric EMS, so it’s kind of toning the body while doing the facial.

WALKER: You have the thing that does the crunches for you?

HILTON: Yes. The NeurotriS machine. It’s so sick. 

WALKER: See, I do them, but I don’t know what they’re called. 

HILTON: [Laughs] So what was the inspiration for your album cover?

WALKER: Anna Nicole Smith.

HILTON: Yes. I remember when I saw that when you posted on Instagram, I was like, “This is iconic.”

WALKER: Thank you. We love the girls. We love Pamela [Anderson], we love Anna.

HILTON: So amazing that you recreated that.

WALKER: Thank you. Well, don’t be a stranger because I’m trying to come to one of them DJ sets.

HILTON: Oh yes, definitely. And I’ll let you know my next house party is in real Slivington Manor. It’s so much fun.

WALKER: Oh, I love house parties. That’s actually my favorite thing. Particularly ones with no air.

HILTON: No air?

WALKER: Yeah. Like a Jamaican party.

HILTON: What is that?

WALKER: We’ll get into it. [Laughs] But I’m so over the clubs. Everybody wants to stand around and stare at each other.

HILTON: Yeah, it’s not fun. But my house parties are lit.

WALKER: Okay, I’ll be there.

HILTON: Hell yes. I’ll find out when the next one is and I’ll send it to you. Wait, what’s your favorite song on the new album?

WALKER: “Don’t Make Me Do It.”

HILTON: What’s it about?

WALKER: It’s just like, don’t make me break up with you, because I don’t want to, but I’ll do it if I have to.

HILTON: Loves it. Congratulations on everything, honey. And I look forward to seeing you soon. I hope you have an amazing Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ll send you over the prezzies.

WALKER: Thank you. Blessings to you and the family.

HILTON: You too, honey.

Even more than 6,000km away from her hometown of Santurce, Puerto Rico, RaiNao still manages to keep a piece of home with her. It’s Monday morning in Madrid, and the 32-year-old, born Naomi Ramírez Rivera, is calmly sipping on a cup of black coffee surrounded by fan palms and chestnut trees inside the terrace of her hotel. Coffee is her morning ritual back home, and things don’t change even if mere hours ago she was performing in front of 70,000 people as a guest on Bad Bunny’s ‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’ residency in the city.

“I think it was the biggest venue I’ve ever performed at, or maybe it was Brazil,” RaiNao gushes, referring to her February appearance on the tour in São Paulo. Ultimately, the numbers don’t matter; for her, it’s all about the experience. “Even if I had done it 10 times over, it’s always beautiful and a different surprise.”

Music has always been a constant in RaiNao’s life. She began playing the saxophone at 11, but she never thought it would be the way she would make a living. “It’s all Wiso Rivera’s fault,” she says with a laugh. During the pandemic, her then-boyfriend and now creative partner and go-to co-producer encouraged her to go for it. She was stuck in a rut, juggling part-time jobs, when she realised that was not the life she wanted to lead.

“I felt overwhelmed that I thought, ‘Am I really going to spend the rest of my life working inside a bank?’ Wiso told me, ‘We have the tools, the studio is right there. Let’s just do it.’ And we did it.” Her stage name followed naturally. The moniker, a play on her nickname “Nao” with the creolisation of “right now,” is her own carpe diem. “It’s become a mantra for me,” she explains. “I’m in the moment all the time now. It’s a goal and a way of life.”

That now is what has taken RaiNao to global stages, performing ‘PERFuMITO NUEVO’ across the world, on US television, and gaining new listeners along the way. The song is what has put her on the map, and she’s more than grateful to Bad Bunny for the exposure. “He’s an artist who knows what he wants but also gives you your space to create,” she says, adding that their collaboration flowed as smoothly as a hot knife through butter. “I had a lot of freedom, and I’m always going to be thankful for that. I love that type of creative connection; it’s intuitive. We listen to each other. It’s great when anyone connects with your music, but he’s obviously a very important artist for Puerto Rico. Knowing he appreciates my music and my art, and that he says it every time he gets the chance, is incredible.”

She believes it’s precisely this type of interdependent local network that makes the Puerto Rican music scene as special as it is. “The support between artists has been key in careers that blow up,” she says. “We really do rely on each other and uplift each other constantly. It’s beautiful.”

The same way she got the cosign from Bad Bunny, RaiNao is also sharing the spotlight with Puerto Rican talent on her latest project, her second studio album, ‘Marcría’, a play on words that refers to both the PR slang for “spoiled brat” and “sea-raised”. In the 16-track album, RaiNao lends the mic to up-and-coming local musician Frido Vargas, who released his first song, ‘Mareo’, as part of the project.

“I’ll always make space to draw attention to the talent coming from my island, which I know goes hard and deserves as many ears and eyes as I do,” she says. Her debut studio album, ‘Capicú’, followed a similar pattern with the inclusion of Gyanma’s ‘Bajo Candau’.

“I’ll always make space to draw attention to the talent coming from my island, which I know deserves as many ears and eyes as I do”

“Puerto Rico’s indie scene is bustling, and you need to be on the island, soaking it up, to know [local artists],” RaiNao shares. Her label was “sweating” when she proposed including ‘Mareo,’ but when Vargas played the song for her, she knew it belonged in ‘Marcría’.

That’s not to say the project isn’t entirely RaiNao’s. Though it borrows its name from the sea, her ultimate “safe space”, ‘Marcría’ is born from RaiNao’s experience at 10, when her mother enrolled her in a school for the visually impaired. The album is a sensory journey accompanied by guided meditation, colour visualizers, and more to tell the full picture. You’ll notice green is a predominant theme. Emerald is RaiNao’s birthstone and the central piece of a ring she received in sixth grade, when she graduated from said school. As such, the hue has tinged the entire album, manifesting in music videos and in the small orb featured on the cover art.

On YouTube, she has microstories for each song that complement the sensory experience. “Not everyone has seen those, and they form a little story that I wrote based on the sensorial treatments,” she explains. “That came first, and then came the songs. It was an experiment.”

Only two tracks were created before the overarching theme was set: ‘Chamberí’ and the single ‘Gris’, which the artist initially intended to give to someone else. Legendary producer Tainy reached out and asked her to send over a few songs for his repertoire, and RaiNao obliged. “I sent him a few, but I kept going back to ‘Gris’ and thinking it was my song; someone else might like it, but they aren’t going to like it as much as I do.” It wasn’t until she was already structuring the project’s concept that she felt she needed to ask for it back. “I felt no other song exemplified water as much as ‘Gris’ did.”

RaiNao
RaiNao credit: Eric Rojas

Another emotional crux on the album is ‘Cántaro’, featuring salsa legend Andy Montañez, one of many remarkable collaborations alongside the likes of Omara Portuondo and Cultura Profética. The song marked the first time RaiNao recorded her own sax in her career. “I know that there are better sax players in Puerto Rico whose sound is way better than mine, and I always tap them to record,” she explains, “but this was a very personal song, and it needed to be me even if the result is not the best.”

The melody for the track was born from a sample of her voice and was later re-envisioned and reworked into a brass comp. Her sax is complemented by a bassoon, played by her best friend, who sent in recordings from Jacksonville, Florida. The result is her take on the “Death of the Author” literary theory and, in a way, her own eulogy. “Once you put out a project, it dies for you,” RaiNao explains, “but with that death comes another birth, another interpretation.”

‘Marcría’ comes to a close with the track that lends it its name, which sees RaiNao reciting a poem by the late Puerto Rican artist Ángelamaría Dávila, included in the 1966 poemario ‘Homenaje al ombligo’. RaiNao serendipitously came across Dávila’s work while working on the album. Upon reading this poem, she was stunned. It perfectly encapsulated the project. “It’s remarkable that this poem was born years ago from the mind of another Puerto Rican woman who’s no longer with us.”

RaiNao toyed with the idea of borrowing from the poem and playing around with vocal layering to use it as an interlude in a song that she’d call ‘Garabato’ (slang for “scribble”). “I wanted something simple that’d bridge the project from its more danceable side to its darker side,” she recalls. Ultimately, she felt the poem, as it was, was the perfect summary, a bio to ‘Marcría’.

Throughout the process of working on this album and the accolades it’s brought her, including a spot in YouTube’s Foundry Class, RaiNao feels “blessed and happy”, but she knows the final word no longer belongs to her; it belongs to the world. “For me, art is very spiritual. I knew I came into this world to leave it a better place with my art,” she says. “I’m always going to try not to dehumanise myself, not to stray too far away from myself to create.”

RaiNao’s ‘Marcría’ is out now via Rimas Entertainment. 

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