The path of a creative isn’t often a straight line. It’s a road full of jagged rocks and unexpected turns that never reveal themselves as lessons until you’re already across. Karly Marina Loaiza, better known as “Kali Uchis” is no stranger to this metaphor.
As a teenager, she recorded and mixed music whenever she could, leading to a deep infatuation with music and photography. She would source her mixtape covers from her camera, highlighting the saturated colors she saw in Alexandria, Virginia.
However, this early passion as a teenager would have consequences. Loaiza would frequently skip school and break the curfew her parents had set for her.
Ultimately, these actions would support her parents’ decision to kick her out of the house. At 17, she was living out of her car in the streets of Virginia, with only a few clothes, her notebook and production software. During this time, she created “Drunken Babble,” a mixtape inspired by her struggles, in a shared apartment.
It was with this mixtape that she would gain recognition. Two years later, Loaiza would be featured on the “Kinda Neat” YouTube channel- a channel that highlights young talent in the music industry that focuses on rap/hip-hop. She would also perform “Never Be Yours,” a simple R&B song sampling “Oh Honey” by Delegation that same year.
On May 9, 2025, Loaiza released her fifth studio album, “Sincerely,” an emotional love letter to the journey she experienced in becoming a mother.
This motif is especially prominent in the first two songs featured on the album, “Heaven is a Home,” where she expresses her love and desire for protection for her child, and “Sugar! Honey! Love!” where Loaiza states her endearing and profound affection for her husband, Caleb Zackery “Don” Toliver.
This theme is extended more in “Lose My Cool” and “It’s Just Us,” where Loaiza expresses feeling lost, but then found when she and Toliver met for the first time. She sings in the song “Lose My Cool,” “When I met you, I stopped trying to keep my cool —I wanna scream and shout it out at the top of my lungs that you make me lose my cool…” In “It’s Just Us,” she sings “When you smiled at me // Something changed in my brain chemistry.”
As the album progresses, Loaiza’s tone shifts from cozy and affectionate to heavily protective and cut-throat toward those who cross her and her loved ones. In songs such as “Daggers!,” “Territorial,” and “All I Can Say,” this theme is especially prominent.
Finally, Loaiza concludes her album with “Sunshine & Rain…” and “ILYSMIH,” two songs that perfectly summarize the album. With “Sunshine & Rain…” expressing gratitude for her past, learning from her mistakes to get her to where she is now, and “ILYSMIH” symbolising gratitude for the present in the form of expressing the love she has for her baby, whom she samples for the outro of the song.
“Sincerely” is an album rooted in familial values. More specifically, the infinite amount of love a mother has for her child, whether cozy and warm or protective and cold.
Avid Kali Uchis listener, Ezra Sandoval, a senior at Ida B. Wells High School and Annaleah Wonder, mother and science teacher at IBW voiced their opinions on the album, introduced additional themes and helped deepen the understanding of various topics throughout the album.
“Well, I feel like her vibe is very happy and provides a sense of comfort. Because she’s very chill, she’s kind of like a little fairy,” says Sandoval.
“I thought that album was really interesting. And I don’t know if this is the sound she usually goes for. But I found it almost like meditative— It felt almost like an opera, like it was meant to be listened to in one whole sitting,” says Wonder.
“I know, there’s something that happened in her life that she’s basing the album about, and so I feel like it kind of has to do with love, or maybe her baby, because love doesn’t just have to be romantic, and, I know her mother had passed away recently. I’m pretty sure it’s kind of like a tribute to her too,” says Sandoval.
Wonder says, “she got really, like, fierce Mama Bear— I kind of related to it, because I obviously love my kids. I call it my mom petronas, because, like in Harry Potter, if your petronas is this spirit thing that extends from your body, it protects and surrounds people around you.” says Wonder, “that’s the best way I can explain it to people.”
Overall, Loaiza’s “Sincerely,” is a love letter based on affection and gratitude for growing into the person she is now, from being kicked out of the house at 17 for pursuing her passion, to having that passion be the driving force of her relationships. Loaiza is using the jagged rocks of her past as leverage to cross the road of being an average R&B singer and metamorphose into something truly magnificent.
