Pop has always preferred its lovers decisive: they fall hard, leave dramatically, block the number and discover self-respect before the bridge. Real life has worse timing, and YASMINA KAÏNA writes from the hours when desire, pride and hindsight are all still talking over one another. Her debut EP, BITTERSWEET, understands that an ending can ruin your evening and improve your judgment at the same time. There is wit in the title, along with the recognition that romance rarely leaves behind one clean version of events.

Across the singles that have introduced her since 2022, the Danish-Moroccan singer has been developing an R&B language capable of carrying several cultural coordinates at once. Latin and Afro-pop rhythms shape the arrangements, while her voice supplies the intimacy at their centre. Artists with mixed heritage are frequently presented as collections of influences, reducing a person to a tidy list of origins. YASMINA KAÏNA offers a far livelier proposition: culture lives in instinct, phrasing, rhythm and choice. Due September 25, BITTERSWEET brings those choices together across her first complete project. Ahead of its release, we spoke with YASMINA KAÏNA.

Hi YASMINA, it’s lovely to speak with you. BITTERSWEET will be your first EP, so September 25 will place a complete body of work where listeners have previously met you one song at a time. When you heard the final sequence from beginning to end, what surprised you about the artist who had made it? 

Maybe how much my mom’s Spanish guitar has actually impacted and inspired me over the years. I did not plan to use the guitar on every track, but somehow it found its way to almost all the songs in one way or another. 

When a relationship ends, memory can flatter one day and prosecute the next. Which song on BITTERSWEET forced you to question the version of events you had been carrying, and what changed once you heard it sung aloud? 

I tend to write about multiple situations at once. A song might sound like I wrote about a certain situation, but in reality I probably got inspired by multiple situations that gave me the same feeling and then made it all into one song. An example: Barcelona was about 3 different situations. Multiple breakups between both friendships and dating relationships lead me to the conclusion that sometimes you just have to listen to your own advice and choose yourself and do what you want to do, without thinking about what people around you might think about it. Sometimes you just have to move to another country, sometimes you just have to accept that people will let you down and there is nothing you can do about it. Sometimes people need to be let go so you can be happy, and sometimes that happiness is to be found in Barcelona. Or like with the song ”Why”; that is about all breakups i have ever had and the breakups i have seen friends have, so it’s about multiple situations but the same universal feeling that most of us feel. 

Barcelona and Lost in Marbella place real cities inside the track list, so listeners may bring their own holidays, romances and fantasies to locations that hold your private history. Does that public mythology ever compete with the city you actually remember, and which detail did you protect from the postcard version? 

I have never really thought about that. I don’t think so. I love Spain and always felt at home and welcome, even before I moved to Barcelona. I have family from Morocco that lives in Spain. My mom used to live there before she got me and my sister, and we would always drive through Spain on our way to Morocco. So I used to visit a lot when I was a kid and everything is very familiar to me and I just love it there. It is beautiful. 

You learned English partly through singing, which can make pronunciation, rhythm and emotion arrive together before ordinary conversation catches up. Is there an English word or vowel that gives your singing voice a confidence your speaking voice had to grow into? 

I think in general that I am better at singing English than speaking it, probably because I learned it through singing. I have been told that I have a really funny accent too because it’s not a normal ”Danish” accent but it’s a weird mix between multiple accents, and I think that is 100% because I learned English by singing English language songs. 

Your family placed melody and rhythm around you in very physical forms: strings in your mother’s hands and an Amazigh drum in your father’s. When you build a song today, which side of that family conversation speaks first, and where do the two interrupt each other? 

I don’t think any of them comes out first, I’m a product of two different people and cultures, both filled with music, and they mixed it all together and made one whole person and so it all comes out at once just like everything else I do, it’s not a 50/50 – its both – its 50 + 50 = 100 and that 100 comes out at the same time. You know a certain riff I sing might sound like it’s inspired from my dads side, but it could also be from my moms electric guitar, and it’s probably both, because two things can be true at the same time. 

Across BITTERSWEET, the words and the voice can pull in separate directions. A lyric may say goodbye while the delivery still reaches back. Where on the EP did you deliberately let your voice betray the decision written on the page? 

I’m not sure about this to be honest, Maybe Barcelona, only because it is a happy melody, but it could be understood as a sad song, depending on where in life you are when you hear it. But for me, when i wrote it, i didnt write it in sadness, i wrote it after i got home from Barcelona and i wrote it in happiness like ”sometimes you just gotta take your own advice and be happy” 

BITTERSWEET has an intro and an outro framing everything between them. Imagine the entire EP played in reverse order. Which song would change meaning most dramatically, and would that reversed emotional sequence still belong to the same story? 

Good question! I think Barcelona, but i might be biased haha. I will have to listen to it all reversed now! 

A debut creates a public first impression that can follow an artist for years. During the making of BITTERSWEET, was there a piece of sensible advice you chose to set aside because it pointed toward somebody else’s version of YASMINA KAÏNA?

Not on this project. BITTERSWEET was made by me and my producer Mozard The Producer and I did not let a lot of people listen to it other than my family and close friends. Me and Mozard have been working on this for almost 3 years and a lot more songs were made in that time that didn’t make it onto this EP – not because they weren’t good, but because it was clear that these songs were meant to be together. The next project will be an international project, focusing on features made with different artists in different countries, different languages and we have been working on that since last year. That will be a project where more people will be involved and I will be taking and asking for more advice than I did with this project. 

Having said that, I’ve definitely been in situations before where multiple people have given me advice, some I have listened to and some i haven’t. Some I have tried out, because I always want to learn, but then found out that I should’ve just listened to my gut and kept going my own way. I have definitely learned that it is very important to listen to people that have been in the industry longer than you, when they give advice, but it is even more important to remember your vision for yourself, and if they don’t share that same vision as you do, you should not take their advice. because they are advising you on what they think you should be, not necessarily on what you actually want to be. 

Listeners may hear Spanish guitar, Afro-pop rhythm or R&B and start assigning each element to a part of your heritage. Which choice on BITTERSWEET came purely from taste, yet people may read it as autobiography? 

I really don’t know, I just feel the music and whatever I feel is what I go with. I try not to overthink it, it takes the life out of the music.

Suppose BITTERSWEET becomes the version of you people keep asking for, even after your own taste has moved elsewhere. How long does an artist owe loyalty to the work that opened the door, and at what point does repeating it become a betrayal of the person who made it? 

I don’t think it will be a problem, I make relatable music about human emotions and experiences. As long as I can do that, and people can relate to me on a personal level I think I’ll be fine, and I think that the audience will too.

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