NIKI

While Indonesia is her home, the global stage is her oyster-and the singer-songwriter plans to use her extraordinary love for music to pursue personal growth and empower as many people as possible.

- AMELIA CHIA

Gen Z are known to be fiercely independent and remarkably entrepreneurial. They also relish a fairer and more open world— and are determined to tread an alternate path in order to get there. “I don’t know if I can speak for all of Gen Z—I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that—but I’m really impressed by their focus to oppose tradition, shatter ceilings and push the limits on things,” NIKI says over our 45-minute chat over Zoom in early March.

Knowingly or not, the prodigious singer-songwriter is veritably all of that, and more, I discover as we navigate the peak and troughs of her life thus far. Dressed in an oversized camelbrown jacket, gold hoops on her ears, and hair pulled back into an offhand bun, she pops up with a cheery hello from her recording studio in Los Angeles, which has just recently been renovated. It is a mellow day, she informs us, as it has been raining. NIKI has a poised and unruffled air about her, and speaks eloquently with a great amount of thought and wisdom in her answers. It surprises me that she’s only 24—but perhaps I shouldn’t be, given the amount of change she’s dealt with thus far.