Normani finally confirms album release date, shares new song “1:59”

Normani, formerly of the girl group Fifth Harmony, has been teasing her debut album for 6 years. Shortly after the X-Factor alums went their separate ways, Normani tweeted that she had a title for her first record. Ever since then, she’s been grinding away (reportedly making multiple albums’ worth of discarded music) and dodging fan inquiries as to the whereabouts of that mythic album (so much so that she ended up making a website called wheresthedamnalbum.com to keep folks apprised of updates). Finally, years later, she’ll dodge no more: along with a brand-new single, Normani announced her album Dopamine will drop June 14.

“1:59,” the new single featuring rapper Gunna, is a downtempo ballad in classic R&B style about reconnecting with a lover late at night. Normani sounds great—as she usually does—but for a song meant to get people excited about a project years in the making, the track falls a little short. “1:59” is solid enough for an album cut, but as a lead-up to Dopamine it doesn’t have the same fire and excitement as the artist’s first solo single, 2019’s “Motivation.”

“Motivation” remains well-loved by pop enthusiasts, but Normani herself wasn’t a fan. “It’s crazy. Now I appreciate that song so much more than I did then. I cried, I ‘boohoo’ cried. I was like, ‘I don’t want this to be my single.’ Then I had total creative control over the video, which meant a lot. I just wanted to feel represented. Now I get it. I understand it more now,” she said in a new interview with Elle. “At the time, I was so sad, but it’s all good.”

With Dopamine (and a new management team), Normani appears to be more in control. And there are dance tracks on the album—she teased that the track “Candy Paint” bridges the gap “between ‘Motivation’ and where I am now.” As she explained to Elle, “I know what it’s like to put out music and records that I don’t wholeheartedly believe in. When we were in [Fifth Harmony], we didn’t have the opportunity to have a real opinion until the last project we did. I promised myself, ‘If God gives me another opportunity to do things in my own way, I’m not going to take that for granted.’”