Rina Sawayama announces new single ‘I’m Free’ with Paris Hilton
Rina Sawayama has announced a new single ‘I’m Free’, a collaboration with Paris Hilton, set to be released next month.
News of the song was revealed in a post on Hilton’s Instagram account, which showed a video depicting a text conversation between the two singers. The post is captioned: “’I’m Free’, out June 21st.”
The first text in the video is from Hilton, with an audio recording titled ‘Free’ and a message saying, “Hey sis! Been working on something…”
“Paris!! Obsessed,” is the reply from Sawayama. “What if you…did a verse?” replies Hilton.
Rina then says she is “running to the studio”, which leaves Paris “on the edge of my seat”.
The post then says “three infinite hours later” the track was complete.
In March, Sawayama said she wasn’t able to release her next album “under my current conditions”.
She said her “mental health has been awful” over the past year, adding: “I’ve been lucky to have found ways to keep my business afloat and support myself as well as my team, but when it comes to new music I can’t release another album under my current conditions.
“I feel really trapped and don’t know what to do.”
Those comments came amidst Sawayama’s public battle with her label Dirty Hit, which is co-founded by The 1975‘s manager Jamie Oborne. At Glastonbury 2023, Sawayama called lead singer Matty Healy out for his controversial comments made on The Adam Friedland podcast whilst introducing her song ‘STFU’: “Tonight this goes out to a white man that watches ‘Ghetto Gaggers’ [porn] and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough.”
Each member of The 1975 has a stake in Dirty Hit, with Healy previously serving as creative director for four years before stepping down from the role in April 2023.
Sawayama said she had “felt intense racist misogyny in a way that I’ve never felt before” since summer last year. Though she did not name Healy during the interview, she said: “In public and private I feel as though I’ve been repeatedly gaslit, disrespected, ignored, even cyber-bullied for calling out blatant racist and sexist behaviour.”
“I just want to leave this world a fairer, safer and kinder place for future generations to live in,” she continued. “That’s always been my mission from the start and I’ve always used my voice for this, but time and time again, women are punished for inconveniently holding a mirror up to men who were not willing to be held publicly accountable.
“My peers and I share stories and it’s clear there are a lot of men working in this industry who continue to get away with awful behaviour.”
Hilton, meanwhile, recently announced that her highly-awaited second album ‘Infinite Icon’ will be released in September. She had previously stated the record would be executively produced by Sia.
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Max Pilley
NME
