In a chat with L'Officiel USA, the singer opened up about cross-cultural collaborations and the importance of talking about mental health. 

Photography by Ryan Shorosky

Fashion by Julia Ehrlich

When I let it slip to Leslie Grace that I&rsquo;m a Super Junior fan, her eyes light up like floodlights.

&ldquo;So you&rsquo;re an ELF?&rdquo; she yelps, referencing the K-Pop group&rsquo;s fandom nickname. One of Grace&rsquo;s recent hits&mdash;and she&rsquo;s been pumping out hit-after-hit&mdash;is hopping on SuJu&rsquo;s &ldquo;Lo Siento,&rdquo; a trilingual Latin-influenced pop track with Grace on the chorus. K-Pop, it should be noted, is big business in Latin America. According to Korea.net, three million K-Pop fans are in Mexico City alone, making it an epicenter for the K-Pop-Latin-American-pop collision. When her friends and the producers of &ldquo;Lo Siento&rdquo; came to her to do the track, she jumped at the opportunity.

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&ldquo;Obviously, I knew everything that was going on with K-Pop,&rdquo; she tells me. &ldquo;I had obviously known about Super Junior&mdash;not to the extent that I know now though. I&rsquo;m blown away. SuJu had planned to relaunch their album, and they had already planned a Latin American tour, and their team knew they wanted to re-release the single off the album as a trilingual track in Spanish, English, and Korean. They were really open to learning about [Latin] culture, and why we use certain sounds, which I think was so super smart on their part. Very necessary, because venturing into another sound, just the same way we did with them, [they could be accused of appropriation].&rdquo;

Now, she&rsquo;s fully in the scene and performed with the boy band at KCON in New York to an arena full of adoring, screaming fans.

"Learning about the culture and why [they] use certain sounds is very necessary when venturing into another another sound."

But this isn&rsquo;t Grace&rsquo;s first rodeo. She&rsquo;s been prominent in Latin American music since releasing a couple of bachata-flavored covers of Motown girl group songs (the Shirelles&rsquo; &ldquo;Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow&rdquo; and the Ronettes&rsquo; &ldquo;Be My Baby&rdquo;) in 2012. Lately, her sound has crossed over into the reggaeton/Latin-pop territory&mdash;her songs &ldquo;D&iacute;ganle&rdquo; (featuring Becky G, and the remix featuring insanely popular reggaeton boy band CNCO) and &ldquo;Duro y Suave&rdquo; (featuring Noriel) have both surpassed 100 million views on YouTube.

Riding on those successes, the 23-year-old Grace is preparing a new album called Gracevolution, a documentation of her growth as an artist.

&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a common thread amongst all the songs, which is sincere lyrics about stuff that I&rsquo;m going through, and I think other people my age, or maybe older or younger, are going through,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Things that when I was 16, 17, 18, I didn&rsquo;t have as much confidence to talk about, but now I&rsquo;ve totally found that power and vulnerability. Two, sound-wise, there&rsquo;s a lot of fusion. There&rsquo;s trap vibes, there&rsquo;s reggaeton-cumbia vibes. So there&rsquo;s some more of that on the way, but there&rsquo;s also a moodiness to the album, as well, which I&rsquo;m excited about.&rdquo;

"We have to let people know that we’re all human beings and we all share similar struggles."

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JACKET DSQUARED2

CREDITS

Makeup: Charlotte Prevel

Hair: Vernon Francois

Photo Assistant: Julian Berman

Stylist Assistant: Grace Lynch

Makeup Assistant: Keely Maroney

Production Coordinator: Tim Oliver

Latin Artist Leslie Grace Is a Bonafide Superstar

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