Naomi Scott was always meant to be a musician. Growing up in the east London suburbs, Scott would sing in her local church choir in the afternoons, then raid her dad’s Windows Media Player playlists to discover Janet Jackson and Kate Bush in the evenings. After being spotted at age 14 by Kéllé Bryan, formerly of Eternal, she spent her mid-teens writing music at home with a view to becoming a singer in her own right, even heading off for songwriting sessions with the powerhouse British pop gurus Xenomania.

The only hitch? After going for a few acting auditions, mostly just for fun, she somehow found herself with a film career. (If Scott looks a little familiar—and you can see past her current shaggy bob dyed a shade of burnt pink—you’ll be aware that detour led her to star as Princess Jasmine in the blockbuster 2019 live-action Aladdin adaptation and a troubled pop star in the 2024 horror Smile 2.) Then came what she describes as a “quarter-life identity crisis” a few years ago, prompting her to hole up at home in London and begin writing songs again on her piano.

“I really felt like a girl in process—I feel like one still—which ended up becoming my motto for the project; philosophically, practically, all of it,” says Scott, speaking from Los Angeles, where she’s kicking off her first solo headlining tour. “I want people to see the process.”

The result is her remarkable first full-length album, F.I.G, released in March. If you’re seeking further proof that Scott was always destined to be a musician, you need only give the record a listen. It has the sonic hallmarks of a debut full-length with its mish-mash of genres—R&B, alternative pop, soul, funk, and many an ’80s beat. But this particular sonic formula betrays her impeccable taste: a touch of Janet Jackson on the clattering groove of “Rhythm” and the sugary-sweet layered vocals (and steamy spoken word asides) of “Cherry”; shades of Prince on the punchy guitar licks and swelling synths of “Losing You” and “Gracie”; a dash of Solange in the fluttering vocals of the lovelorn “Bliss” and the jazzy “Best Kind.” (Former Solange collaborator Dev Hynes is a close friend and mentor of Scott’s, and shares production credits on “Cut Me Loose.”)

It’s also an impressively cohesive (and, at 29 minutes, concise) statement of intent, immediately asserting Scott’s own distinct musical identity; for a self-described “girl in process,” it arrives very much fully-formed. (The title, by the way, stands for “fall into grace,” referring to the journey of self-acceptance she went on while throwing herself into being a musician again, as well as a nod to the metaphor of a fig tree as representing multiple different futures invoked by Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar—let’s hope a music career is the fruit she chooses.)

And while F.I.G didn’t exactly make a tremendous splash upon release, over the months since, Scott’s audience has grown rapidly through word of mouth as fans sing its praises on social media.

“It’s just a wonderful feeling,” Scott says of the response. “Transparently, I’m signed to an independent label, so there’s not a massive cash injection or loads of marketing dollars. But I think I just felt so confident that the music would speak for itself and that the right people would find it, that I wasn’t too worried about front-loading anything, or trying to capitalize on this one big moment. I truly feel like once it’s in the world, it’s there forever to be discovered.”

It’s also been buoyed along by Scott’s impressively DIY approach to building a visual world around the album, with the music videos—realized in tandem with her creative director, Katharina Korbjuhn—capturing a very specific air of unpolished, slice-of-life immediacy. “There’s something beautiful about working with limited resources,” Scott says. “I don’t think money equates to creativity. It just doesn’t.”

The delightful, self-directed video for “Cherry,” for instance, sees Scott dance in a soccer field alongside a women’s team, wearing a vintage Vivienne Westwood button-up hoodie and gray sweatpants (and a smattering of stick-on crystals across her eyelids); it captures her spirit of sophisticated eccentricity. “I wanted it to feel organic, sexy, British, girly, inclusive, fun,” she says, noting that it was also partly inspired by her love for Bend It Like Beckham. As for the video’s lively choreo? “I’m not in the position where I can spend, like, 50 or 100K on a music video, but I wanted that pop star energy still,” she says, with a laugh.

You can feel that pop star energy, too, in the video for “Gracie” (this time co-directed with her husband, the former professional soccer player Jordan Spence), which sees her strutting down an east London high street in a leather trench and pink gloves, throwing shapes with wild abandon as passersby look on with a touch of amusement. “We didn’t have the budget to lock off the street, so you have all these people watching, but then that’s part of the energy,” Scott says cheerily. “I love those imperfections, and that only happens when you go with the flow a bit.”

It’s an attitude that will extend to her live performances: following her seven-city, seven-date U.S. tour, she’ll be playing European festivals throughout the summer, before joining Jessie Ware—another friend and mentor—as a support act for her U.K. arena tour. She’s keeping the live act (relatively) simple—one backing musician on guitar, another doing double duty on bass and synths. “For where I’m at right now, it feels correct to just have these two parts,” she says. Neither will she be doing any elaborate new arrangements or reinventions of the songs on F.I.G—as she points out, it is her first tour, after all. “It’s the first time I’ll be singing this album live, so I don’t want to veer too far away from it,” she says. “I just want to give people the feeling of listening to the album, but live, basically.” Plus, a cover of New Edition’s R&B classic “Can You Stand the Rain” and a mash-up of Scott’s “Bound” with Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love.” (What did I say about impeccable taste?)

Where she will be getting a little more playful, though, is in how she’s presenting it all visually. “Listen, without giving too much away… there will be a few little surprises,” she says, laughing again. There’ll be a dance break or two—“not choreography to the nth degree, but movement is really important,” she notes—as well as clothes racks on either side of the riser for some on-stage changes during the show. (A girl in process, remember?)

“I’ll still be in my base uniform: my tracksuit, my knee pads, my heel pumps, my bra,” she explains, but with a few flourishes here and there thrown in for good measure, such as the trench coat and gloves from the “Gracie” video. There are pieces from her own wardrobe in the mix, as well as designer looks she’s borrowed from brands she and the stylists she regularly works with—Taylor Thoroski and Hamish Wirgman—have grown to love, such as the offbeat London favorite Talia Byre. “You know how people say, on their wedding day, they still want to look like themselves? It’s a bit like that,” she says of her approach to performance wear.

Really, that’s the crux of Scott’s appeal as an artist—she wears her references on her sleeve, but knows how to fold them into something that feels truly and authentically herself. So it stands to reason, then, that the most exciting part of the journey so far for her has been discovering that her instincts were correct: There really are audiences out there whose tastes align with hers, and who have fully understood what she was trying to do with the album.

“It’s just amazing when you see other people feeling the way about your work that you feel about it,” she says, visibly delighted. “And what a beautiful way to see who is genuinely connecting with it, when they are the ones who are telling other people about it. To me, that’s far more powerful, personally, than playing a numbers game—that’s never been a driving force.”

Instead, said driving force—at least for now—is simply to keep experimenting; to remain, through it all, a “girl in process,” even if it looks from the outside like she knows exactly what she’s doing. “I’m still that girl,” she says, smiling. “I’m still trying different things on. I’m still very much figuring it out.”