She’s joking, but Quarter Life Crisis contains some of the smartest pop lyrics you’ll hear in 2023.

Better still, she’s dialled down the cynicism and opened her heart.

On Obvious, Latham even confronts her decision to leave South Africa - and how, in the process, she lost someone close “before I said goodbye”.

“I get this awful feeling, late at night, that she held on for one more day in case I came home again,” she sings, her voice racked with guilt.

When she finished the album, Latham returned home for the first time in five years - but the journey raised conflicting emotions.

“You can reject where you came from, but as soon as your feet hit the tarmac, there's something about the foliage and the air that you can't deny,” she says.

“But ultimately that trip cemented the fact that there was nothing there for me; and that, as much as all these things hurt, my family is still there for me.

“So I hadn't lost as much as I thought.”

These days, her music is played on the radio in Durban, an unthinkable achievement when she was growing up. But in Latham’s mind, there’s still work to be done.

“Quarter Life Crisis isn’t my dream album and it's not my best album,” she says with a characteristic lack of filter.

“The one thing that I felt after finishing it was, 'Let me just make my next one. I know what to do now'.”

Fans in the court of the Baby Queen are already waiting.

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