INJI Dares You To Be ‘Superlame'

It’s a gorgeous late Autumn Manhattan morning, and I’m sitting across from Turkish-born, NYC-based popstar INJI on the patio of Café Chelsea — the French American bistro housed on the first floor of the storied Hotel Chelsea. She can barely contain her glee as she tells PAPER her plans for the day — a dance rehearsal for the music video release of her song ”TEEN ANGST” — a throbbing dance floor beater about turning 25, quitting your job, setting the house on fire, etc. It’s delightful and dizzying, a perfect mix of percussion and petulance.

“It was a long day. We couldn't figure it out. And then I was like, can I have the mic?” she tells PAPER when I ask about the track’s creation and inspiration. “Freestyled on the mic, almost all of it. I literally just yelled those two sentences. I was freaking out this entire time. I need to break up with my boyfriend. I need to burn my life down,” she smiles.

As our conversation shifts from the dissolution of menu orders (her childlike grin turning into a pout when we learn the café’s famed Dark Chocolate Soufflé is only served at dinner) to the dissolution of relationships, I’m struck by a thread that seems to connect Inci Gürün’s personality to the energy on her latest mixtape SUPERLAME: a playful girlishness tempered by wisdom beyond its years.

My mind replays moments with the 24-year-old that prove this theory. I think back to her Webster Hall show last year — her unique sound blending her lifelong classical training, Turkish roots, and genuine love for dance music. I saw it again in her nervous, smiley demeanor just hours before she confidently DJed with Demi Lovato at PAPER’s Fashion Week party last month.

Back to SUPERLAME — which toes the line of timeless house music and modern, cheeky lyricism. It’s the type of mixtape INJI has been working toward since her 2022 track "GASLIGHT" went viral on TikTok — a reminder that deep intelligence and intense messiness can coexist not just in the same person, but in the same track.

First, I want to ask about your remix of Demi Lovato’s “Here All Night.” Because I feel like when we were booking you for the PAPER NYFW party — that wasn’t confirmed yet?

Worlds aligned. It all happened at the same time. So Demi had put out a dance playlist called Here All Night on Spotify, and put one of my songs on it, up top. She posted on her story, my name was up there. This happened [months before] the party. All my fans saw that and they were flooding my DMs like “you’re on Demi Lovato’s Instagram.” A few weeks later she posted one of my songs on her private Instagram. A producer we both work with told me and was like … “Don’t tell anyone” since it’s a private story. But it was mind-blowing. It's also crazy because I [think about me] in fucking Istanbul, in my little living room, not knowing any English, putting on Camp Rock and trying to dance as an 11-year-old. The next day, she put “U Won’t” on her regular story ... I’m like Demi girl who hurt you. Then the PAPER party came along and it was a goal to DJ New York Fashion Week and I fucking love PAPER.

And then the A&R reached out about their remix, and it was like, “Oh, can you guys do this tomorrow?” in the middle of New York Fashion Week, and I'm booked 8 am to midnight. And then we did it. I was up until like 2 a.m. writing it. It was so fun. Then I met her at the party, she was the sweetest human in the world. She said incredible things. She said “I’m such a fan of you, I’m such a fan of your EP, I can’t wait for the mixtape.” She said she knew “every single word to 'U Won’t.’” And that’s when she told me she’d listened to the remix and she loved it.

Let's talk about SUPERLAME. What made you decide on that title for your mixtape?

I had another album title for a very long time that just started feeling wrong. I was gonna make a totally different album. It was gonna be like here's my story. It's was gonna be called A Turk Walks into a Bar. That’s not what happened. I was basically crashing out making this entire album, while I was writing it. I was realizing I had built all of this [my music career] with my boyfriend.

When you say that you do you mean working with him? He was producing your songs?

My music career started as a coincidence with this one collaborator. There’s so much lore. Do you know the story? So, I came here to study finance and be a banker and I’m doing that at [The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania] and it was, it's a total coincidence that I end up making the song “GASLIGHT.” It was in classical groups and jazz groups, and this jazz drummer was like, “Let me give you a beat.” He gives me a house beat, and I take it to this guy because I had a crush on him … Yeah. Because he was the rapper at our school. I’m like “Would you help me? Can you help me write a song? I heard you can freestyle.” We write and it’s the first song we write. We put 10 seconds of it online and it blows up. Suddenly, I have a career, born out of complete coincidence. I built a lot of those early projects with this boy, and I started dating my crush and we were together for three years and he was my main collaborator on [those projects]. Writing this mixtape I felt ike who am I outside of this? Outside of the college context?

I think the coolest thing you can do is have the confidence to be lame or not care about judgment.

Right and relationship context and collaborative context. So you were out here floating.

An adult in New York City. So a lot of the album crashes out. That’s what it feels like. So, after I finished the album I started crashing out about it because of the messiness, the rawness. I felt like Oh, I’m not edgy and cool and mysterious. I think this is a very universal experience for a 20-something-year-old girl. You feel like Am I enough? Am I cool enough? I don’t look like the girl on Instagram. Everybody here thinks I’m lame and they don’t think I deserve to be here. Everybody here thinks I'm lame and they don't think I deserve to be here. At first, it came from that feeling. The first time I felt good and confident and ready to keep going was when I said to a friend while talking about the album, “Everything I make is so lame.” Then I was like, “I fucking accept all of that, the insecurity and the crash out and the messiness and just me not being the coolest, edgiest person in the world. I accept that, and I have the confidence to fucking show it to all of you guys." I love the title SUPERLAME. I think the coolest thing you can do is have the confidence to be lame or not care about judgment.

We talked about “GASLIGHT” a bit, but what was it like emotionally and mentally to write a song, release it, and boom, be in another life, another timeline because of its success?

It wasn't even, I'm gonna write this song and release it. It was, I'm gonna hang out with this guy and make a 10-second video. I didn't have an artist name. I had a job. My entire closet was blazers and loafers. I was so committed. I had been a musician because I've been a classical pianist and singer my whole life. But I wasn’t about to make music. Never thought about it. It was also the golden era of TikTok. So immediately, every label in the world jumps on us. It was crazy. I was so lucky, but it was the toughest thing I've ever gone through. I was freaking out the entire time trying to explain to my parents, and they’re like “What do you mean? After a 10-second video! Now you want to be a musician? We didn’t send you to the US to do this!” I was a senior in college, and I needed a visa to stay in the US. So I had to build enough of a career to stay in the US. There was a time where I would pray, like Give me this visa and I will ask for literally nothing else. All of that senior year, I was skipping class and going to LA and trying to make music secretly behind my parents' backs. Yeah, they're still shocked every day. They're like, “So when are you gonna go back [to school]?” Their daughter, my entire life, I was a massive nerd.

When I saw you at Webster Hall, your parents were there, in that room with all of those people singing your songs back to you.

I don’t know if you remember, but I made the crowd scream at my mom. She called me the other day, like, “So when are your monthly listeners gonna go up?” [Laughs]

Let’s talk about the headspace you were in before the mixtape. What was happening when you were making these songs?

I graduated. I had some success and I started making pop music. I was talking to labels. They were like, “You should make pop!” It was so bad. So boring. I was so wrong about the music industry. I thought, Oh, my songs were too weird, and that's why they're not hit songs. If I make them more mainstream, I'll have more success, which was the wrongest thing ever. But also, this is pre-Charli XCX. So this all happens, I make shitty pop. Maybe 100 songs. I hate all of it. I spent like a year making these songs. I scrap all of it. I also went on tour, and fans showed up drunk, in sunglasses, and the weirdest songs went off. The normal songs didn’t go off. I had to go through making all of those bad songs to get here, then Charli showed the world genre doesn’t matter [with Brat]. You can be a pop star with anything. She made the biggest album ever; she gave me the confidence to make insane dance music.

What was the first song that you made after feeling that way?

“U Won’t.” I also realized that all the good songs came from sessions where I gave up. I wasn’t trying. And maybe I was writing alone so I could be honest. The honest songs ended up on the album.

How do you hope your fans feel when they listen to SUPERLAME?

The mixtape makes me feel free. I want them to feel the same thing. Especially with the shows, I want people show up being like, "I can be fucking whatever here. I'm gonna wave my arms and jump and maybe puke in the bathroom. This is why we came here." A completely open experience. Come be super lame. Come be whatever you are. And then also. Obviously, I'm just trying to pump joy and adrenaline and energy into people. I hope the bigger fans who are listening to all of it and listening to the lyrics, I hope they feel the freedom just be themselves and not give a fuck.

Photography: Edwig Henson