Crown (Aja album)

Crown follows the 2019 release of her debut studio album Box Office, as well as her collaborative Halloween-themed extended play with rapper and producer Shilow, Nail in the Coffin. The album draws from her heritage and spiritual Lukumi faith and is also inspired by her experience in the COVID-19 pandemic which she says allowed them to "re-evaluate myself, my life, my story and how I want to deliver that". Aja has said that the more vulnerable moments on the album were inspired by Billie Eilish's discussion of mental health struggles on the song "Everything I Wanted". She said that each song was inspired by a specific orisha, or deity, and used "drums, cowbells" and "songs in the traditional tongue of the Lukumi faith" to construct them before they were sent to producers to craft the album's interludes. She also said that she wanted to separate herself from other RuPaul's Drag Race alumna in order to "not just perform the art, but be the art" and break from the "template for what people expect" from the show's former contestants.[4] The 47-minute, twenty-track album was released in May 2021[5] following the release of three singles (alongside their associated interludes) over a span of two months.[6][7][8]