Snow Tha Product can think of a few times she should’ve been pettier. She’s taken the high road before, she tells Remezcla, and she’s had plenty of time to imagine what she might’ve said instead. She revisits that impulse on “Should’ve Been Worse,” the opening track of her new album, Next Time, Believe Me. It’s a funny title for a song that asks what staying quiet ever got her.
“They benefit from our silence. Just remember that,” she says.
Released Nov. 6, Next Time, Believe Me spans 17 tracks and features guests including Tech N9ne, Zhavia, AJ Hernz, Gera MX, Toni Romiti, and Chuzzington. Snow hears a through line from her last album, Before I Crash Out, to this one. As she points out, something had to give somewhere between those two titles. The new record is a more polished version of what she’s already been saying: the bars are as sharp as ever, but this time she also gives herself more room to sing, get sentimental, and make a few songs just for fun. “Two Anywhere Two” revisits an earlier song she thinks people slept on, and she brings it up when talking about how much she likes writing songs that let her be a little softer. Even Snow gets tired of being angry all the time.
Growing up as a first-generation Latina in the U.S., Snow got used to people deciding what she could become before she had the chance to show them. That experience shapes what she wants younger women to hear in the album. “Or next time, believe a woman like me,” she says. She wants the project to feel like advice from a big sister to anyone learning how quickly other people can make them doubt themselves.
That insistence on being heard carries over to how she runs her career. Snow hired family to join her team, and choosing to be an independent artist means she’s involved in every aspect of the work — including how to deal with the same companies that dominate the business. Her analogy is the neighborhood cafecito that finds a Starbucks opening next door: you can run your own shop and still have to contend with who owns the rest of the block.
When Snow talks about the people who’ve stuck with her, the confidence in the album title gives way to something less certain. She knows how often fans go to bat for her, and she wants them to feel like they backed the right person. When a win doesn’t come through, she takes it personally. She’s grateful they’ve let her grow up in front of them.
Asked what she refuses to apologize for, Snow talks about speaking up for Latino communities, queer people, and women. “I wish, you know, having clean water didn’t become political,” she says. She wishes the same for being happily married to her wife, raising a child, and feeling safe in their own home. Speaking up can cost her in an industry where a few companies hold so much power, she says, and she’s willing to live with that. The rapper who opened the record wondering whether she should’ve made more trouble ends up describing a pretty ordinary wish: “I just wanna be able to one day live happily ever after in my home and not feel like people are gonna come to attack us.”