Zonnique Pullins released two new songs, “Winner” and “#FTCU,” on May 4. After growing up with parents who work in music — her mom is Tameka “Tiny” Harris, and her stepdad is rapper T.I. — Zonnique is quite familiar with the industry, but she’s still making sure to listen to T.I. and Tiny’s advice when it comes to her career. “The best piece of advice that my parents have given me, and still tell me to this day, is to stay on top of my business,” Zonnique told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “As the artist, you don’t really care to read your contracts and know every little thing. You’re just like, ‘OK, sounds good, sign me up for it,’ but it’s better to really know and have a say on everything being the artist because you’ll get signed up for something that you didn’t even know or you just really didn’t pay attention to, so it’s best to know so that you can be your own boss.”
Zonnique added that she values her famous mom’s opinion of her music more than anyone else’s, but admitted that they’ve begun to butt heads a little more now that she’s coming into her own as an artist. “I definitely don’t always listen to her, especially now being older and being more confident in myself and what I really like,” Zonnique explained, adding, “I do really appreciate her input because she’s been there from the beginning. She’s watched me grow. So her opinion is always very valid to me. And besides that, she’s a Grammy winner and writer, so I think her opinion is very valid.”
When it comes to music, Zonnique said that she’s inspired by everything she goes through on a daily basis. “I always kept a journal since I was young, and I just write stuff daily — what I see, how I feel about it,” she revealed. “It come be something small, like what it looks like outside, and [I] take it into the studio and just go off of that and just say how I feel about everything that I write down in my notes.”
The inspiration behind “Winner,” though, was a lot more specific. “[It] was people in my past and my ex who I feel did me wrong — people who I had in my circle and I was like, ‘I have to cut these people out of my circle’,” Zonnique said. “When I was in the studio, I was like…I haven’t really talked about this. I hadn’t really written about how I was feeling [about this]. So that was my inspiration behind that one.”