Mereba Is a Musician Who Thrives on Discomfort

The singer has created her own signature sound.

Photography by Ryan Shorosky

Fashion by Julia Ehrlich

"I was just super angsty and lonely, and it was hard for me to adjust and make friends, so I learned instruments. They were my friends.”

“At the time, I was going through a lot,” she says. “My father was very ill, and he was living in North Carolina, and I got to see him, and we all knew anything could happen. My last time getting to spend time with him, I was in the process of writing the song. And in the same way, it’s super triumphant to me. I guess I was in a place in my life where I was like, ‘Things are so hard that the only way it could go is up.’ And that’s essentially what happened, so I guess it was an affirmation. Once I spoke those words into existence, my life actually started coming together.”

The song’s automotive theme, she says, is a sort of tribute to her father.

“So I grew up, like with a lot of first generation kids, with the stories (their parents told) of, ‘You don’t know how hard I worked to be here.’ And my dad always wanted this specific Lexus. He wasn’t a materialistic person, but that metaphor for him was like, ‘I will have really been that person who came from Ethiopia, from nothing, and made it.’ So that’s where I got the idea of the car. But also the matte black truck is something to me that’s really militant, like, ‘You can’t fuck with me if I’m in this car,’ and that’s why that particular type spoke to me. It’s like an ode to my ancestors, and the people who came before me who were strong enough to muscle through.”