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LeToya Luckett is a flawless beauty –like Snapchat-filter- perfect in-person. For real. Today, the Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum-selling R&B artist looks like a bona fide rock star with her short, black hair styled beneath a black gaucho hat, bangs softly swept to the side, and her black V-neck blouse paired with a studded leather jacket, black choker, and shredded light-blue jeans. It's May and we're in her team's office in Manhattan. After a seven-year hiatus from music, the Los Angeles- based artist is in town doing press to promote her brand-new album, Back 2 Life –released May 12th. "I'm like, 'Whoa, still in shock.' It's been a minute," she says about her break from music. LeToya made sure to take her time with this album as she wanted it to genuinely reflect who she is today. A self-proclaimed perfectionist, the most challenging part for LeToya was stopping –there were certainly times she thought, just one more, before deciding that these would be the 13 tracks that comprise her third solo album. "I decided to make 'Back 2 Life' the title song, because that's where I am now: getting back to me, getting back to my first love, music. Getting back to what feeds me and makes me feel fulfilled." LeToya dove deep into her own personal experiences with Back 2 Life and feels it's her most relatable album to-date. People will definitely hear her heart, she tells me. "I am always authentic. I walk in my truth. And I think I finally got to a place with this album where I was confident enough to share and come out and say, 'Listen, I go through stuff too, and this is what I learned from that experience, and this experience made me a better person…' I hope they get to see another side of Toya after listening to this album," she says passionately. It's definitely resonating with her fans —her sultry first-single- off-the-album, "Back 2 Life," hit #6 on Billboard's Adult R&B Songs chart. As for "Back 2 Life's" music video, if you've ever been in relationship, you can empathize with what these characters are going through. Was it emotional for you while you were making it? "Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Because I knew that everyone goes through experiences like that and I knew that it would be relatable. After listening back to "Back 2 Life" in the studio when it was all done, I was like, 'They need to see the story behind this.' And that's when I decided to create the mini-series." The video series has three installments – "Back 2 Life," "Used To," and "In the Name of Love" —and costars former NFL player-actor Thomas Q. Jones as LeToya's love interest. Watching "Back 2 Life" you think, Yep, I've been there, I tell her. "I've been there a time or two!" she cheerfully chimes in. "It was so funny. I had my mom in the room with me when I was doing the editing for the argument scene. I was like, 'Mom, I don't know if people want to hear me like…'" she recalls in a hushed voice. "And she was like, 'Girl! That's a real conversation. People need to see that side of you. You deal with heartache and all that stuff, too… That's the working-through process and communication plays a big part in that. And that's why I felt that those scenes were vital to the video." The tracks on this album channel 90s R&B – her favorite era. "I'm stuck in the 90s. I don't wanna come out. Like ever," says the songstress, who still plays this nostalgic music to get hype. Artists like Bobby Brown, Boyz II Men, Toni Braxton, and Mary J. Blige were just a few of the voices able to say what she was feeling when she couldn't. [In the beginning of August, LeToya joined Queen of Hip Hop Soul, Mary J. Blige, on her Strength of a Woman Tour for several dates.] As the "shy, awkward girl who fronted by having the big personality" growing up, LeToya reveals that she was terrified of people on the inside. "If I had a crush or I was feelin' somebody, you kinda play that song in the