Unitsi Ai Delivers a Soul-Baring Reclamation Anthem on “Time for Einstein”

There are songs that sound good, and then there are songs that feel like something. Unitsi Ai’s “Time for Einstein” is squarely the latter—less of a single and more of a spiritual timestamp marking the moment someone decides to finally put themselves first.

Emerging from a life steeped in responsibility, grief, and generational trauma, Unitsi Ai’s path to music is as layered and intense as the song she now unveils. With roots in poetry and a soul forged through trials, “Time for Einstein” doesn’t beg for attention—it earns it, with every lyric wrapped in lived experience and each note bending beneath the weight of personal revolution.

Built from the fragments of three poems and shaped while learning the sultry jazz standard “Why Don’t You Do Right” on piano, “Time for Einstein” simmers with introspective energy. Unitsi’s vocals sway somewhere between spoken word and soulful crooning, moving with a kind of intuitive rhythm that feels less rehearsed and more remembered, as though she’s drawing from a well she’s been carrying her whole life.

There’s no theatrical posturing here, despite her background in acting. Instead, Unitsi channels the emotional rawness of her past—the years as the eldest daughter in a single-mother household, the early motherhood, the devastating loss of her grandparents and mother, and the long road of surviving abuse—into a performance that is equal parts wounded and triumphant.

The production is stripped down and intimate, allowing her voice and lyrics to breathe. Every phrase carries a quiet ache, a whisper of defiance, and a growing sense of clarity. It’s not polished pop; it’s soul music in its purest form—messy, honest, and transformational.

The title “Time for Einstein” suggests a cerebral angle, but the heart of the track is refreshingly emotional. This isn’t a thesis; it’s a therapy session. The song chronicles the moment Unitsi Ai stopped outsourcing her happiness and finally stepped out of the cycles of co-dependency that had defined so much of her life.

While the song’s message is deeply personal, it resonates universally—especially for women who’ve had to grow up too fast or have been conditioned to nurture others at the cost of themselves. In “Time for Einstein,” Unitsi Ai doesn’t just sing her truth—she reclaims it.

Her genre—self-described as Neo-Confessional Soul—fits like a glove. There’s a rawness and emotional transparency here that feels vital in a time where so much music feels overproduced and under-lived. Unitsi Ai is not just another new artist—she’s a necessary one.

"Time for Einstein” feels like a personal reclamation. Can you walk us through the emotional moment or realization that led you to finally write and combine those three poems into one song?

“Time for Einstein” was most certainly an epiphany moment and something “mashed up” emotionally on the fly. I had been learning how to play a song on the piano written by Kansas Joe McCoy but was introduced to me as a kid in the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (sung by Peggy Lee) called “Why Don’t You Do Right.” It was late one evening, and I had been out at an open mic at a place called Tr!p! where I had attempted to cover the original song on the piano while singing. While it was received by the audience “nicely” (as that night always has a great artist supporting artist crowd) I came home feeling a little underwhelmed and as if I had not done the cover “justice,” nor did I feel I had really gotten the “exorcism” I was yearning for/needed to release.

So I pretty much had poured a glass of wine, lit a candle, and was just playing the piano part for a while, trying to correct the little mistakes I had made earlier on stage, and was beating myself up over. But then, instead of singing, the original lyrics, the moment and the melody began to emotionally inspire me to start riffing and using my own lyrics from previous poems and songs that I had. Some of the poems never really evolved into songs the way I wanted, and then, for other lines, they came from previous lyrics I had put into unrequited love songs that had become too heartbreaking to sing anymore, and therefore I had taken them down/removed from streaming.

So I’m singing and playing and getting lost in it and I suddenly realized just how unbelievably happy and at peace I was in that very moment, just being there, with just me and this piano and singing, and how intensely “full” I felt. It dawned on me that it was because I, being from a huge family of siblings and then also having a child very young, that I had never really experienced nor learned how unbelievably valuable time spent alone with one’s self is. How, not knowing how valuable it was to take the time to sit with myself and love and be comfortable with my own company, had played a huge part in a lot of my self doubt, romantic relationships, and lack of boundaries driven by the desire to people please.

Realizing the sun would be up soon and this special moment of undivided attention with myself will have passed, I quickly grabbed my pencil and started to sketch what I was thinking so I could come back to where I left off before going to bed. It wasn't until the next morning/afternoon that I started to glue it all together using, as a tend to do in nod to my favorite artists, lyrics that have inspired me, such as Erykah Badu’s “Time’s a Wastin’” and The Rolling Stones “Time is on my Side” to tie this new song’s overall message into place. The song further evolved when I started singing it with my producing partner, Richard Young, who played the original piano part on his guitar to accompany me and while doing so we had discussed how much it reminded us of Led Zeppelin’s “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You.” Which also ironically was perfectly succinct with my whole existential crisis that all the previous poems and lyrics were written: The concept of fact that if I were to ever personally evolve past my current self and the relationships that I kept failing at, I needed to be alone and spend time to find and fall in love with me and stop falling back into the old habits of dependency and co-dependency, which then in turn led me to title which was inspired by Einstein’s quote in regards to his concept/definition of Insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

You describe your sound as Neo-Confessional Soul. That’s such a powerful term—how did you arrive at that identity, and what do you feel sets your music apart in a genre often rooted in vulnerability?

To be perfectly honest, as eventually everyone will find that I am even to a fault, from the very beginning I struggled with the question of “What is my sound/genre” for two reasons:

#1.) I felt a bit as if I wasn’t musically educated enough to accurately define the many different genres that had influenced me and that I knew I wanted to incorporate into my music. As a lyricist and novice vocalist, I was coming to my producers with a portion of a melody that I had created by pulling from a sample of another artist that I loved. I would top line their track to give the producer an essence of the vibe I felt best accompanied the emotions behind my lyrics. Usually starting with a heartbeat (drum or bass line.) I still to this day like to describe the collaborations as if my words and voice are the leaf, the music composition and production is the stream, the rapids and the waves in which, to me then defines the flow ie formality/genre. Which leads to

#2.) Therefore, I don’t feel confident or comfortable defining my sound to a definitive single absolute. See, by the time I started working with Richard, I had worked with 4 different producers in which, as all producers normally do and are even hired for, had stamped a little of themselves stylistically into the tracks we had collaborated on. While I “liked” what we created, I still wasn’t quite “sold” on them, particularly. However, I was sure that two things were true: Despite the different producers, every thing I had done up until that point included a consistency of flavors that favored Soul, Rhythm and Blues, Hip Hop, and Rock. The second thing I was sure of was that these lyrics weren’t just something I made up to “write a catchy hit song.” These words were excerpts from my diary, made up of my unspoken words, secret desires, intrusive thoughts, pain, pleasure, hopes and dreams, ie my “confessions.” During one of our sessions, I explained all this to my friend Richard, someone who is not only well-versed/highly experienced in the music industry, but also is classically trained and therefore able to exquisitely play all genres of music on guitar, and it was he who recommended the title/label

“Neo-Confessional Soul.” I like the categories behind the sounds/genres this concept is made up of, so to me, it sticks. I dig it.

Your journey from theatre to poetry to music is incredibly layered. What has music given you that acting or writing alone couldn’t?

It gives me the ability to create art in a way that allows permission without apology to stand “naked and fearlessly” on a stage without a mask as myself (not protected or hidden by a script and/or character) while I exorcise my demons, call praise to my ancestors, and proclaim my love or disgust about someone or something. I get to truly release it all and not just pieces of myself through a veil. I don’t think many people understand how phenomenally freeing that is until you’ve done it.

In a world that often rushes artists to define themselves and produce quickly, you’ve taken your time to re-record and refine your earlier songs. How important is creative evolution and self-compassion in your process?

I have been an athlete since I could walk. I played Basketball, Track, Tennis, Soccer, as well as competed in Swimming and Gymnastics. Because of the discipline I developed as a competitive athlete, I know all too well the importance and reward of finally being at the top of one’s game after putting in the time and consistent hard work. How the lack of self-discipline or an ego is a surefire way to keep a player benched or get them injured. So am I hard on myself and sometimes borderline obsessive regarding technique? Yes, somewhat. But I also don’t let it discourage me from seeing my progress and believing in my infinite potential. I have come so far vocally from where I began a little over five years ago. With every vocal session I learn a little something new and therefore feel more confident in my own unique voice. I am grateful for the time and needed the time to learn and explore and discover these things. In these past two years, I began feeling that the original recordings and the ways that I sang them no longer felt “like me.” When I listen to these older versions of these originals, I do so with kindness and gentle ears, because they were a raw version of me in that space during that time and therefore I will always value their original inception. However, as I have become more free vocally, as well as evolve mentally and emotionally in life as a woman in these times, I also connect differently to the original lyrics, which has thus, with the help of my producer, called for the addition or subtractions of textures within the sound. This way, I can truly express each reimagined/remodeled song effortlessly and genuinely because it’s reflective of who I am in present.

The Entertainment industry as a whole is a brutal machine that, combined with what some will forever call “good old capitalism,” creates an environment that I feel is NOT conducive to creating true art, nor does it nurture the artist. To be blunt, I feel deeply empathetic for those discovered via trend and/or who “rise to the top” rapidly, only to then be discarded and dismissed just as quickly, like prize-winning racehorses sent to dog food distributors. So I don’t define my art by concepts of success/fame. I am an artist who wants to create art, and therefore I am infinitely grateful that my path thus far has been what it has been, and I haven’t felt forced to be on a timeline to create something that isn’t authentic to me simply for the sake of content. Thankfully, I haven’t been asked to sell my soul to pay the piper. Because I won’t… Ever.

Your music comes from a place of deep survival and emotional truth. What do you hope people carry with them after hearing “Time for Einstein” for the first time?

To take the time to fall in love with the person in the mirror staring back at you. Really take the time to discover, forgive, accept, and value themselves in a way that needs no affirmation from outer sources. It is not only absolutely necessary to give ourselves this time to develop, but it’s absolutely essential to feeling truly happy and at peace. So then each one of us can step out and into the world feeling at peace and happy because each person is already full, and therefore no one wastes their precious time here on Earth being hurt or hurting others by the search for external substitutes to make them feel whole and/or worthy of love because, again, they are already walking around full of love within. I like to describe this kind of love, which by the way can come at any time at any age, as “the cake” because this love has to come first. For it is only with true self-love that I believe that we can sincerely fall in love with someone else. Because when two people are both full of self love and acceptance, they can authentically choose one another without fear of “needing or losing” them. And that right there, is what I call “the icing.”