Princess Nokia's guide to breaking up

• Princess Nokia's new EP, "I Love You But This Is Goodbye," is a breakup album in its purest form.
• Nokia's EP is "dedicated to my dignity and my heart and the boundaries I set to liberate myself."

Princess Nokia got dumped on Valentine's Day. Yes, it was a little cliché — a little too much like the plot of a rom-com. But it still sucked.

The artist is perhaps best known for hits like "Tomboy" and "Kitana;" in the refrain of the latter, she raps, "I step in this bitch and I do what I want / I don't give a damn and I don't give a fuck." Her song "I Like Him," off her sophomore album "Everything Sucks," brings to mind walking down a grocery-store aisle and throwing men into a shopping cart ("I want him / And want him too"). But there she was with fresh heartbreak on her hands, and she decided to do something more vulnerable.

Her new EP, "I Love You But This Is Goodbye," which dropped March 14, is a breakup album in its purest form. In seven wildly different tracks whose influences range from early Shakira to UK garage, Nokia processes heartbreak in real-time, taking the listener from nostalgic to furious to regretful to gut-wrenchingly sad in less than 20 minutes.

The album is "dedicated to my self-worth and my dignity and my heart and all the boundaries that I set to liberate myself from trauma bonds and romantic soul ties that no longer served me," Nokia tells me on a video call. After a long chapter of romantic tumult, "I was able to discern what was happening in my life and take the good parts and leave the bad behind."

Everyone I know is obsessed with Princess Nokia. The Harlem-born rapper came up in New York City's queer scene, and the queers have stuck with her as her profile has risen, taking pride in the success of one of their own. It helps that her lyrics are sharp, her influences are vast and textured, and a lot of her music is purely fun — perfect to dance or prep or vamp to. She's taken pride in her power, telling Genius, "When you got the juice, everybody wants to drink from your pitcher."

Her swagger is still evident in "I Love You But This Is Goodbye," especially on certain tracks. But overall the EP has a softer cast. "I've said the word 'bitch' numerous times in every chorus in almost every one of my albums," Nokia says. "But when have I ever spoken from the heart and said something about being rejected or not being enough?"

"Everybody looks to me as the big, strong woman, the survivor, the witch, the rapper, the witch doctor, the healer," she continues. "And it's like, hey, please don't forget that I am also a young woman. I am just like everyone else. I have my own personal problems, and they're probably even more harrowing than anyone could imagine because they're not publicly shared. No one has no idea what the fuck is going on."

What's going on is, more or less, encapsulated in the EP's title. "I love you, but this is goodbye" is what Nokia told the person she was romantically involved with when she realized their relationship had to end. "They would provoke me and try to get under my skin and try to see me even after we'd broken up," she says. "And I said, there is no coming back from it. There's no 'being in the present.' There's no rekindling. I'm not saying 'I hate you, go fuck yourself, go die.' I'm saying, 'I love you, but this is goodbye.'"

After the Valentine's Day breakup, Nokia wrote "Lo Siento," the EP's fourth track and halfway point. The song starts as a bare-bones piano ballad and, in a classic Nokia twist, changes part way through to incorporate light electronic beats and a Spanish rap verse. The opening lyrics — "Lo siento / I'm sorry / that I am not the one that you wanted" — hurt. So does Nokia's voice, gentle and low, like she's sitting on the couch across from her ex-lover.

Nokia had the lines written in her Notes app. When she met Danish producer and songwriter Robin Hannibal, she asked him to play a chord on the piano, and she sang them aloud in a clear, operatic tone. "He and I looked at each other, and I was like, 'Oh shit, that's never come out of me before,'" she recalls. "I joke that I'm not a very good singer, but you should hear me in the shower." But "I could never translate how good my voice can be, 'cause I get too nervous in front of the microphone." Now, though, she was finally nailing it.

She also nailed the Spanish lyrics. Typically her grammar in Spanish is "shit," she says, because she's picked up so much of the language from different countries and generations. But when a friend proofread the verse, there were no mistakes, which made her comfortable enough to include it. She drew on Barcelona-based rapper La Mala Rodríguez for inspiration, as well as early-years Shakira. "Shakira is one of my favorite Spanish poets," Nokia says. "She interpolates emotion and honesty in a way that's so profound."

"Lo Siento" represented a new starting point for Nokia. Until then, she'd been sitting on a bunch of songs that didn't make sense together or communicate a cohesive message. Then she watched HBO's Alanis Morissette documentary, "Jagged," and decided to scrap it all. "I was like, 'I can't put this out. This is filler music,'" she says of the tracks. "'I'm watching Alanis fucking Morissette write 'Jagged Little Pill' at 19 years old. I've gotta do better.'"

After "Lo Siento" came other songs: "Closure" and "Complicated," inspired by Letters to Cleo and Didot, respectively. The cheeky, stripped-down "The Fool;" the irate "Angels & Demons;" the smug "Thank You" and the joyous "Happy" — the latter with a smattering of Gorillaz lyrics for the real '90s babies. Together they told the story of a relationship, a disillusionment, and a destructive love that nevertheless had a happy ending: Nokia marrying herself.

In the visuals for "Happy," Nokia flounces through the streets of New York City in DCs and a vintage wedding dress. She bought the dress at Goodwill five years ago and had it tailored, and at one point she actually planned to get married in it, she tells me. But now it serves as a talisman for a different kind of promise.

"I Love You But This Is Goodbye" is full of these kinds of Easter eggs, chief among them the voicemails that come at the end of the first three songs. They're addressed to "Des" and seem to be part of an ongoing, one-sided conversation, with one saying, "You know I figured I was probably already blocked. I'll just keep calling and keep checking forever — forever and ever."

These are from Nokia's ex-lover, she tells me, and she got permission to use them to add "personality and context" to the tracks. Nokia has two years' worth of these voicemails — two years of her ex calling, apologizing, and trying to right their wrongs. She doesn't romanticize the messages, but she does think they're noteworthy.

And while she doesn't always respond, she occasionally does a "cordial and amicable" check-in back. "Because I have it so much better than them. I'm not pining over what I lost; I didn't do anything wrong," she says. "They have to live with that, and that sucks."

Her strong sense of empathy comes partially from a "begrudging" place — because she's had to grow up quickly, to develop a capacity beyond her years, in order to survive. But it means she can engage without losing her perspective.

"I'm a great ex-lover, I'm a great ex-wife, I'm a great friend," she says. "I'm kind of like a light in a lot of people's lives. I'm very forgiving, and I can still talk to people after tumultuous things, which a lot of people can't wrap their heads around." (That, and she never messes around with an ex: "Even my friends would be like, 'Girl, you not fucking him on the side?' Like, nope. I'm a woman of my word.")

And she is truly grateful to the source of the tumult: the person who reminded her that she's lovable. "I hadn't felt that in a long time," she says. "And it ended up not how I wanted. But the takeaway is that I did feel something. I knew that it was possible, that I was capable of being loved. And I say to that person, you may have hurt me, but you gave me a great gift. I can walk away knowing that I am worthy of love and that tomorrow is another day. And that's it."