November 15th, 2011 
The Queen's Castle 
The first time I heard Elle Varner’s smash hit, Only Want to Give It To You, featuring Roc-Nation’s J. Cole play on the radio, I had to know more about this up-and-coming artist.
The 22-year old, Los Angeles native, who currently makes her home in Brooklyn, New York, wrote her first song at the age of 13. She graduated from NYU’s Clive Davis Program of Recorded Music where she was “Officially Crowned” Most Likely to Get Signed and Most Likely to Win a Grammy!
Elle’s currently under management with MBK, the same team that helped to jump-start Alicia Keys’ career and she’s signed under RCA’s umbrella with J Records… one down and one to go (and I’m sure it won’t be much longer before she adds the coveted award to her mantle).
Outside of her debut video, the first time many were introduced to Elle was during the Black Girls Rock! Awards, and she definitely held her own alongside giants like Mary J. Blige and Erykah Badu.
The industry is definitely taking notice, Varner is featured in the December 2011 issue of Elle Magazine, of course. And last night she headlined New York City’s famed SOBs joined by special guests Nola Darling and CJ Hilton.
Watch Elle perform Only Want to Give It to You…
Elle also introduced SOBs to her single, Refill, which will be included on her debut album, Perfectly Imperfect.
In a recent interview with The BoomBox, about Refill Elle says…
…it is such an amazing song. It’s like this hip-hop, R&B, like crazy 808s but with a country fiddle throughout the whole song. It’s so ironic — the whole concept of the song about a refill and you think I’m talking about a drink but I’m actually talking about a guy and his time, and wanting more of him. It’s really cool. Pop and Oak produced it. They produced most of the album.
On how she came up with her album’s title…
So I had come up with millions of titles and they all kind of worked. I don’t know if you heard ‘So Fly,’ it’s a song about body image, self-esteem, confidence and it really hits home because I wrote it at a time when I was going through that, and I still do, every woman does. So that song is a highlight on my record and it speaks so much about who I am. There’s songs that show what I can do, but this song really says who I am. I didn’t want to title the album a track off of the album, so I said ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ kind of embodies my whole persona. But then ironically it also describes the album because we realized, not even knowing, there’s a lot of mistakes that were in the tracks that we actually kept because they just added flavor. You’ll hear when you hear the album but there’s things like stuff we did to keep the tempo that was just supposed to be a marker and we ended up keeping as part of the track. So it’s perfectly imperfect.
On how she ended up working with J. Cole…
We randomly met at school. He went to St. John’s [University] and I went to NYU. And then we bumped into each other. We were acquaintances, not like best friends or anything. We bumped into each other here at the Sony building and I was like, “J. Cole?” and he was like “Elle?” [I said], “What are you doing here?” [He said], “I just got signed.” [I said], “I just got signed.” And so the first thing that came to mind was him when we wanted to put a rapper on ‘Only Wanna to Give It to You.’
What people will be surprised to know about her…
I think people would be surprised to know that I was such a loser growing up [laughs]. It blows my mind on a daily basis when I see people on Twitter like, “Man, she’s got swag.” And I just crack up. I’m always looking at my dad like, “Can you believe this?” I spent so much time with my dad and he didn’t really know how to dress a girl. He would buy me these sweatsuits, these baggy sweatsuits. He was very strict on what I wore to school. I think my fashion sense at the time no one understood. I didn’t care, I was just like, “I’m gonna wear what I want to wear.” I used to come home crying to my mom like, “Everybody hates me. They’re so mean.” They always told me, “You can’t dress,” “You’re a nerd.” I think over time I internalized that and it gave me such a drive to prove people wrong and here I am now.
You can read Elle’s entire interview with The Boombox, here.
Although a release date for her debut album, Perfectly Imperfect is pending, you can sign up for Elle’s newsletter at her website and keep up with her on Twitter or FaceBook.
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