Jazmine Sullivan: 'I want to get to the root of why people do things'

With 12 Grammy nominations since her 2008 debut, the US singer is already a genre leader - and her new EP seals her reputation with a cinematic portrait of six women commodified by their beauty

Did you see the message from Issa?" Jazmine Sullivan asks me excitedly. For all the acclaim and Grammy recognition the R&B star has accrued over the past 12 years, she still reacts to starry praise with joy and disbelief. A hopeful tweet suggesting Insecure's Issa Rae turn Sullivan's latest EP into a short film elicited a positive response, and later in the week, the pattern repeats with Mary J Blige. Wait ... wtf?! I'm so happy man!" Sullivan tweeted after the soul legend signals her eagerness for a guest spot.

To onlookers, though, there was little surprise about the Philadelphia native - also picked to sing the national anthem at this year's Super Bowl - being treated as one of the modern greats of R&B. When Sullivan arrived on the music scene in 2008, a much-touted 21-year-old protege of Missy Elliott, her USP was familiar in the genre: a vocal force of nature, honed in church, who drew on personal experience to deliver raw soul in the lineage of Blige (with whom she toured in 2010) and Keyshia Cole.