“I do it for the love, but it’s not free.”  

For Nicole Anjela, the lyrics mean more than just music but creating because you genuinely love what you do, while also recognizing that your time, energy, and work have value. For a young creative trying to build a career, those two things don’t have to contradict each other.  

That tension sits at the heart of Nicole’s new project. 

At her album listening party, the Manila-based R&B artist opened up about a collection that feels like a carefully constructed statement and more like a series of honest pieces of herself. To Whoever Finds This Album is, as its title suggests, an open letter, something she hopes will eventually find whoever needs it.

She hopes listeners can confide in the album, finding pieces of themselves in her most vulnerable moments. More than anything, she wants the music to meet people where they are.

“I hope that if anyone ever finds my album, they can confide in it,” she shares with ZEEN.

It is fitting, then, that Nicole describes the process of creating the album as one driven by serendipity. Rather than forcing the project into a predetermined shape, she allowed the songs to lead her. Somewhere along the way, she says, the album found itself.

That willingness to surrender to the process also reflects Nicole’s larger creative journey, which is challenging herself to become more vulnerable, both as an artist and as a person.

Finding freedom in the softer side of R&B, Nicole’s relationship with R&B was shaped by two cities that gave her different perspectives on music.

Growing up between Baguio and Toronto, she found herself developing a musical palette influenced by both environments. In Baguio, her love for R&B grew through the city’s laid-back atmosphere and her own growing fascination with the genre’s chill, intimate qualities. Toronto, meanwhile, expanded her musical world, introducing her to different sounds and influences.

One of the artists who changed the way she thought about singing was Jhené Aiko.

Like many Filipino singers, Nicole grew up with the idea that being a good vocalist meant being a biritera, someone who could hit the big notes and prove the size of their range. But hearing Jhené Aiko made her realize that there was another way to be a compelling singer and that you don’t always have to be loud. 

Sometimes, restraint could be just as powerful. That realization became an important part of how Nicole approached her own music. Her influences extend to female R&B artists such as Sabrina Claudio and Summer Walker, artists whose music often leans into intimacy, atmosphere, and emotional honesty.

It is a sensibility that feels increasingly familiar within the growing Filipino R&B scene. And the R&B girlies are rising.  

A Filipino R&B scene ready to be heard

Nicole is excited to see R&B continue to grow in the Philippines, but she also believes the genre still deserves more recognition.

For her, Filipino R&B is filled with musicians whose work can make listeners stop and think, artists whose music has the emotional weight and artistry to stand alongside what is being produced internationally.

Her hope for the future is simple: that Filipino R&B can eventually keep pace with international acts.

The ambition isn’t necessarily about becoming a copy of the global R&B scene. If anything, artists like Nicole are part of a generation figuring out what Filipino R&B can sound like on its own terms.

That also means creating a community where artists can recognize and support each other. 

The rise of Filipino R&B, then, isn’t only about individual artists breaking through. It’s about an entire scene becoming harder to ignore.

“I do it for the love, but it’s not free” speaks directly to the reality of being a young creative.

There is a romantic idea that artists should create purely because they love creating. Passion is often treated as enough of a reward. But anyone who has tried to sustain a creative career knows that love doesn’t erase the cost of making art.

There is the vulnerability of putting a piece of yourself into the world and hoping someone understands it.

For Nicole, the lyric carries all of those meanings. She hopes the song can serve as motivation and a reminder for other creatives that loving what you do should never mean forgetting what your work is worth.

And that’s what makes To Whoever Finds This Album feel especially relevant to a generation of young artists trying to find their footing.