Charli XCX talks pop-music 'machine', girl power and her 'raw' album

In this week's Billboard cover story Charli reveals that she is writing songs for Rihanna and Gwen Stefani, and that Stefani has particularly been an inspiration to her.

"Let Me Blow Ya Mind," the 2001 Eve hit featuring Stefani, "is my favorite female collaboration that has been released over the past 20 years," says Charli. "I definitely wanted to create that girl-power kind of vibe with 'Fancy.'"

On the pop-music "machine" Charli XCX says "[Songwriters] don't just churn it out -- we're not machines. That song opened the doors to a side of the music industry that I'd never had access to before. You just see how the machine works."

​And On her "raw" new album "I just didn't realize that song would be around for so long," she writes in an email on Sept. 29. "I don't want people to get the album and just expect to hear a record full of 'Boom Clap,' because that's not what it is. It's raw. There's more to me than that."