The Gospel According To Ciara

Ciara speaks in mantras. She is a greatest-hits collection of catchphrases, a walking playlist of motivational bon mots. While imparting the secrets of her marriage to NFL quarterback Russell Wilson, she might cite the Bible to make a point about finding refuge in her partnership: “Lean not on your own understanding,” she says (Proverbs 3:5). On the importance of tuning out unsolicited feedback, she might reference the late Finnish composer Jean Sibelius — or at least the bastardized version of his famous missive to his haters seen on baby tees worn by Charli XCX and Katy Perry: “They don’t build statues of critics.”

She also invokes her own music, specifically her 2018 insta-classic, “Level Up,” with barely a wink while describing the always-be-closing mentality that has informed her life and career. “The pressures that I experience are more so the ones that I create,” she says with spine-straightening directness, “because I want to be on the conquest of being great and just trying to continually level up and grow.”

Some of the mantras Ciara spouts are well-worn to the brink of meaningless (health is wealth, numbers don’t lie) or so understated in their wordplay that they would not even register as truisms if she didn’t repeat them with just enough emphasis (perspective is everything). Yet Ciara delivers them all with such earnestness — often punctuated with a helpful addendum of “that’s a saying” or “that’s real,” in case you didn’t believe her — that she makes them feel new again. “The three most powerful forces on Earth are the three M’s,” Ciara says. “It’s music, money, and medicine. Music can give you a feeling that money can’t buy sometimes. And then music can also heal you in a way that sometimes medicine can’t, right?” So true, bestie.

I have come to Ciara’s towering hotel suite in New York City this January afternoon to experience the one-woman self-improvement workshop she seems to offer free of charge within any conversation. Today she’s dressed as the missing evolutionary link between Sporty and Posh Spice: in a luxe black turtleneck, black faux-leather joggers, and gold bracelets for days. Weighing down her left hand is a rock you may have read about, a reported 16-carat diamond engagement ring from Wilson that is so mammoth, it literally creates its own lens flare in photos. Her oblong sunglasses give off a vibe somewhere between “don’t f*ck with me” and “I just went to the optometrist,” but upon my approach she whips them off right way and comes in for a hug.

It has been more than 20 years since Ciara arrived on the doorstep of MTV in the “Goodies” video like Botticelli’s Venus — you know, if Venus swapped a clamshell for a burgundy Oldsmobile and thought to throw on a swimsuit — and she continues to thrive to a degree they should study in Harvard Business School. Which she’s studied at, by the way, having completed its $12,000, four-day business of entertainment, media, and sports program in 2019. Since then, the mother of four has been in empire-building mode, and you better believe the bedrocks of the Ciara-Wilson portfolio are built on words to live by: A production company called Why Not You. An apparel company called House of LR&C (that’s Love, Respect & Care) with a women’s line called LITA (that’s Love Is The Answer). And then there’s her own independent record label called Beauty Marks Entertainment, named because “all the scars you get from the obstacles you face in life are your beauty marks,” she tells me.

“If you don’t have a memory of trying to dance like Ciara with your cousins or your friends, did you even have a childhood?”

Last year, Ciara blasted through arenas on the Out of This World Tour with Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes, and though Missy was of course the headliner — a long-awaited return to the stage from one of music’s elusive visionaries — the show felt like a major celebration of Ciara, too. The women not only share some of their most beloved hits (“Lose Control,” “1, 2 Step”) but also a commitment to striking visuals, contagious choreography, an old-school playfulness, and a catalog full of so many jams, listening to them in succession instantly turns you into DJ Khaled: Another one! Another one! To stumble down a Ciara rabbit hole on YouTube — go ahead, do it now, we’ll wait — is a particular joy matched only by, say, receiving an unexpected if small tax refund or flipping on the television and discovering you’re just in time to catch an early-2000s J.Lo rom-com playing on VH1.

“Ciara’s body of work is timeless. She has created music throughout her career that many generations can listen to and it does not feel dated,” Missy tells Bustle over email. Having Ciara by her side on her first-ever headlining tour made the trek that much sweeter, she adds: “You will have many associates in this industry, but friends are rare. I don’t even look at Ci like my friend — that’s my sis, and she has been there not just for fun, but if I needed inspiration. She got me if I needed a prayer. Having a friend to be there for you in this business is what you need to keep going.”

Ciara, who will turn 40 this year, is too successful to be underrated. She’s also, perhaps, too consistent to always be appreciated for the very high level at which she continually operates. She is in some ways the anti-eras artist: Across her body of work, there are no discernible artistic peaks or valleys, no perfunctory reinventions, or gripes with her own image. She has, of course, been unfailingly ambitious and finely recalibrated her sound to evolve with the times, but she has always loved being Ciara, and my God is she good at it. “I’m always trying to find a way to keep things fresh and make sure I’m always looking ahead and — most importantly — have fun,” she says. “I think the fun is what’s carried me and sustained me.”

Ah, yes, you might be thinking, the golden rule — have fun! Perhaps this message strikes you as something you’ve heard before, like the pop star remix of Live Laugh Love. But Ciara doesn’t gatekeep. For every bit of shiny, bumper sticker-worthy prose she offers, she’ll also tell you how she learned the lesson the hard way, the work it took to come to such a conclusion. You want a husband you can build a future with, a family that adores you, crowds of people screaming your name? She’s not hiding the keys. And she doesn’t conceal her losses either. The sting of disappointment, the frustration of taking your eyes off the ball, lower back pain — that’s all in the music, too.

Ciara Princess Harris was a 14-year-old living in the suburbs of Atlanta when she outlined her plan for world domination. A military brat turned high school cheerleader, Ciara says she’s “always been a very strong-minded, somewhat stubborn, pretty fearless girl.” So she grabbed a pen and paper and got to work: First, she wanted to get discovered, like one of the subjects of those Behind the Music-esque shows she’d watch on television with her mom. Then she wanted to sell 3 million or 4 million records. (Check — Goodies alone has gone quadruple platinum in the U.S.) Lastly: She wanted longevity. It’s this item on the to-do list that feels like the biggest miracle of all.

“When your daughter looks at you and wants to mimic you or be like you a little bit? We’re doing something.”

Ciara came up at a time when the spectacle of TRL-era pop was still going strong and Southern hip-hop was finally cracking the mainstream. She built a brand out of straddling both worlds as Atlanta became the epicenter of not just rap but basically all of popular music. “She put on for Atlanta like I do now,” says rapper Latto, a lifelong fan who featured Ciara on her Sugar Honey Iced Tea album last year and calls her a “high vibrational person.” “Seeing her made me feel like I could do it, too. Her sound was so smooth and Southern. When she hit the scene, it was something I felt like I had never heard or seen before.”

When streaming took over the industry, Ciara was ready for that, too. She brings a slow-jam sensuality to her club-bangers and a club-banging intensity to her slow-jams, which means that any one Ciara song always sounds perfect next to any other Ciara song in a playlist. This is an artist with a catalog built for the shuffle feature. Yet when I ask Ciara if she has her own theory of why Ciara the Pop Star has endured, she’s more philosophical. “I’ve just kept my face steady and I’ve never stopped believing,” she says. “I’m always reaching for the next step. Even if I fall and feel like I took two steps backward, I’m still looking up.”

She has thrown down for that belief more times than she can count over the course of her career. Like the time in 2006, when she was recording her second album and a top Sony executive told her that her song “Promise” — the closest you will get to recapturing the feeling of slow-dancing with your middle school crush — was “the worst R&B record.” Rightfully convinced of its greatness, a 20-year-old Ciara and her producer, Polow da Don, decided to leak the song themselves — a move that, in the shadow of Napster and the rise of iTunes Music Store, would either drum up the necessary support or potentially derail the entire project.

“We leaked it at an Atlanta radio station and literally the song took off and was a monster,” Ciara says proudly. Because of its success, “I ended up having my first No. 1 album. And that week was a big week — it was me, Gwen Stefani, Eminem, everyone.”

Nearly a decade later, she found herself in a similar situation. In 2017, as she pondered a future as an independent artist, Ciara met with another label executive who told her “Level Up” would flatline — so she flew herself and a small crew to New Zealand to make a video with Parris Goebel “and spent the least I’ve ever spent on a video with that many dancers,” Ciara recalls. She went as far as setting up her own product placement: “I had actually reached out to the former CEO of Bose and asked him about putting a little stereo, a little speaker box in the video to help offset costs for the budget.”

“Level Up,” her first release on Beauty Marks, went viral in a matter of days, inspiring the #LevelUpChallenge on TikTok and earning Ciara one of the biggest hits of her career — it’s the most-viewed of any of her YouTube videos. “Talk about betting on yourself and taking risks,” she says.

“You can’t be worried about what’s happening on someone else’s block. You might miss out on what’s going to happen for you.”

Sometimes, of course, the bet doesn’t pay off. In 2010, Ciara confessed to fans that she spent six figures of her own money to promote “Gimmie Dat” as a single and film an accompanying music video. It’s a terrific video — up there with Janet Jackson and Robyn in the pantheon of divas dancing in empty warehouses — but it wasn’t enough to send the song up the charts. “There’s been times when maybe it doesn’t work as well as I thought it would,” Ciara says, in the same steady voice. “But I’ve been pretty consistent in my belief, so I won’t stop believing.”

This drive is what her closest friends love about her. “She is the type of artist that will not just quit if she hits a rough patch,” Missy says. “She believes in herself, and sometimes you have to be your own cheerleader when it comes to your art.” And here’s the twist about pop stardom in the internet age: stick around long enough, and even those rough patches become victories. A single underperformed? As we speak, fans are probably clamoring for “Justice!” in the comments. Critics didn’t love an album? Well, that’s because it was ahead of its time — just wait for retrospective thinkpieces to correct the record. Ciara proves that hanging on is simply the most powerful, radical thing you can do.

Talk to anybody who grew up listening to Ciara, and they’ll almost always tell you a story about trying to move just like her: forming girl groups with their friends to “1, 2 Step” on the schoolyard; clearing the furniture to practice her wiggle-walk from the “Work” video; studying her “Ride” floor-humping routine frame by frame. “If you don’t have a memory of trying to dance like Ciara with your cousins or your friends, did you even have a childhood?” Latto asks. “I had a physical copy of her Goodies album and would pop it in my radio and try to reenact her music videos in my room.” Legendary RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Colby, known for her own acrobatic stage presence, says “Goodies” and “1, 2 Step” were the first songs she ever performed in drag. “I love a beautiful woman who’s not afraid to be strong,” Colby says. “She’s not really doing what anyone else is doing or moving how anyone else is moving, and I think that’s exciting and very attractive.”

Imitating Ciara, it should be noted, can come at great expense for overall joint health. “One of my fans told me he broke his leg trying to do one of my dances. I think it was The Matrix,” Ciara says, referring to her signature gravity-defying backbend (named for Keanu Reeves’ bullet-dodging technique). “I had never heard anything like that before, but I thought it was so sweet because I could tell he was a true fan.”

“Sometimes you got to say the ugly before you get to the pretty.”

Ciara is as much of an athlete as a pop star can be, and she ages as if her features were dipped in amber nightly. But even she has had to confront the limitations of one’s corporeal form. She gave birth to her fourth child, Amora, in December 2023, and within a few months was training and rehearsing to hit the road with Missy Elliott. “That was a little out-of-body for me,” she says. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to do this. I’ve been there before, but your body changes as you get older. I’m trying to embrace every step.”

In the past, “I would’ve probably been so hard on myself because I hadn’t made it back to where I was, post-baby,” she says. But Ciara isn’t one to dwell on the downbeats: “I’m like, I’ve got to give myself some grace.” Her positivity is as relentless as a Theragun. “I also was kind of loving this fourth-baby version of me. My baby definitely put a little bit more on my hips and there is, as Russell says, ‘more to grab on,’” she says, grinning. “I want to lean up a little bit more, tone up more, and he’s like, ‘Don’t get crazy.’”

It helped that she got to bring her caravan of kids — which also includes 10-year-old Future (her son with her ex-fiance, the rapper Future), 7-year-old daughter Sienna, and 4-year-old son Win — on tour. “I don’t even know how I would have functioned if I was on the road for that long without them,” she says. Ciara recalls one scene on the road when Sienna dressed up in cargo pants and high-top boots to proudly proclaim herself “a mini Ciara.” “She watched me in amazement, and that made me feel like I’m doing something,” she says. “When your daughter looks at you and wants to mimic you or be like you a little bit? We’re doing something.”

Just don’t ask her about turning 40 in October. “Don’t even say it, OK?” she says, laughing. She covers her face with her hands. “I’m not old yet, I’m not declaring that — I’m hanging on to my 30s by a thread.”

There’s another milestone Ciara can look forward to in 2025: 10 years since she met Wilson, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks who now plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers. (They married the following year.) Football is both the major organizing force in their lives — “We can’t move Thursday Night Football,” Ciara jokes of planning her career around his seasonal commitments — and a primary love language. “Communication rules a nation,” she says. “What I will give my husband credit for is he can communicate really well. It’s the quarterback in him. He’s so used to having to do that anyway. It’s a big part of his everyday life.” And as an artist, it’s a big part of hers, too. “I love communicating,” she adds. “Sometimes you got to say the ugly before you get to the pretty.”

Tending their marriage is a matter of “always competing,” she says. “You need to still turn up the sexy. He walks through the door, and I’m like, ‘OK!’ Because he intentionally went in to go get sexier, to get cute. For me, the same thing. It’s a lot sometimes with four kids and doing everything else, but I feel so good when I put in effort and he sees it.” (Her upcoming single “Ecstasy” is a mood-setting, winking-face-with-tongue emoji of a song that will give you a very good idea of what keeping it sexy in the Wilson household looks like. “There’s always a nice, classic, sensual CiCi record,” she says. “My album is never complete if it doesn't have that.”)

The two have kept up their tradition of having date nights every Friday. “I’m really looking forward to just being with him, talking about life, looking into each other’s eyes, holding each other’s hands, doing all those things that you do in the beginning,” Ciara says. “Search for the beginning at all points as best as you can, because we know what that feels like in the beginning — there’s this excitement.”

Search for the beginning. “I’ve never said that before,” she says, pausing to consider. A new mantra.

Determining a winner in sports is easy. But despite what you will hear from the pop stans duking it out in the replies, eternally one-upping each other with chart milestones and streaming updates, the true value of art can’t be neatly measured on a points system. How does Ciara reconcile that with her competitive streak?

She sits up on the couch, activated. “I’ll give you an example,” she says. The Grammys were in a few days, so awards shows were on the brain, and Ciara thought back to “Body Party” — the lava-lamp-smooth, career-reenergizing slow jam that briefly made her a Pitchfork darling and went No. 1 at R&B/hip-hop radio. “You would think that that metric would automatically classify you for a nomination, right? No. 1 song, moving the needle in a pretty cool direction, I would say, and I don’t have a nomination.”

She says this casually — not complaining, just stating facts. “If I was basing it off of the metrics [of awards], then I would feel like I failed,” Ciara continues.

But you get to dictate the terms of your success. “If you live by the cheers, then you die by the boos,” she says. “I’ve seen artists come, and I’ve seen some artists go, and again, no one gets it right all the time, but I am grateful that I’ve been able to sustain myself, and I’ve been grateful that my fans still stand tall for me and that people show me love in the way that they do. I think there’s something to that. I have to remind myself, like, be proud of all that you've accomplished, because you have done something, right?”

“Ciara believes in herself, and sometimes you have to be your own cheerleader when it comes to your art.”

There was a time, a few albums deep into her career, when Ciara would get frustrated — she’d be hustling to make things happen for herself and then see some new artist blow onto the scene and achieve their dreams in lightspeed. Why not her? “You can’t be worried about what’s happening on someone else’s block,” Ciara says now. (Save for one iconic Twitter exchange years ago, she has learned to worry only about keeping her side of the street clean.) “You might miss out on what’s going to happen for you.”

At this point in our meeting, she’s less life coach than football coach, psyching me up before a game. The encouragement is starting to fly almost faster than I can keep up. “Keep on pushing, keep on believing, keep on being you. Run your own race at your own pace.” Her eye contact is reaching you-better-take-notes-on-this levels of seriousness. “It might take you longer to get there, but if you stay the course, one plus one will equal two.”

Dusk has snuck up on us, so I make one final request of Ciara: Would she be willing to teach me to do The Matrix?

She agrees without hesitation and ushers me over to a corner of the room where we have more space for a side-by-side demonstration. “Oh my gosh, I’m not even prepared to move my body,” she says.

She bends her knees slightly and gestures out toward the skyline, where the glowing orb of the sun is disappearing behind Manhattan. “What you want to do is have a focal point,” she says, before turning her feet in — soles out, ankles down. “Then you go back, go back, go back,” she says softly, as if directing a parking job from the sidewalk. “And then you’re living in your core.”

Living in your core. Has a phrase ever so perfectly wrapped up the Ciara ethos of minding your business, doing the work, and embracing what you do best? Put that on future Ciara self-help books, Ciara workout tapes, Ciara podcasts.

“Keep looking this way,” Ciara says, imploring me not to lose focus, but I glance over to my right anyway. In the last beams of the afternoon sun, I see Ciara gently lowering her body in one smooth, controlled motion, her eyes fixed straight ahead, her hair close enough to the ground that she could sweep the floor with it, and I think it is the most graceful thing I have ever seen.

Top image credit: Ferragamo jumpsuit, Tiffany & Co. by Elsa Peretti rings