Funk-soul singer Nikka Costa, midway through a tour with Lenny Kravitz and a solo club stint, releases her sophomore album, can'tneverdidnothin', on May 24th. This follow-up to 2001's Everybody Got Their Something was a long time in the making.

"We had a record done and ready to release about ten months ago, and advances were just about to get sent out," says Costa. "And the record company was like, 'Give us one more song, and we'll go with this.' They wanted me to be more pop, and I was trying to play along. But I felt like I'd lost myself in everyone's opinions, and I was just not feeling the record."

So Costa took up a residency in Los Angeles, playing acoustic sets at a small venue. "I was told not to do that because of how it would look, like maybe I wasn't as big as before," she explains. "But I just wanted to have that feeling of connecting with the audience again. And those gigs were so fun! I re-tapped into what kind of artist I wanted to be."

During that period, Costa wrote a lot of new material and handed her label not simply a single, but a significantly different album. "This is a lot closer to my live performance," she says, "more raw, and I'm proud of it. I'm sure this will mean a much longer, more arduous journey for me -- but also a longer career, I hope."

The album's title speaks to Costa's perseverance in the music industry. "It comes from what my mom would tell me whenever I said I couldn't do something," says the Los Angeles native. "Like, 'You're not going to be able to do it if you talk that bullshit. You've got to try.' My whole career has been about people telling me I should do things like everybody else so I can get more radio play, but I've been sticking to my path. I think of myself as the underdog, compared to the Ashlee Simpsons of the world."

For her sophomore effort, Costa turned once again to husband Justin Stanley, who also produced the Vines' Highly Evolved. When asked if that closeness can breed tension in the studio, Costa replies with a laugh, "You mean, like 'Do another take, or I'll bitch-slap you'? No, not at all. Oddly enough, we're pretty chill about it. He doesn't let me get away with just anything; he pushes me to sing another take. He's quite a perfectionist."

Stanley was particularly supportive when she wanted to push her songwriting into increasingly personal territory, as with "Fatherless Child." The song is a tribute to her father, producer Don Costa (Sammy Davis Jr., Donny Osmond, Nikka's godfather Frank Sinatra), who died suddenly when she was ten years old. "I wrote it for myself and didn't expect anyone else to hear it," says Costa. "I always write about my own experiences, and this time I wanted to make myself as vulnerable as possible, to have that naked feeling. And when he heard it, my husband rushed me into the studio and pressed 'record.' That's what's on the record, that one take. After I wrote the song, I realized it was the twentieth anniversary of his death. I think I was subconsciously finally feeling ready to deal with it."

While "Fatherless Child" is a slow-paced, melancholy track, can'tneverdidnothin' is packed with funky rockers, beginning with the first single "Till I Get to You." On this opener, Costa sings through the alphabet, with each letter standing for a lover, until she reaches "U." Kravitz ended up playing drums on the track.

"I've known his guitarist Craig Ross for a long time, and he told me to ask Lenny to play drums on the album because he loves to but no one ever asks him," says Costa. "So I called him up and said, 'Uh, hey, Lenny. Wanna come bash the kit?' And he said yeah! He had such a great time with us that he ended up playing on three songs. He just kept coming back!"

Kravitz enjoyed working with Costa so much that he invited her to open for him on his Electric Church tour earlier this month, blowing through twenty-seven cities through the end of May. "We're having a blast," says Costa. "Lenny and I are friends, and it's been really easygoing and fun." At the same time, she's been experiencing the best of both worlds, playing a string of club dates on her own. "It's my kind of fans, and the places are smaller and sweatier and more crowded," she says. "We get real down and dirty."

"I was gone for a long time, and I was itching to get back out there," says Costa. "Playing live -- that's the whole point of making records! You can feel a bit rusty, you know. But I've been so pleased to see that the fans are excited, that they haven't forgotten about me."