Forever Young

“I haven’t had my Red Bull yet,” Melisa Young offers by way of apology. With her nights increasingly spent as her lovable rapping alter ego, Kid Sister, the energy drink has become an integral part of her mornings. But this is the day before Young hits the road for a U.S. tour in support of her eagerly anticipated (and long overdue) debut album, Ultraviolet, for Downtown Records, and she’s taking it easy.

We’re sitting in the Chicago native’s sunny Albany Park condo, a modestly sized place decorated in pink hues that seems lived in but not too lived in: The spare bedroom is still empty, and in Young’s own bedroom, we spot an open suitcase, its contents spilling out. We’re here to talk about the record, why it’s been delayed for so many months and how she feels about the result, but Young’s mind is elsewhere. Barefoot and still in her pj’s (tank top and sweats), Young floats around the house, loading the dishwasher and telling us how excited she is that people are getting back into dance music. “People like Lil Jon are doing techno now,” she says. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, my God, these kids are starting a revolution with their dance music, I hope I’m not too late to the party.’ ”

Dance music’s climb back onto the charts is old news to the 29-year-old. “DJ Enuff—Biggie Smalls’s old DJ—did an interview with me in ’97,” she says, taking a seat at her glass dining table. “He was like, ‘I know this sounds silly, but we look to you because we’re fathers and mothers now, we’re old.’ I think of him as a visionary, and he’s looking to me now.”

Which makes sense, given how Kid Sister’s album shifts seamlessly among house, electro, pop and dubstep. But she dismisses these genre tags out of hand. “I guess we do have all these little flavors, like a Neapolitan pack, but really it’s all just electronic hip-hop,” she says. Still, when the producers span from underground U.K. dubstepper Rusko to Brian Kennedy, the man behind Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” well, that’s quite a range. Yet Young makes it work. And that, she explains, is why it took so long for her album to come out. “We pushed the album back because there were songs that stuck out, that didn’t flow.”

Our conversation with Young jumps from “the Beeears”—which rolls off her tongue with the same drawl that defines her playful rap flow—to bad tattoos to why superclubs are overrated. As she mimics bad dancing, swaying from side to side with her hands in fists, she complains about having to perform in clubs filled with girls with fake boobs and guys with precision-shaved eyebrows, thick necks and trash stashes. “The bouncers are assholes, it’s hell at the door, and I don’t even want to go in.”

Of the trials of a performer’s life, she adds, “I’ve never done coke or anything. Why would you do coke when you can get a Red Bull for $2? I’m already a happy-go-lucky kind of bitch. You’re either a balanced person going in or you’re not, and that’s going to keep you buoyant or you’re going to sink.”

Drugs, clubs and craziness aside, Young is in it for the long haul—whatever “it” might be. “I don’t want to be a 40-year-old rapper.” Instead, “I want to move on to movies, but acting is a tough gig,” she sighs. “That shit’s not easy. It’s harder than what I do. But would I like to be on Mad Men? Shooot, sign me up!”

Kid Sister hits up House of Blues Wednesday 25.