Black at the unveiling of a billboard her parents bought her in Hollywood.   (Photo: Jason Laveris/Getty Images)

“Not to speak for Rebecca,” Baum says at brunch, “but it was really important for me to have five singles ready for her.” She then adds, with a little tension in her voice, “I instinctively feel that Rebecca has great songwriting capabilities, but we didn’t have time for her to work with writers, so it was important to find songs that she could have penned herself.”

I ask Black if she’s tried songwriting. “It’s so hard … It’s like … ” There’s a long pause, and then Black says, “You’re vibrating.”

She’s referring to her manager’s cell phone, which is now jittering across the table. Black, fully distracted again, resumes twiddling with her phone, ending the line of questioning.

Baum eventually pokes Black in the ribs to get her to face my way and takes the opportunity to snatch the phone away from her. I ask Black what she has done to invest in herself as an artist, now that the world is watching. More singing lessons? Dance training? She tells me that she’s been watching a lot of celebrity interviews. “I grew up being the girl who would always tune in to watch famous people talk about their careers, how they handled scandals and megafame. I’m trying to pick up tips,” she says without a trace of irony.

“You can imagine how many people are asking for interviews and how limited we are about it—that’s intentional,” Baum says. “Rebecca’s work speaks for itself, and nowadays you don’t have to do every interview, so this is special.”

Black is now tackling a new task before her: siphoning strawfuls of her iced tea into her glass of water, giving the beverage a sewage hue. “Rebecca is pioneering the way to do this,” Baum continues after taking one of the straws away. “She owns her own assets. As I believe you know, it would take artists twenty years to circle that material.” She’s right. Black has attained both cultural relevance and ownership over her work, a feat that usually takes other artists decades to achieve. She grabs a new straw and begins to pour liquid from her glass into Baum’s. When I ask her if there’s a specific sound or artist she’s emulating, Black repeats her undying devotion to Katy Perry, who is “not like those Disney kids. They are so in-the-box.” (A few days earlier, her publicist had rejected my request to take Black to the local record store, saying, “I don’t think that would work. She’s not that into music.”)

It occurs to me that Black may just be sick of talking about “Friday” or her nascent-yet-possibly-over-maybe-never-was singing career. Sitting at this table, she’s making it perfectly clear that she’d rather not have her day consumed by the adults around her, the way any kid her age would feel. Or perhaps what Ark Music Factory and Black’s parents, publicist, and manager have unwittingly created is a much savvier player than they could have imagined. Black seems to have fully internalized, probably subconsciously, a reality that may elude other recording artists: This interview will have no impact on her career. She doesn’t need this, or any other traditional outlets, for that matter, to get people’s attention.

When I asked her what she thinks of signing to a label, she cocks her head and says, “I am my label.”

Related:

• Archive: “Music Features”
• Table of Contents: Oct 3, 2011 issue of New York | Subscribe!