LOS ANGELES (AP) — Music has always been an emotional salve for Dawn Richard. In the early days of her career, she processed life’s adversities by dancing onstage and escaping in the grandeur of performance.
Now, the former member of Danity Kane is choosing to lean into stillness, forcing herself to rest in the moments between pain and freedom. Richard’s latest album, “Quiet in a World Full of Noise,” is her time to be vulnerable, showcasing her journey to stand in her truth, take time for herself and find hope at the end of the tunnel.
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Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
“I promised myself that if I did do this (album) with Spencer (Zahn), in the end, there would feel and be hope. And every musical journey I’ve been through, my music has had that hope at the end," Richard said.
Richard made headlines in September after she filed a lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, her former boss and collaborator, alleging that he manipulated and assaulted her. In the lawsuit filed Sept. 10, Richard is suing for unspecified damages as well as millions of dollars in income that she says she was denied. Combs' representatives have accused Richard of making “an attempt to rewrite history.”
Combs has been indicted on sex trafficking charges and has been held at a federal jail in Brooklyn since his Sept. 16 arrest.
Richard doesn’t directly address her lawsuit or time with Combs during an interview to discuss her new album. She says her new music — melancholic and poetic —was inspired by the loss of a family member and the stress of having parents who were in and out of the hospital.
“There was just a lot going on for me that added to the reality that if I don’t start speaking, I’m not going to be in the right place,” she said. “And it’s something that I think for me, music has always been a piece of therapy that has saved me.”
She says she’s been standing up for herself since the early days of her career, both as a member of Combs' “Making the Band 3” group Danity Kane and as a solo artist.
“As a Black woman, I had my story in it, and I’ve been very vocal about what that has been,” Richard says. There were moments when she felt like a product more than a human. She says her album “Goldenheart” was a metaphor for her struggles in the industry.
“(It) was about a warrior who felt she was like David and Goliath, this person that has this one little rock trying to fight these massive dragons,” she said. “And that was literally the story and the message that has been through most of my projects.”
Now, Richard wants others in the music industry to follow her on this new path of freedom, one where she is in control and creates music as a tool for healing and expression.
“I want people to feel like they can speak their truths and do it in whatever way they see they can. I want that change,” she said. “And I hope every woman, queer person, whomever, they feel safe enough to have that comfort to say, ‘I can speak on this. I have that quiet in me to speak on this.’”
Released earlier this month, “Quiet in a World Full of Noise” is Richard’s second album with multi-instrumentalist Zahn. The musical duo, who met in 2018 through indie pop musician Kimbra, previously worked on 2022’s “Pigments.”
“We give each other the space to really be ourselves,” said Zahn. “It’s a space that maybe is harder to access if you’re making music that is set out to be more commercial. Neither of us ever thought about that for better or for worse.”
Richard appreciated that Zahn didn’t judge her lyrics as they were building songs: “If anything, he said, ‘Woo, OK, let me play. Let me build around it.’ And that’s what you hope for.”
She sees “Quiet in a World Full of Noise” as a metamorphosis, a chance to lay bare some of her most intimate moments with the hope that listeners can find solace and comfort.
“I love the person that I’ve become. I love the musical person I’ve become. And this project speaks to what that journey has been and how I feel,” she said. “This is an honest process about me as a person, less about the things I’ve done and what I do, but who I am as a person and who I’m aspiring to be.”
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Richard has done.
Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Dawn Richard, left, and Spencer Zahn pose for a portrait to promote the album "Quiet in a World Full of Noise" in Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has arrived at a delicate moment as he weighs whether to order a U.S. military response against the Iranian government as it continues a violent crackdown on protests that have left more than 600 dead and led to the arrests of thousands across the country.
The U.S. president has repeatedly threatened Tehran with military action if his administration found the Islamic Republic was using deadly force against antigovernment protesters. It's a red line that Trump has said he believes Iran is “starting to cross” and has left him and his national security team weighing “very strong options.”
But the U.S. military — which Trump has warned Tehran is “locked and loaded” — appears, at least for the moment, to have been placed on standby mode as Trump ponders next steps, saying that Iranian officials want to have talks with the White House.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday. “However, with that said, the president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary, and nobody knows that better than Iran.”
Hours later, Trump announced on social media that he would slap 25% tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran “effective immediately” — his first action aimed at penalizing Iran for the protest crackdown, and his latest example of using tariffs as a tool to force friends and foes on the global stage to bend to his will.
China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Brazil and Russia are among economies that do business with Tehran. The White House declined to offer further comment or details about the president’s tariff announcement.
The White House has offered scant details on Iran's outreach for talks, but Leavitt confirmed that the president's special envoy Steve Witkoff will be a key player engaging Tehran.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and key White House National Security Council officials began meeting Friday to develop a “suite of options,” from a diplomatic approach to military strikes, to present to Trump in the coming days, according to a U.S. official familiar with the internal administration deliberations. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Trump told reporters Sunday evening that a “meeting is being set up” with Iranian officials but cautioned that “we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting.”
“We’re watching the situation very carefully,” Trump said.
Demonstrations in Iran continue, but analysts say it remains unclear just how long protesters will remain on the street.
An internet blackout imposed by Tehran makes it hard for protesters to understand just how widespread the demonstrations have become, said Vali Nasr, a State Department adviser during the early part of the Obama administration, and now professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.
“It makes it very difficult for news from one city or pictures from one city to incense or motivate action in another city,” Nasr said. “The protests are leaderless, they're organization-less. They are actually genuine eruptions of popular anger. And without leadership and direction and organization, such protests, not just in Iran, everywhere in the world — it’s very difficult for them to sustain themselves.”
Meanwhile, Trump is dealing with a series of other foreign policy emergencies around the globe.
It's been just over a week since the U.S. military launched a successful raid to arrest Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and remove him from power. The U.S. continues to mass an unusually large number of troops in the Caribbean Sea.
Trump is also focused on trying to get Israel and Hamas onto the second phase of a peace deal in Gaza and broker an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the nearly four-year war in Eastern Europe.
But advocates urging Trump to take strong action against Iran say this moment offers an opportunity to further diminish the theocratic government that's ruled the country since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
The demonstrations are the biggest Iran has seen in years — protests spurred by the collapse of Iranian currency that have morphed into a larger test of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's repressive rule.
Iran, through the country’s parliamentary speaker, has warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if Washington uses force to protect demonstrators.
Some of Trump's hawkish allies in Washington are calling on the president not to miss the opportunity to act decisively against a vulnerable Iranian government that they argue is reeling after last summer's 12-day war with Israel and battered by U.S. strikes in June on key Iranian nuclear sites.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on social media Monday that the moment offers Trump the chance to show that he's serious about enforcing red lines. Graham alluded to former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012 setting a red line on the use of chemical weapons by Syria's Bashar Assad against his own people — only not to follow through with U.S. military action after the then-Syrian leader crossed that line the following year.
“It is not enough to say we stand with the people of Iran,” Graham said. “The only right answer here is that we act decisively to protect protesters in the street — and that we’re not Obama — proving to them we will not tolerate their slaughter without action.”
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another close Trump ally, said the “goal of every Western leader should be to destroy the Iranian dictatorship at this moment of its vulnerability.”
“In a few weeks either the dictatorship will be gone or the Iranian people will have been defeated and suppressed and a campaign to find the ringleaders and kill them will have begun,” Gingrich said in an X post. “There is no middle ground.”
Indeed, Iranian authorities have managed to snuff out rounds of mass protests before, including the “Green Movement” following the disputed election in 2009 and the “woman, life, freedom” protests that broke out after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody of the state’s morality police in 2022.
Trump and his national security team have already begun reviewing options for potential military action and he is expected to continue talks with his team this week.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank, said “there is a fast-diminishing value to official statements by the president promising to hold the regime accountable, but then staying on the sidelines.”
Trump, Taleblu noted, has shown a desire to maintain “maximum flexibility rooted in unpredictability” as he deals with adversaries.
“But flexibility should not bleed into a policy of locking in or bailing out an anti-American regime which is on the ropes at home and has a bounty on the president’s head abroad,” he added.
Activists take part in a rally supporting protesters in Iran at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks with reporters at the White House, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
