Ilana Kaplan is a Staff Editor at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. Her work has previously appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vogue and more.

For as long as Jessie Murph can remember, music has always been what she's wanted to do.

"It was always my safe space," the singer/songwriter, 20, tells PEOPLE over the phone. "It was always when things were feeling loud or too much or anything like that, it was my first go-to."

But it was around 10 or 11 years old that the Nashville-born, Alabama-raised musician knew that being an artist was going to be her career path. "The first instrument I learned was the ukulele and then my grandparents had this s---y keyboard that I would play on," she recalls. "And I would learn covers on YouTube."

Over the years, Murph soaked in the music of Adele, Amy Winehouse and Drake before carving out a singular country-meets-pop-meets-hip-hop sound of her own. "I never want to just be one genre," she notes.

With the help of TikTok and YouTube, Murph was discovered and signed to Columbia Records in 2021. Her debut studio album, That Ain't No Man That's The Devil, was released earlier this fall.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Murph -- one of PEOPLE's 2024 Ones to Watch for music -- opens up about what she learned from collaborating with Maren Morris, working with Jelly Roll and what she envisions for the future of her career.

My No. 1 has always been Adele. I've always been so fascinated by her voice, and I just think she as an artist is incredible and so genuine, and I just love how she's done everything. But I don't know, I listened to a lot of different things growing up. A lot of Amy Winehouse. A lot of country music was all around me; I'm from Alabama, so it was just something that was always part of my environment. And then in middle school I started listening to a lot of rap, and I don't know, a lot of different goodies going on.

It just made sense in my mind. I loved doing it, and I was like, I might as well record it and post it. Then I did that, and one of them blew up and I remember thinking, "Oh wow, if these can blow up, maybe one of my songs can blow up." So I started posting my own songs, and now we're here.

Well, I grew up in a musical household, and it was never anything serious. There was always music being played in the house and so forth. When labels started reaching out, she had a lot of knowledge about what was good and what wasn't good because there's a lot of f---ery that could go down if you're not aware of what's happening, which I was not. But she definitely helped me navigate that whole process.

I think I was probably 16 when it started, maybe. I remember coming out of cheer practice one day, and I looked at my phone and [one of my covers] blew up. I remember being so just shocked and ecstatic, and I ran home and went and covered a bunch more songs and posted them. I was so excited.

I don't know that I feel like there's been a specific moment. It's been a slow, steady climb -- or at least that's what it feels like. There have been specific moments where I was like, "Wow, this is really insane." But I'm not sure if there was one moment.

I don't even remember really how it went down exactly, but it was during Covid, so I was taking all these meetings in my bedroom with my mom. We would Zoom and meet these people and met with Columbia, and I loved them and the rest is history.

I still feel similarly about it. There's so much s--- that I like to do, and I don't ever want to be held into one category. I think that the country will always be a part of my sound because of where I'm from. I feel like it's just in me in that sense, but I don't think I'll ever be fully country.

Wow, that song feels like it happened so long ago. I was definitely going through something not good at that time. That whole era is just a bunch of sad songs, but "Where Do You Go" was just me just trying to be okay, I think. People really connected with it, which was really sick and healing at the same time. It made me feel less alone. That is a really special song to me.

There's definitely an overarching theme. Anger was probably one of the biggest themes of That Ain't No Man That's The Devil. I had a lot of built-up anger I was holding in specifically around the topic of men in my life and things I've witnessed and had grown up seeing. Something set me off, and I had to get it all out.

I was writing a song called "Son of a Bitch" for the album ... I always knew it was something, and I needed to use it for something. Then I ended up grouping all the songs together, and I was like, "Damn, that line encompasses the whole album."

I had this really bad habit of playing songs that are unreleased way before they come out, so I was actually playing a good amount of the album before it came out. I was so excited to be able to play the songs I wasn't playing, and I love the album so much and getting to see people sing it has been so fun.

Honestly, I wrote "Sip" very recently. I posted it without talking to anybody about it first, it blew up, and I had to put it out. I love spur-of-the-moment things like that. They really excite me and light me up, especially when there's no plans for anything. Coming off of such a serious album with so many heavy emotions, I needed something like that for my soul, and that's kind of where I'm at in my personal life. Life's good at the moment, and I feel like my art always reflects what I'm going through.

That was my first collab. I've always been such a huge fan of her ever since I was little and I wrote "Texas," and she's from there, and then she ended up getting on the song. It was the most surreal thing ever.

No, to be honest, I'm such a big fan of her that I was really quiet when we shot the music video and everything, but she's the sweetest person ever. It was also my first time doing a collab, and I was nervous. But I think she's incredible and such a powerful, strong, great woman and somebody to look up to. When I found out she was down for that [song], I was like, "This is the best day of my life."

One of the things that I really took away from the experience is just how sweet she was. You never know when you're meeting somebody, and she's such a genuine, sweet human. That's so inspiring to me because I love it when people are the same way they seem online, in person. She's like, "If you ever need anything, I'm here."

Jelly reached out before "Wild Ones" was a thing and invited me to come to his show in Arkansas and sing a song with him. I went, and we sang "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd together, super random, super fun. So, I got to meet him, and we became friends. I had written "Wild Ones," and he heard it, and he was down to get on it. I thought it would be such a crazy combo of sounds. Then I went to the studio with him and he made his verse. The rest is history.

That dude is such a funny human. Every time I'm around him I'm laughing about something. He's the greatest, and anything that comes out of that dude's mouth is inspirational. He's just such an inspiring human. You can just tell how grateful he is for everything in life, and that that is something I really look up to and strive to be like.

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People have definitely just told me to remain myself, be humble and always stay close to family, and that's something that's always just stuck with me. It might've been Jelly Roll, I'm not really sure.

Diplo was actually the first person to ever reach out to me, famous person-wise. It was right when I got signed or maybe before I got signed even, and we were just talking about collab-ing or making something together. Then, a couple years later that song ended up happening. Polo G's on that, too, which was really sick. He's one of my favorites.

I definitely want to branch into makeup and fashion, but music is my main priority. The rest that comes with it is cool. I love performing, too, but being actually in the studio and getting to make music is something that just lights me up. It's the one place I feel like myself and like I am safe, I love it so much, and I'm always going to do it. One of my biggest goals is to win a Grammy, and so that's something that I look forward to, and I hope happens one day. An arena tour [would be great]!