SAN FRANCISCO — “I haven’t really done press in a long time,” Tracy Chapman said as she settled onto a bench in the courtyard of San Francisco’s stately Fairmont Hotel last week, wearing a black beanie over her pulled-back, gray-flecked dreads.

Over the past decade, the singer and songwriter has remained nearly silent, though the past two years have brought renewed fervor for her tenderhearted folk music. In 2023, Luke Combs released a smash cover of her 1988 debut single, “Fast Car,” and the two performed a deeply stirring duet at last year’s Grammys. Still, Chapman has remained resolutely out of the public eye, passing on interviews about the second life of “Fast Car” and declining to show up at the Country Music Awards, where it took song of the year, making her the first Black woman, and Black songwriter, ever to win a CMA.

But Chapman, 61, agreed to this interview because she wants to talk about something she is particularly excited about: the vinyl reissue of her multiplatinum self-titled debut, which arrived Friday. “This is an opportunity for me to be able to say why I wanted to do this project and what it means to me,” she said, “instead of letting the chatter speak for myself.”

Flowers bloomed around her in rich shades of lilac and orange, but Chapman was attired in unobtrusive neutrals: a pale pink button-up under a black zip-up sweater beneath a casual, blazer-like jacket. (“The key to your comfort is to have layers,” she said of her longtime home city’s fickle climate.) Over an hour, she spoke about the album, and also much more — like that emotional Grammy performance (afterward, she “was weepy for weeks”), her penchant for notebooks (she recommended Roland Allen’s “The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper”), her disinterest in streaming music and the current state of that elusive shadow her best songs have always chased: the American dream.

For a figure who has become better known for her reserve than her public statements, Chapman was remarkably warm and open, quick with an easy, amiable laugh. She is a thoughtful and considered talker, speaking in full sentences that sometimes pause for long parenthetical asides, yet always close cleanly, returning to her original point.

Released when she was 24, her self-titled album introduced Chapman as a poetic, socially conscious lyricist and an uncommonly affecting vocalist in command of a deep, haunting alto. With sparse arrangements driven by Chapman’s acoustic guitar playing, the music on “Tracy Chapman” tackled injustice head on: “Across the Lines” is an autobiographical tale of segregation and racial strife; the bracing a cappella track “Behind the Wall” takes a hard look at domestic violence and the indifference of the police. Chapman’s knack for vividly bringing her all-too-human characters to life kept the album from feeling one-dimensional or didactic. It has also, nearly four decades later, kept these songs feeling fresh.

Chapman’s debut means so much to her in part because its overnight success, buoyed by a star-making performance at a televised benefit concert for Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday, gave her the power to erect certain boundaries around her personal life. In recent years, she has not been interested in touring (she hasn’t booked one since 2009) or even releasing new music (her most recent album, “Our Bright Future,” was issued the year before). When she made an offhand remark about missing instant feedback from audiences, she quickly batted away a follow-up question about whether she was considering touring: “No, no, not until I put out something new.”

But perhaps that day will eventually come, since she is, as ever, working on new material. “Whether or not I’m in the studio or going on tour, I’m always writing, always playing, always practicing,” she said. “It really is fundamental to who I am, and I think about music all the time.”

“I play it and I sing, probably annoying people around me,” she added. When I suggested that people around her were probably more than happy to hear her voice, she smiled. “I hope so.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: How long have you been working on this reissue?

A: In 2022, I wrote a note to the president of the label to ask if this was something he would consider. The idea originally was that the record would come out in its 35th year. But as you know, and anyone who can do math realizes, this is 37, and here we are. [Laughs] We just ran into a number of snags along the way. I listened to every test pressing.

Q: What was it like living with this material again?

A: It’s kind of surreal. It’s a little like “Groundhog Day.” Didn’t I just listen to this entire record yesterday for a couple hours? You’re trying to listen for technical issues. So that’s separate than what or how it makes you feel. But it took me back to my studio time with David Kershenbaum, who was the producer of the first record, and then to some extent thinking about when I wrote some of the songs. I didn’t allow myself to have too many moments of nostalgia.

Q: You were so young when you created some of those songs — 16 when you wrote “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.”

A: I started writing songs when I was 8 years old, and it was just one of these things that I honestly think was in my DNA. I come from a musical family: My mother sings, my sister sings, so music was in the fabric of my life. But for it to be the thing that altered the course of my life, in such a substantial way —

I felt like I was on a path to improving my situation when I was able to go to college. My mother always thought it was very important that me and my sister go to college. And we managed to do that, through scholarships, grants, all that sort of thing. I graduated with my major in anthropology, which was going to make me a lot of money. [Laughs] To even get to that point was a significant accomplishment for someone coming from a working-class background in Cleveland, Ohio.

Q: I read somewhere that though you were offered a record deal before you finished college, you told the label, “Hold on, let me graduate first.”

A: Yeah. I actually had a few random offers when I was in school, at Tufts. I would street perform in Cambridge and the subway whenever I had time to do it. Someone from Warner Music dropped their business card in my guitar case. At first I was like, “Eh, I don’t know if this is a real thing.” And I called the number, and he turned out to be who he said he was. And then I had another offer from Argentina, and I passed on that as well. Once I was out of college, there were also a few folk labels.

I ultimately chose this production company that was owned by a fellow student at Tufts, his father, Charles Koppelman. And I signed with them, and then they shopped my demo tape to various record labels. Bob Krasnow, at Elektra, he gave it the go.

Q: When you were playing on the street, were you performing some of the songs that would be on your debut album?

A: Yeah. I played some traditional folk songs, but I was mostly playing my original songs.

Q: Had you written “Fast Car” at that point?

A: I actually didn’t write “Fast Car” until after I had the record deal. I was in this holding pattern where we were trying to find a producer.

Q: Did suddenly having a record deal alter your writing process at all?

A: It didn’t. “Fast Car” was just written in the same way that I wrote everything else. Just playing, singing, late at night, early in the morning, and just working something through. I feel fortunate that I didn’t ever feel pressured by the label or my managers or anyone to try to write something that would be a hit. I don’t even know that I have that capability, so it’s good they didn’t ask.

Q: Thinking about the writing on this album, the language is so simple and straightforward. Part of the power of “Fast Car” is that anyone can understand those lyrics. It’s speaking to something universal.

A: Someone was asking me recently, how do you know when a song is finished? There’s a different answer for every song. With a song like “Fast Car,” it’s narrative. It’s a story. And so, once you answer the questions about who it’s about, what they’re doing or where they’re going, and if you’re satisfied with those answers, then you’ve come to the end. And because it’s a song, you’re thinking about the song structure as well. Although, a lot of my song structure is very unorthodox, and I think that’s another thing that indicates that I was not listening to a lot of songwriters in order to hone my craft. There are some standard practices that I’ve just ignored. When you play by yourself, you can do whatever you want. In part, that shaped the way that I developed.

Ultimately, a song has to make sense. That, for me, is a test. And I’ve certainly written songs that don’t. [Laughs] I think I’ve mostly not put them out in the world but, you know. It happens. But I’ve always had a listener, in the way that some writers have a reader, and my sister has been that person for me since the beginning. I think she has an innate sense of what is musical, and she always told me the truth.