In a climate where plenty of artists prefer to cloak their reference material in secrecy, Kelela draws a refreshingly complete map. She’s so effective at communicating her musical ideas because she’s willing to share exactly what she’s studying for inspiration. For the past 13 years, she’s nurtured this curiosity alongside a deep sense of familiarity with her core audience, bringing them with her as she’s fused R&B vocals into multiple musical traditions: East Coast club, drum’n’bass, ambient, and her hometown D.C.’s go-go. When I interviewed the Maryland-raised singer about the remix version of 2023’s Raven, she was reading Amiri Baraka’s landmark 1963 work Blues People. “It’s making me feel very affirmed in my practice. The bridge-building and world-connecting that I’m doing,” she said at the time. She’s the quintessential music geek, visibly giddy to demonstrate her place within the pantheon of Black musicians across generations and genres.
Raven ended a years-long reprieve from public life by using metaphorical interpretations of water and emergence to lay out the importance of intentional solitude. It was the perfect post-pandemic record—reveling in IRL connection while still possessing the skills to embrace hermitude. It also solidified Kelela’s gift for intuition: knowing what people need to hear because she, too, is traversing similar sentiments. With her new album, new avatar, Kelela reintroduces her connection to her punk roots as she makes another case for those instincts.
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“The reality is, things aren’t better. Things have not been solved,” she said of her approach to the album in an interview with the Parisian DJ and journalist Naomi Clément. “Everything’s deeper into the shit, actually.” The mood is considerably heavier, especially in comparison to whatever early 2023 felt like. The U.S., in particular, has been directly engaged in assaults on foreign governments for nearly three years. The economy has suffered as a result. The tough job market is especially tough for Black women, who account for nearly 55 percent of female job loss in 2025, despite representing only 14 percent of the female workforce. Of course relationships—romantic or otherwise—would be strained. So when Kelela points to “shittiness,” the feelings expressed aren’t necessarily new, but they are intensified in response to crisis. What is new—at least to most—is that Kelela is executing her message through what she calls “guitar music,” which, in this case, is the indie and punk rock she enjoyed for much of her youth in the D.C. suburbs. What instrument could be a more natural choice to express a profound sense of rage, angst, and uncertainty?
Over producer Oscar Scheller’s shoegaze beat on “idea 1,” Kelela loses patience with a lover who’s suspended in an emotional stasis. “Pride and delusion, hide the solution deep in the ground,” she nudges, before getting to a more seething question: “Are you alive?” On “goin down,” the strums establish tension early as she constructs the story of a significant other who has betrayed her trust. Her falsetto on the pre-chorus pairs perfectly with the light strings before things take a heavier turn on the hook, bringing visions of Janet Jackson’s brief leather-clad, dance-rock moment in the late 1980s.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
