Her approach isn’t lacking for lyrical ferocity, but there are moments where her words are as melded to the melody as a body floating in the ocean, the undulating current syncopated to a slow, steady flow of air into lungs. Kelela’s voice is now almost indistinguishable from the sound. Raven, her new album and first in six years, presents something further afield. 2017’s Take Me Apart was set squarely on the move - crash-landing on an Earth with crushed blues, where the club feels less like a backdrop and more like a necessary reprieve from the bullshit of a failed romance. Kelela’s second joint, Hallucinogen, became a breakup story told in reverse with its principle cosmonaut wandering the galaxy tethered only by bass and malleable melody. ![]() ![]() She then spent the next decade messing with the knobs and dials, while her longtime collaborators Nguzunguzu, LSDXOXO, Kingdom, and Fauzia grew adept at transforming her sensuality to all measures of textures. Kelela’s 2013 debut mixtape, Cut 4 Me, is a wondrous recombinant of flesh and tone, metal and concrete - its industrial clanging, furious dance beats, and warbling synths providing the backbone for a voice that is at once soft and ferocious.
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