FEATURE:
Spotlight
I am going to feature in Spotlight, as we are just in 2023 and there are these incredible musicians who are going to change the face of music. One such super-talent is the brilliant Ravyn Lenae. Last year, she released an album both exceptional and underrated. HYPNOS is one I would recommend to everyone. I am going to bring in a few interview that relate to and promote the album – ending up with a positive review for the album too. To start, W spoke with Lenae about her debut album. She has released a few E.P.s, but this phenomenal album covers and discusses womanhood, romance, sensuality, and sexuality:
“Ravyn Lenae signed a deal with Atlantic Records when she was 16 and went on tour with the rapper Noname while she was still in high school. By 2018, when Lenae turned 19, she had already released three EPs. And as her career as a singer of slinky, experimental R&B songs started to take shape, a prevailing “wise-beyond-her-years” narrative developed around it. Well, she’s a teenager, it seemed to say. (“It’s hard to believe that someone so young could be bursting with so much talent,” one outlet wrote; she “radiates a maturity beyond her age,” said another.)
“Yeah… yes,” says Lenae, now 23, laughing with recognition as I say this. It’s a Thursday afternoon, the eve of her album release. In several hours, she’ll get together with a bunch of friends and family in Los Angeles, where she lives, to celebrate Hypnos—her full-length debut, and her first project of any sort in four years. So I ask: Did she take that time as a form of resistance against assumptions about her age?
Actually, there were moments when she feared waiting. “Especially as a young woman, there’s this pressure to keep up with the times,” she says. Maybe she wasn’t sufficiently established as an artist to take so much time to put out more music. People might forget about her; fans might not care anymore. But mostly, she just wanted to get the record right, however long it took. “I can make songs all day. It’s not about making enough songs. It’s about making songs that feel like now and that feel like me,” she says.
The result is Hypnos, which came out on May 20. It’s a 16-track “journey through where my brain has been,” Lenae says, delving sonically and lyrically into explorations of womanhood, romance, sensuality, and sexuality. She oversaw all the production, describing her role as something like a curator: She brought in a mix of new and familiar collaborators like the producers Monte Booker, Steve Lacy, and Kaytranada; and the musicians Smino, Mereba, and Foushée. “Every time, she’s been at a new level,” says Smino, who first met Lenae in 2015 at Chicago’s Classick Studios. “Her whole process is like, this is going to be my best shit.” Lenae “knows when she wants something,” he says—whether that’s a particular drum track or a feature on a song—and makes it happen.
Lenae grew up in Chicago, in a home filled with the classics of ’90s and ’00s R&B and hip-hop: Erykah Badu, Destiny’s Child, Goapele, Outkast, Busta Rhymes, India.Arie, Pharrell. “I think I grew up with this sharp ear, in a way, for good music,” she says. She has two younger sisters. “There aren’t that many men in my family, so a lot of feminine energy,” she says. (That’s her grandmother’s voice at the end of the Hypnos track “Inside Out.”) But she was the only one who wanted to make music herself; her family members primarily pursued what she describes as “corporate careers.” (Her grandfather, once a fairly well-known doo-wop singer in Panama, excepted.)
Lenae started working on Hypnos in 2019, not long after she finished touring her third EP, Crush. She knew she wanted to write a full-length album, but beyond that, the project was pretty nebulous. She traveled continuously between Chicago and Los Angeles, meeting different producers and exploring different sounds. And she was listening to a lot of Black women artists for inspiration—Brandy most of all. She wrote “Venom,” the second track, with Booker in Chicago, and its energy—“fresh, exciting, mysterious, and a little weird and eerie,” she says—helped crystallize the project.
But the pandemic forced her to swerve. “I think everyone can relate to feeling very lost and almost unsure of what your purpose is in the world, and if your job is important and shit like that. It took me a while to gear back up,” she says. In August 2020, she relocated to Los Angeles. Many of her musician friends from Chicago, including Smino and Booker, had already moved there, and the city’s warm weather and easy access to nature started to look more appealing as the pandemic wore on. She describes the songs that emerged from lockdown, like “Inside Out,” as more inward-looking than some of the pre-pandemic music”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Barrington Darius
I am excited to introduce this amazing artist to you. Maybe you know about her already, but there are quite a few – especially here in the U.K. – that may not know her name and music. Let’s hope that is rectified now! Harper's BAZAAR spent time with an R&B prodigy and highlighted her Hypnos: In Context documentary:
“Growing up in a very female-dominated family instilled in me a confidence and sureness about my thoughts and my ideas, and the way I think about things,” she explains. “Especially being a young Black woman in a very male-dominated industry, it’s easy to feel shy about, you know, stating your opinion or your wants and needs without being labeled a bitch or hard to work with.”
The process of speaking up during the creative process is something Lenae says she learned after years of practicing and watching others. Specifically, during a string of openings for bigger acts, including a tour with Noname in 2017, followed by a summer tour with SZA and a 2018 tour with Jorja Smith.
“Being able to go on my first tours with Black women was really special for me. And I think that’s really important, just for representation, and making sure that you’re doing your part as an artist. I just feel the responsibility to bring other Black women on my journey with me,” she says. On Hypnos, she brings along Steve Lacy, Mereba, Foushee, and Smino, all collaborators who came from, what she calls, a “meaningful process” of selection.
As Lenae works on lengthening a historic string of prodigies and protégées, she calls on her own judgment for the final say.
“Writing this album was an exercise in striking the balance between writing from this otherworldly place, as well as introducing my own life experiences and what I’ve been through,” she says. “This is the most honest and raw I’ve ever been”.
Before getting to a review of the stunning HYPNOS, Loud and Quiet celebrated an avant-garde Black pioneer whose HYPNOS album was/is an undoubted work of brilliance. I am in no doubt that Ravyn Lenae is going to join the pantheon of musical greats! You can tell already – at such an early stage in her career – that she is going to inspire legions of other artists:
“Ravyn’s brilliance as a songwriter is most apparent on this track as it draws on ideas pertaining to familial history and the power of given names; she illustrates the need to keep pressing on in a way that recalls Janet Jackson’s anthem of Black solidarity, ‘Can’t Be Stopped’.
“That song serves as a love letter to who I am and the people I come from,” she says. “[It’s about] putting some respect on my own name, especially as a Black person where it feels like the world wants to humble us all the time.” These notions are further explored on ‘Where I’m From’ featuring Mereba, a rootsy folk track grappling with the singular experience African-Americans know all too well – that of not knowing the origins of their cultural bloodlines and heritage.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sophie Barloc
Asked why she specifically sought out Mereba to join her, she explains: “Her father is Ethiopian, but she doesn’t know the lineage of her mother. It was cool to have that perspective of knowing half of where she comes from but still yearning for that sense of the unknown that many African Americans experience.” While themes of lineage are central to ‘Inside Out’ and ‘Where I’m From’, in a more abstract way they were crucial to the very existence of Hypnos as a whole. Janet Jackson, Kelis, Destiny’s Child, Deniece Williams and Minnie Riperton have all been cited by Ravyn as part of the genealogy that influenced the look, sound and feel of the album – and she doesn’t feel that it does a disservice to her own uniqueness to acknowledge that. “I’ve found people get weird about stating the people they’re inspired by, but I think it’s a beautiful thing when you have such an amazing, strong pedigree of Black women who paved the way. Knowing our history and looking to that to inform what we have now is so important as an artist.”
The chamber and orchestral soul Minnie Riperton created with Charles Stepney on her 1970 album Come To My Garden abundantly looms over Hypnos’ closing track, ‘Wish’.
“When I wrote it, it felt like Minnie but also that climax in a Disney movie where everything is revealed to the main character. When they can see all the lessons they’ve learned on their journey.” The ballad’s theatrical properties with its graceful and lush string ornamentations deliberately ends with what classical music specialists would call an imperfect and abrupt cadence. “I approached that song like it was the end of a journey, but with the promise of another. That’s why the song never really feels like it’s complete.”
That’s appropriately symbolic of what Hypnos represents at this stage in the story of Ravyn Lenae: a massive leap into unknown territory, her wings growing on the way down in the knowledge that there is more for her to yield as an artist and a woman”.
I will end with a review of HYPNOS from Pitchfork. A 2022 album that was overlooked by some, it is one that you need to listen to. It won a lot of great and very positive review. Each recognising its brilliance and undoubted importance:
“The immediate appeal of HYPNOS is just how tantalizing Lenae’s arrangements are amid familiar soundscapes. On previous songs like “Sticky” or “Free Room,” Lenae tapped into her higher register, but here Lenae’s soprano has become a gravitational force. On the Kaytranada-produced “Xtasy,” Lenae’s sultry and blithe singing washes over the beat like water beading off a car. “Lullabye,” a kiss-off to a former lover, moves through melismatic harmonies like clockwork. “I hope she keeps you warm at night/This is our lullabye,” she croons, but you know she’s going to be OK just by her composure.
For someone already lauded for her singing, Lenae’s vocal technique on HYPNOS is the work of a perfectionist. Her sound has blossomed into a potpourri of the R&B female icons of the last three decades, but especially of the ’90s and early ’00s. The most obvious comparison here is Aaliyah, but Lenae’s vocal composition honors many on HYPNOS, pulling from Brandy’s “vocal bible” riffs and Solange’s visionary harmonies, Kelela’s outré artistry, and Destiny’s Child’s lullabying melodies. “Venom,” a seething funkadelic synth-led track, feels caught between something off OutKast’s Stankonia and Brandy’s “What About Us?”. “Why do you play me for a fool?” Lenae asks, before descending into harmonies that unravel like those on Solange’s “Rise.” On “Cameo,” Lenae brings back Lacy and frequent collaborator Luke Titus for a funky opener that recalls the synth bass sound of Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon.” The influences are never distracting so much as they are twinkling, fun, and carefully blended.
Sounding like someone else is by no means the limit to Lenae’s creative yield; she is as self-assured as she is exploratory. Rather than replicating a nostalgia that’s become commonplace, she has earnestly studied these forebears and applied their techniques to her own brand of soft and intense music. “Light Me Up,” the album’s sexy, slow-burning centerpiece, creates a moodboard of R&B references, and digs deep into the excitement of sexual exploration: “Come inside/Show me you’re the leader/Switchin’ sides/Make me a believer,” she begs. Lenae’s weightless falsetto and stimulated writing make it a female contemporary to D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel).”
The way Lenae seems to examine and deliberate her decisions in real time makes her a magnetic narrator. On “M.I.A.,” she takes stock of her life and goes full escapist mode in ways that commit to her shapeshifting tendencies. Taking notes from the Afrobeats artist Amaarae, the song is slick and coolheaded, cheekily rhyming about the freedom to sneak away at a moment’s notice. On “3D,” Lenae reunites with Zero Fatigue’s Monte Booker and Smino for a wobbly groove that puts Lenae in the driver’s seat of a relationship moving too fast. “I’m asking you to keep it light/Things are better movin’ slow,” she cautions, raising her pitch with each word of warning. In her earlier work with Booker and Smino, Lenae sounded like a gorgeous vocalist, but as HYPNOS emphasizes, she can be all of those things and the star of her own story.
While the majority of HYPNOS’ themes are commonplace to early twentysomething experience—heartbreak, growing apart, trifling men, finding your footing—Lenae makes them feel easily digestible and less existential. On “Skin Tight,” she ponders the kinetic energy of a past relationship with grace and respect beyond her years. The scornful acoustic number “Mercury,” with “Deep End” singer Fousheé, initially comes off as a minor song on the album. But Lenae’s airy, level-minded approach is captivating—making this a bold and bittersweet highlight. Even as she whispers “I fucking hate you/Don’t ever speak my name” it never sounds all that painful, more like pity in the face of disgust.
Even when heartache leaves her distraught, Lenae is laser-focused on reaching for spiritual affirmation and aggrandizement. The album ends on the feather touch of heartfelt closer “Wish,” which brings together Lenae’s dizzying expression and limitless execution as a vocalist. “Every night you close your eyes, make a little wish,” Lenae sings, tip-toeing down the words. It could lift you out of the deepest hole. Even as she touches on trends and familiar themes, it’s Lenae’s delivery, confidence, and alluring presence that makes HYPNOS stand apart. As she considers her anxieties, hopes, and doubts, she reveres the musical icons before her in ways that show just how ready she is for her own turn”.
I shall round up now. It is always wonderful spotlighting a brilliant artist who is primed for greatness! Ravyn Lenae is going to be an icon before long. Following the release of HYPNOS, so many eyes and ears are directed her way. The twenty-three-year-old Chicago-born artist is an absolute sensation! Among the top tier of incredible artists that will define 2023, the peerless Ravyn Lenae is going to enjoy…
A golden career.
_____________
Follow Ravyn Lenae
