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How do you chart an intriguing course in a sea of sameness?
But interest from listeners was elusive.
WevediscussedBlack ingenuity under duress, how vital subgenres of electronic music were birthed in working class metropolitan communities.
But its white artists who get accolades for the stuff.
It wasnt until this year that a Black woman was awarded for Best Dance/Electronic Album at the Grammys.
She worried that the gesture would make her seem difficult.
Black womens assertiveness in the face of adversity is often pawned off as rage.
Ravensweeps the spectrum of emotions between anticipation and frustration.
The artist sounds as if she relishes subverting prescribed gender roles.
She also sounds like shes documenting the annoying responses shes heard after pledging to live more freely and comfortably.
Like SZAsSOS,Ravens aquatic sonics and references are manifestations of an underlying theme of romantic drift.
She picks over pieces of familiar structures, figuring out how they can be repurposed at sea.
Kelela pitches herself somewhere betweenDrexciyaandAaliyah.
Ravenis as notable for its tunefulness as for all the ways it corrodes and complicates its hooks.
She seeks agency in inaccessibility and quietude.
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