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Oct 09, 2017 By Laura Studarus

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when Kelela hadn’t figured out how to translate her ideas into music. Nine years ago, a meeting with Yukimi Nagano changed than when the Little Dragon frontwoman gave her some annoying simple advice: jam with your friends and see what happens. At the time, Kelela wasn’t a believer. Could it really be that easy? But three months later, she had her first original song.

From taking the stage at the Hollywood Bowl in a lineup curated by Solange, to guest spots with Danny Brown, Gorillaz, and Future Brown, to her own recently released debut album Take Me Apart (out now on Warp), she’s since become a recognized force in the music industry. Still, Kelela says the elemental craft of songwriting hasn’t changed much. Just sit down and down it. It’s just that lately, between a rising profile, and a society riddled with strife, the stakes are so much higher. But thanks to game changers like Solange and Kendrick Lamar, both which she name-checks as debunking the idea of R&B’s lack of innovation, she’s finally in the position to be heard.

“Anyone who tells you they’re not affected by the outside world is lying,” Kelela declares, calling on the way to her Los Angeles rehearsal space. “I feel like that is not true. I think also on a basic level; I am trying to rebut a lot of things I find problematic in the world. At the same time, maybe embrace things that aren’t being embraced or being exalted. That’s sort of what I’m thinking about. Bringing things to the surface that people aren’t thinking about. Answering to stereotyping. Answering to the marginalization…the conversation around whiteness and white privilege and Black Lives Matter, there’s a lot of new language that entered the conversation. It’s not new language, but it is language that’s new to a very public sphere. I think that’s something that helps people understand and receive where I’m coming from.”

Along with her mixtape debut Cut 4 Me and 2015 EP Hallucinogen, Take Me Apart marks another chapter in the musician’s sonic rebellion, a lead-by-example document of a woman refusing to be tied to a single sonic idea. Presiding over a deep bench of heavy-hitting producers (including Ariel Rechtshaid, Arca, and Mocky) Kelela’s acrobatic alto soars over skittering electronics, drum and bass beats, and slow-burning keyboard compositions. This is her Janet Jackson in space moment, an exploration of the seemingly contrarian idea that being tough and sensitive are mutually exclusive.

There’s a belief that if you’re winning, you’re a strong woman,” Kelela confirms, expanding on yet another trope she’s hoping to dismiss. “You’re overtly strong and tough. You don’t break down. Especially for black woman. People expect us to be the rock. The person who you can cry on their shoulder. I’d love to add to musical and visual language that answers to that.”

The album is also Kelela’s attempt to explore the before, during and aftermath of two long-term relationships. She laughs at the idea she’s capable of writing from a conceptual viewpoint, and confirms that her often self-analytical and heady lines, like the “Onanon” chorus which contains the telling declaration, “It’s not a break up, it’s just a breakdown” come from a very real place. (“I don’t think I’ll get to conceptual albums for a little bit,” she admits. “It goes from this part of my life, to that part of my life. And then the next album will probably be from the next part of my life.”) It’s a diverse sense of self that she’s comfortable exploring. As her music reveals, Kelela isn’t a romantic or a realist—she’s every point on the scale at once.

“I feel like a romantic, in that I love the delight and discomfort of that we experience when we have a crush and the way that it’s happening at the same time,” she muses. “It’s terrifying and delicious. I’m obsessed with that feeling. When I feel that feeling I love it. I feel alive. I feel like I’m tapped into what’s really good in the world. When it comes to the other side, through the years I know that through my experience I’m trying to be wiser every time I approach a new relationship. I think there’s a notion that part of being in love is a certain type of suffering. I don’t think it has to be that way. Pain is fine, but despair and continuous feeling of discomfort is not…I’m trying to operate with more wisdom but without losing the child-like approach to love and goodness. I never want to not have that response to romance. I never want to feel jaded. My music is for people to restore their faith in love. If you’re jaded it’s a perfect remedy. I want to make it easy for people to access that emotion.”