Kelela wants her songs to feel as complex as real life, a goal that demands a deliberate and often time-consuming approach to songwriting. The D.C.-born artist admits that her process typically begins with gibberish, allowing word sounds to dictate the emotional trajectory of a track before she settles on specific lyrics. She explains that this method is essential for capturing genuine, nuanced meaning, even when the final product feels like a spontaneous creation.
Her latest project, the album new avatar, represents the most efficient studio run of her career, largely due to her collaboration with producer Oscar Scheller. The record sees Kelela exploring a "White Bag" aesthetic, a playful term for her engagement with the alt-rock sounds that shaped her early musical interests. This creative pivot is further highlighted in her new Spotify Live Room session, where she delivers a compelling cover of Incubus’s "Mexico." For Kelela, the choice of Incubus is personal; she views the band’s Morning View as a foundational record that resonates deeply within Black communities, serving as a gateway for many who felt like outsiders in the rock genre.
The performance, which includes strings and a reinterpretation of her own track "idea 1," showcases her commitment to minimalism. She emphasizes that "negative space" is a crucial instrument in her work, providing the air necessary for her lyrics to breathe. By stripping away extraneous production, she allows the emotional core of her music to take precedence. This focus on reduction is a hallmark of her career, tracing back to the early days of the Night Slugs and Fade to Mind scenes.
Beyond the technicalities of arrangement, Kelela is candid about the structural forces that shape the music industry. When asked why the concept of genre remains such a pervasive obsession, her answer is direct: "Because of racism." She points to the origins of American popular music, noting that categories like "R&B" were historically constructed as "race records" to serve capitalist interests. She argues that these rigid classifications are merely modern iterations of historical, exclusionary practices that ignore the sonic reality of the music itself.
Reflecting on these themes, she highlights the importance of historical context, citing seminal works like Amiri Baraka’s Blues People and contemporary scholarship such as Matthew D. Morrison’s BlackSound as essential reading for understanding the industry's legacy. By grounding her work in this awareness, Kelela continues to challenge the industry's status quo while crafting music that feels both intimate and expansive.
