Throughout her career, Kelela has felt she has had to straddle two audiences: Black fans who are mesmerized by her lush R&B vocals and white fans who are entranced by her club production, thus becoming “a point of discovery for both,” she says. “That’s how I was always thinking about it.” With her long-awaited second full-length, Raven — due Feb. 10, 2023, on her longtime independent label home, Warp Records — she plans to “service the people who are there in the front row and have always been there,” says Kelela. “Queer Black people.”
On Raven, Kelela offers poignant reflections about not allowing herself to be swallowed up in her sorrow but rather celebrating her self-renewal and relishing in her resilience. “As a person who has always felt outside, there’s a deep catharsis in finding an entire social network of people who are also on the outside and making a group based off that marginalization,” she says. “When I service my immediate community, I service myself. Before, I was taking that for granted. I would be like, ‘Those people are going to always be there no matter what I do.’ And I think that’s anti-Black, or there’s some internalized sh-t there that I don’t like, and that’s not serving me, that doesn’t help me.”
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