On her new album ‘new avatar,’ Kelela traces a line from her own refusal to compartmentalize to what she wants for her Black queer fans.
"The very essence of being queer is not existing within a binary," she shares in her new interview with Naomi Clément. That resistance to categories, she says, shaped how she built this album — one that folds guitar, rock, and hardcore influences into a sound rooted in R&B and Black musical tradition.
She's speaking specifically to Black listeners who grew up loving genres coded as white or "other" (rock, metal, hardcore, etc.) and who learned to split themselves accordingly, showing up as "one of the only four Black people at the hardcore show." ‘new avatar,’ she says, is "a love letter" to those listeners. It’s an attempt to let them hold every part of what they love at once, without doing the work of separating it out.
@kelelam's new 12-track project is out now, with features from @pinkpantheress2, @FousheeLive, and A.K. Paul.