\n<\/p>\n
K<\/span>eiyaA had been grinding in New York\u2019s experimental jazz and hip-hop scenes for a good six years before her 2020 debut album, Forever, Ya Girl. Self-released on Bandcamp to make some cash while couchsurfing, the record totally shifted her life\u2019s course. A low-key yet potent swirl of bedroom pop, R&B and electronic music that zeroed in on feelings of solitude and uncertainty, it struck a chord with critics at tastemaker sites such as Pitchfork and the Fader and became one of the year\u2019s defining underground records.<\/p>\n It also allowed her to tour the world; at the same time, the 33-year-old producer, singer and multi-instrumentalist born Chakeiya Richmond immediately began to feel the pressure of following it up, stress compounded by the end of a toxic relationship. \u201cI was like, at worst, [the follow-up] has to be just as good. At best, it has to be better. How am I gonna do that? When you put that expectation on yourself, you\u2019re not actually gonna meet that,\u201d she says, sitting on the patio of a London cafe. Having struggled with depression her whole life, she experienced a renewed, debilitating spell. \u201cThere was the survival mode loop of like, couch rotting, bed rotting, having to work up [the energy] to take care of myself in general, let alone get to the computer to make music.\u201d<\/p>\n KeiyaA also noticed that she was changing herself to meet expectations. \u201cThere was a difference between the way I would dress myself than what I would accept when I was styled by someone,\u201d she says. KeiyaA brings up the heavy tan shirt dress she wore to play NPR\u2019s Tiny Desk Concert. \u201cI\u2019m grateful for the women who helped me find that dress, but I think I also felt like: I\u2019m a fat woman and they\u2019re trying to cover me up. I want to be snatched \u2013 I tend to wear clothes that are close to my body and black, and I like to show off my tattoos. When I watched [footage of] that Tiny Desk, I was like, \u2018What am I wearing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In the blazing sun, KeiyaA is the picture of an ascendant off-duty star: her peach sunglasses, long curly black hair and tattooed arms make her hard to miss. She punctuates long, thoughtful ideas about life and art with peals of soft laughter. At the same time, she speaks with the openness of someone unwilling to put up armour in order to inure herself to the indignity and intensity of the music industry.<\/p>\n Today she recognises that part of her was trying to capitulate to her community \u2013 her then-boyfriend was in the underground rap scene \u2013 and the teachers she had worked with when studying jazz at university. \u201cI wanted neo-soul, hip-hop, rap greats to respect it \u2013 I wanted people like Madlib to respect my production,\u201d she says, between sips of her flat white. \u201cForever, Ya Girl was 100% me, but I also feel like there was a part of me that was trying to prove something to the elders. To show a certain type of respectability, or something. I\u2019m still figuring that out.\u201d<\/p>\n KeiyaA\u2019s second album Hooke\u2019s Law is, at its core, about shaking off those expectations and finding a way to make music that\u2019s free and totally intrinsic to her experience. Her first release for big-budget indie label XL Recordings, it is an odyssey of jazz, pop, experimental composition and club music which she wrote and produced single-handedly. Hooke\u2019s Law is a dense, rewarding listen: tempos melt and crystallise; the lyrics can be raw and ragged or totally raging, and they\u2019re often jabbed by terse samples or abrupt beat switches. It is an expansive, tightly constructed album that many will hail as the album of the year.<\/p>\n <\/span>KeiyaA: \u2018the gig starts when you step foot in the venue\u2019.<\/span> Photograph: Bre Johnson\/BFA.com\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n For a while, KeiyaA felt that she should be grateful for any attention she received. Born on the south side of Chicago, she was a musician from a young age. The jazz musicians she had grown up around taught her that \u201cthe gig starts when you step foot in the venue \u2013 when you communicate to your fans and to the crowd and staff you are in performance mode.\u201d<\/p>\n That mode of thinking could only go so far. After the release of Forever, Ya Girl, she had to contend with the idea that people suddenly thought of her as KeiyaA the indie star, rather than the human being Chakeiya. \u201cThen I noticed it kept extending further and further past the gig. Now I\u2019m outside getting some ice-cream \u2013 \u2018Are you KeiyaA?\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cOr like, at a party where I just want to shake ass with my friends, but now \u2018KeiyaA\u2019s at this party\u2019 \u2013 especially if I\u2019m with friends who are also famous, it\u2019s like \u2018KeiyaA and Kelela are at this party\u2019, and people are staring, and suddenly you have a meet-and-greet line forming around you. I just want to shake my tail feather.\u201d<\/p>\n Interacting with her new fandom sometimes felt depersonalising, as if she had to meet expectations of who \u201cKeiyaA\u201d was; that pushing back would have negative repercussions for her career. \u201cOn my travels, people would constantly [say things] like \u2018Oh, you\u2019re actually really sweet and quiet and childlike.\u2019 I\u2019d be like, well, what did you expect? \u2018We expected you to be very serious, kind of like a diva, very commanding\u2019,\u201d she recalls. \u201cPeople expect me to be this sage, measured; everything I say is a profound one-liner. I\u2019m like, it took me days to write those lyrics, guys!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n A lot of the songs on Hooke\u2019s Law deal with this newfound attention, as well as the difficulties of knowing whose interest in her was genuine. \u201cI\u2019m over here like, \u2018I just wanted to be loved and accepted. Anybody want to love me? Hello, I\u2019m worthy of love, guys!\u2019 and people being like, \u2018I want what you have\u2019, or \u2018I\u2019m really inspired by you\u2019, and me being like, OK, I\u2019ll take that,\u201d she says. Sometimes, what she thought was a mutual desire for connection turned out to be more one-sided. \u201cIf someone\u2019s asking for something, I\u2019m gonna help them \u2013 but then you notice over time, like, \u2018Oh, you copied and pasted that sound, where\u2019d you get that sound from? I read your interview and you were inspired by the film that I showed you.\u2019 But it\u2019s like, I hate even noticing it! These things sound so silly.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n It was around 2022 that KeiyaA began properly engaging with making music again. Experimenting with Auto-Tune allowed her to depersonalise the process. She likens it to \u201cstepping into a mecha suit\u201d \u2013 the kind of robot suit a superhero might use to fight a powerful enemy. By 2023, she was ready to force herself to snap out of her creative fugue. \u201cI was like, what are you gonna do? Try to make something purposely for someone else\u2019s approval? What would that even sound like?\u201d she says. She turned her frustrations into an album whose lyrics say literal fuck-yous to landlords, insincere actors and violent colonial histories. \u201cI definitely looked to the way punk expresses anger, the way metal expresses all the shit deeply, the way goth music expresses sadness and longing and desire, to inform the way I channelled those feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n Those influences had been in KeiyaA\u2019s head for a long time; Hooke\u2019s Law doesn\u2019t sound<\/em> like nu-metal, but it pays tribute to the nu-metal-head she was as a teen. \u201cThere was a part of me that really related to the white male hubris of nu-metal stuff as a teenager \u2013 a lot of those bands were from the midwest, trailer park, hood and speaking about their emotions in a very simple way,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the time, I didn\u2019t really know that they were reinterpreting Black sounds and inspired by hip-hop, which is why I was like, OK, intellectually, I\u2019m not gonna have as strong of a relationship with this music \u2013 it felt like a betrayal to me as a Black queer woman. But I listened to it again recently and I\u2019m like, this shit still hits.\u201d She has been thinking about trying to write in conventional pop structures, inspired by the melodic US indie-rock band Pinback. \u201cHistorically, I\u2019m a goth \u2013 I either love the girls or, like, really hard, punk metal music.\u201d<\/p>\n That is KeiyaA\u2019s MO right now: trying hard to accept that the ideas she once held about all aspects of her life may be more mutable than they once seemed. When she was in the depths of her depression after the release of Forever, Ya Girl, she spiralled, thinking that maybe life wasn\u2019t worth living if she couldn\u2019t find clear answers for everything. And then, one day, she asked herself: \u201cReally? Are you sure?\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was like, did you die? No. It hurts really bad. It\u2019s really hard, it\u2019s weird, it may be something you hold for ever. But did you die? No!\u201d<\/p>\n Hooke\u2019s Law is released via XL Recordings on 31 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KeiyaA had been grinding in New York\u2019s experimental jazz and hip-hop scenes for a good six years before her 2020 debut album, Forever, Ya Girl. Self-released on Bandcamp to make some cash while couchsurfing, the record totally shifted her life\u2019s course. A low-key yet potent swirl of bedroom pop, R&B and electronic music that zeroed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[863,14743,14744,686,1953,7128,2878,14742,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-24228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-feather","10":"tag-keiyaa","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-noise","13":"tag-shake","14":"tag-shut","15":"tag-tail","16":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}