Raven

by 
AlbumFeb 10 / 202315 songs, 1h 2m 40s
Alternative R&B Electronic
Popular Highly Rated

The nearly six-year period Kelela Mizanekristos took between 2017’s *Take Me Apart* and 2023’s *Raven* wasn’t just a break; it was a reckoning. Like a lot of Black Americans, she’d watched the protests following George Floyd’s murder with outrage and cautious curiosity as to whether the winds of social change might actually shift. She read, she watched, she researched; she digested the pressures of creative perfectionism and tireless productivity not as correlatives of an artistic mind but of capitalism and white supremacy, whose consecration of the risk-free bottom line suddenly felt like the arbitrary and invasive force it is. And suddenly, she realized she wasn’t alone. “Internally, I’ve always wished the world would change around me,” Kelela tells Apple Music. “I felt during the uprising and the \[protests of the early 2020s\] that there’s been an *external* shift. We all have more permission to say, ‘I don’t like that.’” Executive-produced by longtime collaborator Asmara (Asma Maroof of Nguzunguzu), 2023’s *Raven* is both an extension of her earlier work and an expansion of it. The hybrids of progressive dance and ’90s-style R&B that made *Take Me Apart* and *Cut 4 Me* compelling are still there (“Contact,” “Missed Call,” both co-produced by LSDXOXO and Bambii), as is her gift for making the ethereal feel embodied and deeply physical (“Enough for Love”). And for all her respect for the modalities of Black American pop music, you can hear the musical curiosity and experiential outliers—as someone who grew up singing jazz standards and played in a punk band—that led her to stretch the paradigms of it, too. But the album’s heart lies in songs like “Holier” and “Raven,” whose narratives of redemption and self-sufficiency jump the track from personal reflections to metaphors for the struggle with patriarchy and racism more broadly. “I’ve been pretty comfortable to talk about the nitty-gritty of relationships,” she says. “But this album contains a few songs that are overtly political, that feel more literally like *no, you will not*.” Oppression comes in many forms, but they all work the same way; *Raven* imagines a flight out.

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8.4 / 10

Kelela’s rapturous second album is a masterful display of tension and release, centering queer Black womanhood through blasts of heated dance music and ambient comedowns.

6 / 10

Nearly five-and-a-half years on from her debut, the Washington D.C.-born artist makes a frequently breathtaking return

7 / 10

Raven is littered with gorgeous, exquisitely produced songs which make Kelela one of the best in the R&B field

Kelela arrives just in time with a long-awaited reminder she’s electronic music’s supreme.

A soundtrack for melancholic late-night drives through buzzing cities.

The album's ensuing batch of remixes -- in which Kelela was intensely involved, even revoicing some songs -- pulled together contributions from the far-ranging likes of CupcakKe, serpentwithfeet, and go-go legends Rare Essence, the latter reconnecting Kelela to her birthplace of Washington, D.C. There was no telling which path the singer/songwriter and producer would take until she returned four years later with "Washed Away," the first preview of Raven.

On Raven, the follow-up to 2017's Take Me Apart, Kelela explores autonomy, belonging, and self-renewal as healing.

8 / 10

On the front cover of Kelela's Raven, the singer is submerged in a borderless body of water, her face just barely visible above the surface....

8 / 10

Five years since her fan favourite debut full-length ‘Take Me Apart’ made its mark, Kelela Mizanekristos returns with follow-up ‘Raven’, a sparse,

The US singer’s long-awaited second album embraces the Black female experience with a mix of drum’n’bass and sensuous, unfurling soundscapes

9 / 10

Raven by Kelela: this is another masterstroke from the Washington DC artist, who makes future-facing pop music like nobody else

No matter the tempo or setting, Kelela’s ‘Raven’ is fully aware of how the body can both entrap and liberate. Read our review.

6 / 10

Returning from a five-year hiatus, Kelela's 'Raven' isn't an explosive comeback for the alternative R&B singer but a downtempo reflection.

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92 %

The Australian jazz singer wants to be on the move, Paramore sound a little different, and Yo La Tengo cycle through life and death

R&B experimentalist Kelela finally returns after six years. New music review by Harry Thorfinn-George

8 / 10