INTERVIEW: Ravyn Lenae on new album 'Bird's Eye': "For me to really feel fulfilled in music, I have to really lean into the things that make me happy and excited about."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Brandon Hoeg
Published: 30 August 2024
Ravyn Lenae first released music as an independent artist in 2015, and has increasing turned heads with her delicious pop-R&B hybrid soundscapes
She has recently released her remarkable second album Bird’s Eye and it is without doubt one of 2024’s greatest albums. Lenae has an undeniable talent to create music that pulls at the invisible emotional strings that connect you to the greatest music. You won’t be able to put it into words, but from the first note you will quickly find yourself drawn into Lenae’s world and you will never want to leave.
Executive produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Dahi (Kelela, SZA, Kendrick Lamar) the album brilliantly blends R&B and pop in such a way that you can never definitively attribute any of her music to one or the other. It is all held together by Lenae’s quite beautiful voice, which has an ethereal, floaty quality while still remaining powerful.
Released two years after her debut album HYPNOS, Bird’s Eye focuses on the sometimes extreme growth you go through in your early twenties, which in Lenae’s case was exacerbated by her rise to fame. “One of the most beautiful things about making Bird’s Eye was the amount of reflection that was required to truly tell a story that felt clear and honest,” Lenae says. “Digging into the nooks and crannies of my journey so far was so rewarding in many ways, but it’s most meaningful when it manifests into tangible change in my life.”
The album opens with ‘Genius’ which ramps up the pop vibe with its gentle beat and delicious melodies. Lyrically it looks at love and relationship from a unique angle - that confrontation and fighting are part and parcel of love, no matter how perfect you think your relationship might be. ‘That's alright, never mind what we said last night…What's love without some confrontation?’
Lenae collaborates with Childish Gambino on the single ‘One Wish’ which leans into a R&B soundscape with the lyrics exploring the complex relationship Lenae has had with her father, with the focus on her 10th birthday party that he didn’t attend. ‘I can't forgive you / No matter how hard I try / I can't forget you’. ‘Dream Girl’ is another big name collaboration, this time with Ty Dolla $ign with a sweet pop-R&B sound.
‘Candy’ brings in a different feel altogether, with a summery, reggae sound, while ‘Love Is Blind’ moves in the opposite direction, with a synthpop feel but one that is dialled all the way back to a lush slower, slinkier feel. ‘Love Me Not’ takes another path again, taking Lenae into jazzy-soul with a story of conflicting emotions towards a certain person: ‘I don't need you, but I miss you, come here / And, oh, it's hard to see you, but I wish you were right here.’
The album ends with ‘Days’, which lends a whisper of country to its mellow pop base. It closes the journey of Birds’s Eye with the promise of a new stage in Lenae’s life - and yours - as she acknowledges the mistakes of the past, how it has helped her grow, and emerges with a new sense of hope. ‘Me and myself got to talking / Maybe I wasn't the problem / Sometimes we fall for the sake of falling…Waking up, my eyes are open / The door to the past is closing.’
Lenae has created an extremely special collection of music with Bird’s Eye and it is the kind of album that will effortlessly wind its way around your soul, leaving you both just a little bit in awe of Lenae, but also with the feeling she is singing just for you, so intimate and connective is her voice. An album to cherish, we recently caught up with Lenae to chat more about its creation.
Ravyn it’s so lovely to be chatting with you, and congratulations on Bird's Eye, there is just so much dexterity in your voice. There's so much going on here, and I feel like you've just gone, ‘You know what? I like all these things’. I imagine that's something you get to do with your second album, you go that was me, this is still me but I'm just going to have a little bit more room to play.
Literally. I felt like that was the only way I could approach it, that felt free and not overwhelming. A lot of people talk about the feelings that come with making your sophomore album, and how there's so much pressure but I didn't feel any of that. I felt like, I got the first one, now I can really lean into all those things that inspire me and make me excited about music. So this one was just so much fun for me.
You've got some really interesting sounds on this album and one of the things that I love about the era that we're currently living in is the lack of genre or the lack of camps that people were forced to stay in in the past. Artists such as yourself do get to go, do you know what? It's all music
Yep, I like reminding people!
Was there any sounds or inspirations on this album that you put in that you went, ‘this one might throw people.’
Yeah! First of all, I'm always listening to Janet, that's like one of my main influences. But then there was some No Doubt, some Gwen Stefani, Nelly Furtado, Fleetwood Mac, just some other flavours that I felt would be interesting to explore and that I personally love and listen to. Those were the things me and Dahi were listening to at the time and felt would be cool to explore.
I love that. You are a beautiful lyricist. There's some amazing lines, like ‘Running low on lemonade / Crying over paper plates’ from ‘One Wish’. When you’re writing, does the melody come first, and have you always been obsessed with words and moving them around?
So for me, melody is everything. That's the first thing I feel, that's the first thing I hear when I hear chords, and from there, that's when words come, or maybe just a word, and then I attach that to a feeling and then a story from there. On this album, I worked with my friend Sarah Aarons, who is a prolific writer, and we got super close. Her just learning me and figuring out the best way to interpret these feelings and these stories I wanted to tell was such a fun experience. I've never co-written on any other project, so having someone through the entire thing who understands my perspective and the way I want my stories to be told and written was so beautiful. I learned so much, so many new things about songwriting and how it works, and I just found a new love for it. So this one was really fun to write because of that.
Tell me a little bit about your career trajectory, from chasing the melody into becoming the songstress you are now. Has music always been a huge thing for you?
Yeah. I grew up listening to a lot of music, my father loves music, and a lot of our moments where it was just us spending time and bonding was over music, driving in the car. He always took the side streets so that we had 15 more minutes to listen to the full album. So that was a lot of my memories with him and seeing how much music can move people, and how much people attach their lives and big moments of their lives to songs and music is something that I admired, and I wanted to be a part of that. So having this outlet and being able to express myself and really document moments in my life in this way is something I'm so grateful for. So even having songs like ‘Pilot’ where I say, ‘I just know I'm 24 / Small to the world I'm in’, I thought it was so fun to be able to stamp a song with a time in my life saying ‘I'm 24’ and being able to revisit that, kind of like a photo album or a yearbook, is something I think is the most special thing about music.
I think that's so beautiful. Because most of us, our thoughts and coming of age stay within the confines of a usually really tough diary to look back on! I always love hearing someone just purposely making that time capsule and looking back at it with such fondness, not just for the moment, but for who you are in that moment. I think is a really important bit of self love there.
Yeah, thank you. Even fans and listeners being able to do the same thing through my music. I've had so many comments from people saying, ‘I just turned 24’ or ‘I'm turning 24 next week’, that's so special to me, because my favorite songs and my favorite albums, I attach myself in that way. So to have songs that people can connect with is just why I do it.
That's absolutely beautiful. How have you found navigating this equally rewarding and brutal industry as a solo artist at 24?
I mean, I'm still navigating that and learning myself through it, but I do feel that with each project, with each year, I'm getting closer and closer to who I am and in the things I want out of life and out of my career. That's why this project in particular is so important for me, because I feel like this is the launching pad of me really reaching those parts of myself, and reaching those people that feel what I'm feeling. It's definitely tough, especially as a black woman and the expectations that come with that, and the opinions and the boxes that people like to place you in. But I think for me to really feel fulfilled in music, I have to reject that at all turns and really lean into the things that make me happy and excited about.
I’m curious as what those boxes were that people were trying to put you into?
This is something I've been processing with this album, but me coming out so young with music at 15, people have a particular idea, or they attach themselves to that version of you. That's natural, I do it, you do it, we all do it with our favourite artists or our favourite albums. But it's important for me to still feel excited about music, I have to keep evolving past that and beyond whatever people like to hear me do. That's something that I knew would be a challenge for me and for listeners who I've had for so long. But I even made a tweet today that says something along the lines of the most beautiful thing about music and with each project is that we lose people, but we gain people with each one, and that I don't expect to keep the same listeners forever, that's unrealistic. But I am grateful for the time that I do have certain ears and certain perspective and certain people with me, every part of it is special and memorable. Really looking at it from that lens is something that has given me peace in being able to wade through the things I want out of music.
I think that's so true. We really do as humans, we put what we mean onto a song and what that song means for us, and so sometimes it could be a real shock when either we learn that it wasn't about what we thought it was, or that the artist was doing something else wirth it, because we claim ownership of it.
Yeah, I even read something today that's scientifically proven about what makes certain albums or certain movies ‘classics’. It's usually because it's attached to a certain time period in our life, I think it was 17 to 22. So if you ask anybody what's a classic to them, it's usually something that happened between that pivotal time in their life.
That’s so true! What's your classic then? Give me your classic album
SZA’s Ctrl is a classic album to me. And I thought that was funny, because that literally happened when I was like, 19. Obviously the work is great, but I think there's something else in play there that's beyond what the music is or what the art is that we're consuming. It has more to do with where we're at in that particular snapshot of time.
You've recently shifted across the US, Chicago to LA. Obviously the world affects the way we operate, the way we manoeuvre, and society shifts from city to city. I'm curious if have you noticed the move influencing the way you create music as well?
Yeah, I would say so. Like you said, when your environment changes that that usually promotes some type of internal shift. I felt that happening, and that's why I moved. I was back and forth from Chicago to LA an annoying amount of times, so I was like, okay, something needs to happen here, obviously something's pushing me to LA. I was like one of the last people in my friend group to move, but once I did it, it felt like this is where I'm supposed to be for the time being. Having a new lens on what music can be, and running into artists, and really getting out in the world beyond the city I grew up in, was something that felt necessary for my growth and for me going down these rabbit holes of what's next for me in music. Even just something as simple as the sunshine and being able to go to the mountains one day, or go to the water the next day, has been something really good for me. I don't know if LA is my landing spot, but for right now it feels good for me.
Bird’s Eye is out now via Atlantic/Warner Music Australia. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Raven Lenae on Instagram and TikTok.
26 September - Red Rocks Amphitheater (Supporting Omar Apollo), Morrison, CO , USA
5 October - Lincoln Theatre, Washington DC, USA
8 October - Webster Hall, New York, USA
10 October - The Opera House, Toronto, Canada
12 October - Vic Theatre, Chicago, IL, USA
16 October - Buckhead Theatre, Atlanta, GA, USA
18 October - Scoot Inn, Austin, TX, USA
20 October - The Echo Lounge & Music Hall, Dallas, TX, USA
25 October - The Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, USA
26 October - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, USA
10 November - Vega, Copenhagen, Denmark
11 November - Saalchen, Berlin, Germany
12 November - Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, Netherlands
15 November - La Machine du Moulin Rouge, Paris, France
17 November - Botanique, Brussels, Belgium
18 November - Brixton Electric, London, England
19 November - Gorilla, Manchester, England
