A Cryptic Summons to SoHo

A crowd clad in Telfar snoods and North Face puffers swarmed a cobblestoned street in Manhattan’s SoHo Monday night, summoned by a cryptic text from Kelela. It was clear that many on line—which extended down Greene Street, curved around the corner past the Diesel on Spring, and streamed down Mercer to form a “U” around the block—had little hope of getting in. A second, more amorphous line formed on the sidewalk opposite, ostensibly for those who had given up their dreams of attending but wanted to tell, or rap, the story of how they watched their favorite diva float in anyway.

The Evolution of a Pop Icon

Kelela was here to premiere a new single called “Idea 1”—a title that feels like the name of a WAV file passed around so many times that when it was time for a final designation, she perhaps shrugged and told co-producer Oscar Scheller, “Ugh, let’s just keep it.” The spectacle of the event proved just how much the halo around the New York-based star has expanded since the release of her last studio album, Raven, the 2023 political manifesto that twined ambient, techno, East Coast club, and R&B into a soundtrack for soft clubbing before the term was even coined.

On Raven, Kelela threw everything into the pot that she had been working on since Cut 4 Me in 2013: the glitchy mechanics of Hallucinogen, the party-starting breakup anthems of Take Me Apart, and the pacific microbeats of Aquaphoria. It was the album that officially ushered her into the pantheon of experimental pop icons like Björk, FKA twigs, and Arca.

“Idea 1”: Back in Her Bag

On “Idea 1,” the singer is back where we need her, which is in her bag. The home she’s built with an avoidant lover is finally about to collapse, and to make matters worse, she’s the only one willing to deal with the fallout. Despite her misfortune, she manages to go full glam. The silver-toned music video recalls a clip from Aaliyah’s prime, with Kelela’s windswept waves framing her face as she catwalks an illuminated tunnel in slow motion. As she calls out, “Don’t you look away,” a yowl of shoegaze guitar tears through her distant soprano.

A Surprising Pivot to Rock

Kelela’s return might surprise even her diehard fans, given how the gristly guitars that shroud the chorus resemble a sound the singer hasn’t yet touched: rock. Well, at least not in any records available to us. In a Rolling Stone interview last year, Kelela teased an album that will return to her “roots” as a musician, when she played in a progressive metal band with then-boyfriend Tosin Abasi (of Animals as Leaders). If the seismic ambient of Raven’s lead single “Washed Away” set the tone for one of the best downtempo experiments of the decade, it might be time to throw up your index and pinky fingers.