Ravyn Lenae’s 2022 debut, HYPNOS, established her as a chameleon, adept at mixing soft R&B along with her personal futurist kinds. Whereas this strategy positioned the 25-year-old singer-songwriter amongst this technology’s innovators, her follow-up, Chicken’s Eye, is a deliberate shift towards a extra boundless exploration. For this album, Lenae and government producer Dahi seemed to create one thing new and formless, pivoting if the music ever felt, as he defined, “too R&B.” Whereas HYPNOS showcased the fluidity of R&B, Chicken’s Eye is extra assorted: Lenae experiments like she’s an alchemist in an R&D lab, trialing new mixtures of downtempo guitar, light reggae-pop, and even a stuttering, Brainfeeder-esque beat.
On Chicken’s Eye, Lenae isn’t abandoning R&B altogether however reasonably discovering and rediscovering pockets for her evolving feelings. The manufacturing spans greasy electro zaps, swirling pop, and taut rock, like on opener “Genius,” the place her signature, sage-scented falsetto pierces via a strutting rhythm that’s like a distant cousin to “Billie Jean.” Lenae sings as if she’s whispering from one other lifetime with the reward of perspective, explaining, “Paradise takes a little bit persistence/Give it time.” Her music is contemplative, and Chicken’s Eye displays the slow-going a part of her self-discovery journey. She’s nonetheless deciphering anxieties round love, grief, and self-doubt, however feeling extra unconfined than ever.
Realistically, development occurs in increments, with build-ups and setbacks. Alongside the way in which, Lenae challenges her companions and her family members to hitch her in pushing previous discomfort. On the robust, grungy “Love Me Not,” she attends to her romantic needs, waffling between emotions for an ex (“Oh no, I don’t want you, however I miss you come right here”). Its softer counterpart, “Love Is Blind,” floats over a supple drum beat and climactic sitar solo, elevating her voice right into a pitch that seems like a lonely witch casting a spell. On “One Want,” a heat, lush ballad, she tries to blot out the stains of her father’s absence with clarion reflection: “Known as me on my birthday/I believed you’d be in your method,” she sings, her wispy vocals drifting amid woozy strings as she speaks for her 10-year-old self. Infantile Gambino steps in as a surrogate, crooning from her father’s perspective in short Frank Ocean-coded blurts, providing an odd sense of consolation. The music is a beautiful, tender paean to stolen connections, and her dad didn’t hear it till he filmed his look within the music video—a testomony to Lenae’s willingness to permit her vulnerability to unfold in actual time.
Even within the album’s meekest moments (the marginally too slack “From Scratch”), it’s simple to get misplaced in her expansive soprano. On “Unhealthy Concept,” she swats at a sweet-talker in speedy run-on sentences paying homage to Bow Wow and Ciara’s “Like You.” Her smooth purrs sync fantastically with Ty Dolla $ign’s assured rasp on “Dream Woman,” like she’s Catwoman creeping via a discipline of glistening keys. The coy, ’80s-tinged monitor captures summer season weekend-in-the-park bliss with slick, watery strings and guitar licks, whereas “Sweet” pairs her lithe, cackling vocals with a lilting lover’s rock groove. Transitioning from these lighter moments into the deeper introspection of “Pilot,” the album’s penultimate monitor, Lenae searches for belonging beside a crackling hearth, lamenting, “Perhaps I’m contagious/The best way that I can push anybody away.” These shadows of doubt give the album its quaint, mercurial really feel, deepening Lenae’s quest for understanding. Chicken’s Eye situates her as a consummate thrill-seeker with limitless curiosity, restricted solely by the uncertainties in her personal thoughts.
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