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" When I was little, my parents would have these gatherings, and it was a common thing for me and my cousins to have to put on, like, shows. "
Kelela
Put
Cousins
Parents
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" Even on my most angry song, I'm also still saying, 'Thank you for helping me to learn.' I've always wanted to give voice to that complexity in our experience. "
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" I do like things the way that I like them. But I'm trying not to be - I don't wanna be that way. I'm not a control freak; I wanna protect my agency. It's a weird question as a black woman. "
Kelela
Black
Control
Trying
" A lot of people of color in the music industry are still more interested in embracing things that are considered white canon, and looking radical. Like when people point to punk in the indie world: If you point to the history of punk as what you see as your legacy, that's more prized and praised. "
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" I guess the bottom line is I don't make music that is consumed en masse. "
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Bottom
Line
Make
" When I started making songs, some of them read as mixtape-y, and some of them read as album-y. "
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Started
Them
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" My queer black women peers are the ones who make me not feel crazy. The way we act is so instinctive. "
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Women
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" Before I collaborate, it's important that I have a conversation about what I care about before we make anything, so that it's very clear. "
Kelela
Care
Clear
Conversation
" Sounding like I have agency in a song is important to me. I want to feel empowered by the music. "
Kelela
Important
Feel
Me
" I'm just tryna be honest about all the things that I dig in my music. It's not just this over here, it's also that over there. "
Kelela
Music
Dig
Here
" Popular music was this abstraction - an abstraction that I was relating to immensely but was ultimately far away. "
Kelela
Music
Popular
Far
" I would say there is a zone of R&B that hadn't been quite innovative. "
Kelela
Quite
Would
Zone
" 'Take Me Apart' doesn't feel cohesive in a singular way but in a varied way. You can fixate on individual songs, and there are references from all over the place: Anita Baker to Bjork. I wanted to show all the facets of myself. "
Kelela
Me
You
Way
" I've grown up feeling very American but being constantly bothered by people - there's internalized racism and feeling weird about being second-generation. "
Kelela
American
Feeling
People
" A lot of white men in the music industry are promoting and participating in black culture in a way that is pretty careless. They want the currency of blackness, but they don't want the brunt that comes along with that. "
Kelela
Culture
Black
Men
" I'm pushing back against the white, misogynistic, heterosexual establishment in the music industry. Like, literally, in all its forms. "
Kelela
Against
Music
Like
" I know my ticket is vulnerability. Most people point to some emotional experience, some hardship, some high or low when they talk about my music... a time when they need to feel those feelings more. "
Kelela
Know
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Time
" The whole thing about 'progressive R&B' blows my mind. Black music has always been progressive. "
Kelela
Always
Black
Mind
" The goal is to blow the audience's mind. "
Kelela
Audience
Mind
Goal
" I've always had this commitment to not being in one thing. "
Kelela
Being
Always
One Thing
" I don't want you to feel defeated, like, 'Oh boy, why do you do this to me?' We have too many of those songs. "
Kelela
Want
Feel
Boy
" After it became clear that I was not going to graduate, I had this moment where I was like, 'I need to not sulk. I need to pursue - at least try - to pursue music. But if I don't try, I'm going to be a really bitter middle-aged lady working in a cubicle.' "
Kelela
Lady
Working
Try
" I spent a lot of time in college. I was just being academic and discovering myself through reason and analysis. "
Kelela
Time
Reason
Through
" There are no black women geniuses that are being named in canons. I could name a bunch, but it's not part of common knowledge. It's not how the world is taught to think about black women. "
Kelela
World
Black
Women
" Music in the U.K. is not racialised in the same way as it is in the U.S. In the U.S.. it's more rigid and conservative. And white people in the U.K. have more close proximity with black people and people of colour in general. "
Kelela
Way
White
People
" I've talked about that with friends, about what genre makes sense to choose for each record and the strategy around that... Sometimes it's more about the moment of time, and other times it's more about the sound of the song. Sometimes it's about what's going on in larger life, in politics. "
Kelela
Politics
Moment
Life
" We don't want it to be obscure music. We're not trying to be indie. We want to be popular. "
Kelela
Popular
Obscure
Trying
" When it comes to melodies, production, and sound in pop music, people try to be formulaic and solely concerned with what's resonant in a way that is so cheap and ugly. It actually just devolves culture, ultimately. "
Kelela
People
Ugly
Try
" Often, I write to feel better and to heal - to cope with things that I'm dealing with. I'm either writing to get out of a feeling or to get into the feeling, to feel it more. Usually it's the perfect remedy, but if it isn't, I focus on other parts of what I'm making that don't involve writing. If neither are working, I simply forfeit the day. "
Kelela
Writing
Perfect
Focus
" I want to soundtrack people's layered feelings. "
Kelela
Soundtrack
Feelings
People
" The assumption is simply that I hit on all the things I've hit on so far by accident, that my talent is just this raw thing that pours out of me, and then white people feel like they have to come in and contain it, refine it, and bring it to the place where it can been released. "
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People
Place
Feel