Ravyn Lenae Talks ‘Blue Island’ Album, Blackness of Music, And Success

The swelter of late summer in New York City is notoriously gross. Smog, sweat, subway delays and sirens create a famous combo of discomfort that many try to avoid. But as Ravyn Lenae floats into the midtown Manhattan studio on the release day of her third studio album, her energy creates a temporary oasis.

Granted, she’s not new to staying cool under pressure. The 27-year-old started her music career as a teenager in Chicago and has shared stages with SZA, Steve Lacy and Kaytranada for years. But even though her voice has been in R&B rotations for close to a decade, last year changed the conversation. 

This time last summer, the singer’s insatiable “Love Me Not” had jumped from TikTok remixes to the charts, peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s a break any artist dreams of, especially in the Internet age: A viral moment that sets you on the fast track to max exposure for the first time.

“Anybody who says ‘no’ is lying,” Ravyn proclaims during our VIBE Q conversation. “That shit is so fun — seeing the numbers go up in real time, seeing people discover you in real time, seeing the opportunity pour in when you’ve been working for it and hoping for it.” 

But what comes after a peak is a make-or-break turn, one that’s broken many great artists before her. As “Love Me Not” catapulted her name into festival lineups and brand deal negotiations, Ravyn almost got pulled in the undertow of the rapid change. She found herself in an emotional whiplash between confidence and anxiety. She found herself defending her entire identity to people who had just learned her name. It’s enough to give anyone motion sickness.

“Whenever we do talk about R&B, we’re not talking about sonically what’s happening,” she says. “It’s purely racial. And I think that’s the bigger conversation that people like to avoid.”

Knowing what kind of formulas the Internet rewards, Ravyn could have coasted. She could have hit rinse-and-repeat on her follow-up album and called it a day. Instead, she worked overtime to expand even farther beyond expectation. 

As she gets cozy on the cream couch, her eyes are framed by terracotta boho braids. As the latest iteration of her signature red tresses, these braids are just like the songs on her latest studio album, Blue Island—frayed, perfectly tousled, and free-flowing.

Executive produced by longtime collaborator Dahi, Ravyn’s Blue Island is a declaration that this Black girl can’t and won’t be defined by one song or one sound. It’s an album that glints with soft rock akin to Wilson Phillips, Stevie Nicks, and Kate Bush, as much as an R&B gleam channeling Chaka Khan and The Ronettes. The jangly rush of “Familiar Dreams” offsets the buttery, psychedelic slink of “Sew Me Back Together” and the chest-pounding knock of “Let Us In.” Spoken word affirmations from Doechii anchor Ravyn’s harmonies on “Babygirl.” Electric guitar and ‘80s sheen carry “Wish You Well” and “Find It One Day” to transcendent heights where being the bigger person feels like triumph, not compromise.  

This ambition to show her full range comes at a pivotal time for the artist. Ravyn plays with friction between genres she loves to show she can’t be defined. Regardless of the ride, she’s secure as the captain of her own ship. Smooth seas never made a skilled sailor, anyway.

[This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]

VIBE: Congratulations on your third studio album, Blue Island. We’re recording this on the day the album’s dropped. Now, the world has received it. How are you feeling?

Ravyn: It feels crazy. Last night, at 12:00 a.m. I was in the shower, and like, “Let me just put the album on and remember it as mine first before it goes out into the world.” I think it’s really important for me to do that so I remember how I feel about it. But honestly, the reception has been so good. I think people are already finding their favorites, which is fun. It’s good to hear that people are resonating with it.

I love that you hit the streaming service yourself, like, “Let me listen to this as a fan and also as the person who created it.”

Really, that is me stepping outside of what I’ve known the process to be [in] the last year and just thinking of myself as a fan and how I feel about it objectively. And I was like, “This is good.”

Three albums in, Blue Island feels like the most dialed in you’ve ever been as an artist. Your message, your voice, the genres you’re playing and expanding in. At least that’s how it feels as a listener.

This is for sure the most dialed in I’ve felt internally, even. People who’ve been following my career over the past eight, 10 years know that it’s been a lot of me exploring myself in every album and really pouring who I am at the time into it. And this one just feels like a compilation of all those things that make Ravyn Ravyn in a way. Especially with the past year and the reception of Bird’s Eye and “Love Me Not” and having so many new eyes on me, it really made me have to look internally into like, “Okay, what is it I want to get off? What is it I want to say and leave for people so that they understand who Ravyn is and what type of artist she is?” This really felt like that type of statement and arrival for me in a lot of ways.

There’s this beautiful little vignette on the album, on “Never Let Me Go” where you get that voice note from your grandparents, and your grandpa asks you if the album’s doing good. 

He don’t know what’s going on. [Laughs]

Right! But that’s a reminder that it’s all relative. To some people, it’s been like a meteoric rise, and they want to call you an overnight success. Others are like, “How you doing, baby? The music’s going good?”

It was important for me to have that human injection in the album so people — and for me — remember where I come from and that I’m a granddaughter, I’m a daughter, I’m a sister, and I’m a singer. Just making sure that piece of my life, that is so integral to me as a person and artist, was included.

How else have you been grounding yourself within the whirlwind?

At least, in the past few years I’ve been making sure that when I’m traveling – because so much of my life is travel – finding little pockets of joy. Even if it’s just going to the ocean, going to the movies, going to a museum, or taking a walk. I think it’s something that I underestimated early in my career, but it’s so important. Or just really seeing the cities that I’m in. It’s such a gift I’ve been given as a touring musician: being able to see the world and being able to take these places and experiences and food and people, culture, and take it back with me and put it into music. That’s what keeps me human, inspired, and excited. It’s easy to just be busy. 

I read that you created a lot of this album while you were promoting “Love Me Not” and all the virality that came with it. In some of your studio sessions, you felt like you had to go in and create something just as good. How did you release yourself from that pressure of comparison and expectation when making this music?

I think that’s a hard one, because it’s so easy to get caught up in what worked about a song and what the recipe is when there really isn’t one. I had to make peace with [the fact that] there isn’t a recipe. What makes a song resonate is really just how you feel about it and the energy you put into it. But I do know I wanted to create that same kind of magic and environment in the studio and in my life for that type of success.

And that’s coming into the studio and just really going off of what I feel, what I’m listening to in that week that feels cool, or if I heard a chord or melody or a guitar texture out in the world. Those are the things that keep me following that trail of magic. 

In the midst of all of that, did you confide in any of your peers who kind of went through that virality machine and then had to define themselves and come back to themselves? 

I was talking to Omar Apollo a lot. I really resonated with his experience in the industry. He’s from Indiana, so that’s like my Midwest boy, too. I remember talking to him about how to ride that wave and also deal with [the] anxiety of seeing the numbers go up and then wanting to turn all of those people into immediate fans.

It’s this unrealistic expectation. It just gave me a new perspective on how the Internet really works and the trajectory of an artist, especially an artist who I feel — like Omar, like myself, like Steve [Lacy] — are going to be around for a long time.

What was Omar’s exact advice about how to ride it?

“One: say yes to everything” [laughs]. He was like, “Take all the opportunities that you’ve been dreaming about. Take it, take it, take it.” He said that because there will be a point where things slow down and you just have to remember what you’re rooted in and still be inspired and excited about what else could be on the horizon. 

I think what’s inspiring right now is that it feels limitless in that way. You have artists who might have felt like their career was over four years ago, when they were ready to give up. Then all of a sudden something happens. There’s a song from six years ago that they thought was cool then but didn’t really succeed [until] now.

Even though you had maybe the expectation monster on your shoulder going into the studio, did it give you a newfound confidence?

I think so. I think paired with, obviously, the anxiety of loving having a hit and what it does for your self-esteem, music, and your financial state. So many positive things come from that, and you’re like, “How can I do it again? How can I do it again? How can I do it again?” It’s good to have that type of fire and ambition because it makes you just make good music. Also, knowing the type of artist I am, knowing I’m going to follow whatever is calling me, and knowing that’s a path worth trusting.

This whole album feels like you’re following your instincts wherever they lead, and there’s so much going on in this. I hear pop, soft rock, grunge, and jazz influences. It’s named Blue Island, which is a township in Chicago?

Yeah, it’s a city. It’s where I was born. 

Is it a callback to your roots and your most base desires and passions? 

I think it feels like a mix of arrival and transition[ing] into me stepping into exactly who I want to be. There’s something different about even the way I’m talking about my music, the album, and myself that feels more commanding, or just how I’m expressing myself in videos, on stage, using my body, using choreo. It feels like my artistry is manifesting in a really cool way that just feels almost animalistic and angsty.

How have you surprised yourself most in making this one?

Honestly, I have to say with the visual aspect of it and choreo, introducing that into my live show and my videos and just my visual language has been so fun and challenging. I always thought that I wasn’t an artist who was going to do choreo for some reason. I always thought my memory was bad. I suck at memorizing lyrics. Even my lyrics.

Also, when you see girls like Beyoncé and Normani and Victoria Monét, you see them really dancing. It can feel like, “Oh, if I don’t have that diva-esque thing about me, then maybe you won’t land.” But I think something that was so cool about me [was] embracing my form of movement, my style of how I like to bend and contort. Finding what shapes I like to make with my body has been fun. And [with] Akira, my choreographer, it’s just been a beautiful journey of discovering that piece of me and how my music can really manifest outwardly.

And doing it your way. 

Doing it my way. Exactly. Or just do what feels natural for me. Even down to, “Oof, I kind of suck at dancing in heels. Maybe I shouldn’t wear heels even though it looks so good.” You know what I mean? Really lean into what makes Ravyn feel good and like herself.

Going back to the declarations made on this album, we gotta talk about “Babygirl” with Doechii. You’re planting the flag for all the girls who may be a little left of center or “alternative” or not doing maybe what they’re “supposed” to be doing. How did that collab come about and why is it such a centerpiece of the album?

That song felt so important the minute I started making it. I just knew it was going to feel like the thesis of the album or the thing that ties all these themes together. Just because it feels like you’re walking through my brain and the day-to-day life of someone like me, a Black girl in the world in music who is a little rebellious of the norm and what works and is finding her way and her path.

It felt so right to have someone like Doechii on it because I’m so inspired by her, her conviction in her path, and her dedication to who she is before anybody else believed or saw it for her. I think that’s so beautiful, and such a striking story, and I just resonate with women and artists like that. I thought it was important to have something like that on the album. I think that’s something I would have liked to hear if I was 15. I would want to hear: “Could never be wrong even if you don’t go where everybody goes.” I think that’s such a beautiful, confident sentiment to be singing to myself every day.

Speaking of standing in your truth, it’s so strange that people questioned who you are. Some people thought you were white, then people found out you were Black and thought, “What kind of Black girl is she?” I will never forget the day you posted — it was the screenshot — “the one black girl in the all-white friend group.”

In the white friend group, yeah.

I was like, “Y’all know I don’t talk on here,” but I feel like at a certain point I had to defend myself. And I’m not somebody that usually feels like I have to, but I think it was just an important moment for me to bring people into who I am and to remember that there’s a person behind these songs and these tweets and [that I come] from somewhere culturally rich.

That was a weird and confusing time for me to have people on both sides: White people hearing “Love Me Not” and thinking I was white and then them watching the video and being like, “Oh, okay.” Or Black people being disappointed that the song that went crazy wasn’t a pure R&B song. Sometimes you just can’t win with that shit. It really gave me a taste of what defining my own path really feels like. And it doesn’t only come with, “Oh, that’s so cool. You’re doing your own thing.” It comes with a lot of rejection, questions, and curiosities…I think a lot of it is just me having to understand that I have to get comfortable with that type of thing in my career, because I don’t think it’s the end of it. There are people like Santigold, Kelis, Whitney Houston, whoever, Janet [Jackson], who’ve experienced that before me. It’s just sad that it’s still happening and we’re still having to defend ourselves.

At the root of it, it’s just important for me to reemphasize, especially to Black people, that these are all our genres. When you make speculations or throw out opinions like that, you’re cutting the richness of the soil we come from. The beauty of what our history has done and explained to us is that the people before us have really carved out and worked so that we don’t have to keep having this conversation. We can occupy any space we want to because it belongs to us. Hopefully, in all of this, people walk away from these conversations feeling empowered to do whatever they want. 

That’s the quiet part that people don’t want to admit: that they’re really saying they don’t think you should be in a genre or you should have this look or fit an aesthetic. 

I also understand the history of Black music and how it’s been co-opted by white artists and the history of whitewashing. I’m not dismissing that. But at the same time, we’ve got to look at the facts and the history, and make room for and embrace artists really exploring themselves. At the root of it, that’s what we have to keep in mind: these are Black artists and young Black kids looking up to every form of Black. We don’t want to shut out any of it because we might be crushing flowers that are supposed to grow. 

Even with this album, Blue Island, when you look on streaming services, it’s called an R&B and Soul album. How does that make you feel?

That’s a great question. I saw that last night. When people call me an R&B artist, that resonates. People call me a pop artist; that resonates. People call me an alt artist; that resonates, too. I don’t know, but what I do know is that whenever I don’t speak about the full spectrum of genres I like to occupy, it feels like I’m deleting parts of my identity that feel like they make me whole.

And I think whenever we do talk about R&B, we’re not talking about what’s happening sonically. It’s purely racial. And I think that’s the bigger conversation that people like to avoid. Because for me, what makes R&B music R&B is the vocal tonality of it, the harmony choices. A lot of pop is pulling from right now. When you look back in history, Michael Jackson, Janet, Prince, they all called their music pop, and everybody recognized it. I think it’s important to keep making sure our history is written the right way and for Black people to feel empowered and not scared of that. 

Going back to the album, you’re experimenting in ways I didn’t even hear on Hypnos or Bird’s Eye. These guitar riffs, these bridges. What’s one song where you really surprised yourself in how you played with genre and sonics?

Probably “Saturday Night.” I love that one because I can’t put my finger on what it feels like, and I like when music sounds like that. I think that has a lot to do with me and Dahi’s process too, because I’ll write a song to a specific beat that sounds a certain way. That original beat felt a little more kind of almost like a little Southern-Western-something. I thought it would be fun to write a Stevie Nicks-type of hook over that type of beat because why would you ever do that? In that tone, too. I like when worlds mix that aren’t supposed to. That one feels like, ‘What is it?’ There’s like this electronic element happening, but then the hook feels like a classic kind of soft rock hook. I like that it kind of pulls multiple worlds and people together. And I think that’s what makes a really great universal song in a way. So that one.

The storytelling on here is so on point. You’ve always been such a succinct, honest writer. “Find It One Day,” that’s one of the most maturely petty songs I’ve heard in a minute, and I love that. Writing a former lover, somebody who fumbled you, writing them a letter and then having them find it one day.

Yeah, I just like that idea of having a break-up and then almost hoping that when you guys go out into the world, you’ll find that thing that makes you a better person or a more expansive, well-rounded, smarter person, and that that makes you somehow find your way back to each other. I like to romanticize shit like that, but that’s really what the song is saying: That as hard as it is to make this decision to break up, separate, whatever, I’m hopeful that the world would do its thing and the universe will do its thing and that it’ll make us come back to each other better. Or not. That’s like the fear of letting go of somebody you love, right? Hopefully you find each other again, or you find that thing that makes this work. 

Are there any parts of yourself you had to break up with in order to get from who you were in the “Love Me Not” whirlwind to who you are now on Blue Island?

I think I’m somebody that usually doesn’t do too well with too much change at once, even though I’m an Aquarius and it’s kind of in our nature to kind of evolve and change and kind of go with the wind. But sometimes when I feel like change is happening that’s a little out of my control or wasn’t planned or anticipated, I freak out and don’t know what to do. But now, after this past year, I have the tools to cope with change and take it all as one full, colorful experience. I think that’s what makes life fulfilling and tumultuous in the best way.

What are the tools? 

I feel like I’ve had to learn not to fixate over the details of everything, and knowing that with every decision or with every path or change in script, that there’s something on the other side that’s going to work and that’s going to say “yes,” and that’s going to agree with me is what I have to like walk with. And don’t get me wrong, I forget it every day, and then I have to remind myself every morning. It’s just a trust that has to happen with you and the world.

Looking back on your life in the past couple years, would you want another viral hit?

Yeah! Anybody who says “no” is lying. That shit is so fun — seeing the numbers go up in real time, seeing people discover you in real time, seeing the opportunity pour in when you’ve been working for it and hoping for it. Of course. I want it a million times. 

Speaking of learning to trust yourself, a big part of that is undoing all that we’ve learned around scarcity and how nothing is ever going to be as good as it was.

A lot of what was disorienting about last year was this rush of opportunity I’ve been searching for and hoping for my whole career, and feeling like I have to say yes to everything. I’ve chosen one of the most uncertain and unstable careers you could have, and there’s always that fear and thought of, “What if all of this goes away tomorrow and I don’t have the opportunity anymore?” And I just want to feel like I said yes to everything I could and did everything I could to sustain it.

But that creates a really fucked up, unhealthy relationship to work and to music and to something I love because now it’s like, “Oh, I can’t take a break because I’m scared that …” What did Michael Jackson say when he said that, “Whenever I get a song, I have to record it just in case it goes to Prince instead and he records it.” It’s that thing that is good for ambition and work ethic, but at a certain point it’s like, “Girl, don’t kill yourself over this.” You know what I mean?

I saw the Charli XCX movie [The Moment], and I saw that she took a two-day break even though she was still screaming on the phone and talking to the label over the entire break. But I was like, “You can take a break even if it’s just two days, even if it’s just around the corner at a hotel in L.A.” But finding time, prioritizing it, and measuring it is just as important as work, and I’m trying to work and mold that into my brain because it’s bad.

What are you saying no to in this era?

Nothing yet. I’ll let you know [Laughs] I’m in this season where I just feel invigorated and inspired and hungry. I need to feed that hunger and excitement. Maybe next year I’ll take a break. It’s the worst. My manager’s always like, “Okay, I told you. It’s on you.”

Thinking back to that young girl who was doing shows in Chicago with her mom — shoutout to mom — what do you think you would tell 15, 16-year-old Ravyn about where she’s been now?

I’d tell her to keep harnessing that thing you got in you. I celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Moon Shoes EP last week, a few days ago, and it’s a good reminder of what that initial feeling was and how pure it is. And I think I would just tell her that there’s something naturally in you. That’s just it, and don’t doubt that. I keep telling myself that.

You’ve surrounded yourself with a lot of contemporaries who’ve been doing that, mixing it up, and changing the definition of alternative by the day, by the hour, by the release. Who are some other producers or musical artists you want to work with?

There’s a wide range of artists I want to work with. I love Rosalia. I want to work with Andre 3000 someday. I love Lykke Li. I love Santigold. I got to meet her a few weeks ago. I just told her that I love her, and seeing someone, especially a Black woman, really pave her own way is just great and inspiring for me. I love Charli. I mean, Steve [Lacey] is one of my favorite artists ever. I always want to make music with him. 

In what ways is Blue Island an album you only could have made now in this season?

The past two years have shaped my early adulthood and molded my thought process around how far this music thing can really go for me. I think it’s important to see what’s possible to be able to know, okay, I can do it. I’ve always known that, but then once you see how tangible it is and you feel it, that’s a different thing. I think when you walk into the studio and spaces with that type of energy and confidence, it just breeds something different. I’m so proud of the music, and you can feel that thing in it.