Kelela Knows How to Interrupt a Groove

She could fill a dance floor if she wanted to, but she's got other plans.

- CRAIG JENKINS

IN OUR CONSUMERIST DYSTOPIA, where the spoils belong to the boldest players in the data business and corporations adopt the language of community activism, mass culture can feel inescapable. It's getting dicey to be different, wondering whether everyone else feels suffocated by political schisms, constricting social mores, and broken allyship pledges. How do you chart your course in a sea of sameness?

A decade or so ago, when flashing a streak of creativity within a mile of the radio netted you labels like alternative and mysterious, telemarketer Kelela Mizanekristos wrecked her car and spent the insurance money making a mixtape. She'd dabbled in a few genres already, having, she says, grown up "listening to R&B, jazz, and Björk." During a stint as a café singer, she expressed a love of standards she'd picked up from her father; later, she joined the rock band Dizzy Spells. But interest from listeners was elusive. It wasn't until she released "Go All Night," from her 2013 mixtape, Cut 4 Me, that her art started to connect, her rich vibrato buffeted by a maelstrom of clattering high hats and chopped-up vocals.

Kelela workshopped new songs reflecting her wide-ranging interests. Her effortless electronic R&B curios gestured to the abrasive sound design of the underground and the tuneful ease of contemporary soul. These were tiny revolutions, excursions into dance music in the years when artists caught hell for EDM moves, after "Turn Up the Music" but before "Break My Soul." On her 2017 debut full-length, Take Me Apart, she made pretty songs from odd materials, deconstructing dubstep wubs in "Blue Light" and using the Roland synth that gave "Jupiter" its name— an instrument famous for its blaring leads to play sultry chiptune instead.