Ravyn Lenae finds the freedom to be who she wants to be on Blue Island, where intimacy and spectacle coexist without the fear of canceling each other out.
Ravyn Lenae has spent the past year discovering what happens when the world finally catches up with you. On Blue Island, her third studio album, the Chicago singer turns that sudden acceleration into something more complicated: a record about becoming more comfortable with uncertainty, more defiant about identity and, perhaps most importantly, less interested in asking permission first.
Executive-produced by Grammy-winning producer Dahi, who also worked with Lenae on Bird’s Eye, Blue Island finds an artist deepening her sound without abandoning the personality that’s defined her. “Handle,” alongside “Reputation” featuring Dominic Fike and “Bobby,” captures an artist evolving in plain sight while still figuring things out privately. On “Handle,” Lenae moves through love with a seductive new confidence, moving between moods as if refusing to stay in one place long enough to have a label placed on them.
The album arrives in the wake of “Love Me Not,” Lenae’s breakthrough hit that climbed to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 2 in the U.K. The success brought everything she had once wanted, along with the less glamorous baggage of anxiety, loneliness, heartbreak and intrusive questions about her Blackness and whether she belonged in particular musical scenes. Lenae responded by looking backward to artists who refused those boundaries, including Santigold, Janet Jackson and Tracy Chapman. Their influence helped open the door for an album that embraces every corner of her personality, from flirtation and teenage angst to the strange, lonely, offbeat feeling of being caught between versions of yourself.
Musically, Blue Island is just as restless. Lenae folds her R&B foundation into influences ranging from Blondie, the Sundays and the Cranberries to Martin Rev and the dramatic choruses and high-wire vocals of Bollywood soundtracks. The idea of a “Blue Island” represents, Lenae says, a point of arrival, a place where she can finally stop worrying about preconceived ideas of Blackness, pop or R&B and simply make the music she wants.