L'Rain

Today on Ecléctico you're listening to L'Rain, the mononym of Brooklyn-born and based musician, singer, and songwriter Taja Cheek. Her music blends "genres (thus making new unnameable space for herself) including but not limited to gospel, jazz, and neo-soul" while on this album L'Rain "fractures and mends our expectations of what musicians, especially Black women musicians, are categorized to do versus what they need to do (and actually do)." [Quoted from the liner notes on the album's Bandcamp page.]

"Two Face" by L'Rain
2021 | R&B, jazz, noise, and pop singer, musician, and songwriter from Brooklyn

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Music
• Listen and watch on YouTube
• Listen on Tidal
• Listen on Amazon Music
• Listen on Deezer
• Listen and buy on Qobuz
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Buy and listen on Bandcamp
• Buy on iTunes
• Buy on Amazon

Go deeper with an excerpt from and a link to an excellent interview between Taja Cheek and writer Sasha Frere-Jones on his newsletter, S/FJ:

[Sasha Frere-Jones:] Fatigue doesn’t sound like it’s duplicating anything.

[Taja Cheek:] I’m glad that was your takeaway. The fool’s errand that I’ve set up for myself is to create a new sound, which is a pompous thing to say, because I am influenced by so many different kinds of music — music I feel deeply inspired by and love. But I do want to try to create something else, and it’s always hard when people ask me, like, “What were you listening to when you wrote this record?” I’m like, “Well . . . .” That’s not even relevant, because it’s more like I’m trying to avoid a sound than I’m trying to sound like something else.

It’s something that comes naturally to me, but it’s also something that I’m very conscious of in the process of making music. And I want people to try to figure out what’s going on. Which is why reviews are such a big thing for me. I feel like it’s challenging music to review, but I want people to be up for the challenge because I feel I deserve it.

• Read the whole interview.