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Ravyn Lenae: a new contender among R&B greats hits the road with Sabrina Carpenter
Two years after the release of Hypnos, Ravyn Lenae is still riding the wave of her sensational debut album and solidifying her transformation into a heroine of experimental R&B. On her sophomore album, Bird’s Eye, the 25-year-old singer traverses genres and explores a range of sonic textures to better recount her melancholic memories. She recently joined pop star Sabrina Carpenter on her U.S. tour.
by Alexis Thibault.
Bird’s Eye, Ravyn Lenae’s new album
When she thinks back to her childhood in Chicago, Ravyn Lenae, now 25, mostly remembers the music playing from her father’s car stereo. Digging deeper, she also recalls a garden—an Eden buried under autumn leaves in burnt orange. Years later, she realized those childhood wanderings had inspired her music. As if, to compose, she had to dive back into a time when adult problems hadn’t yet replaced carefree laughter.
Two years after releasing Hypnos, her dizzying debut partly produced by Steve Lacy, Fousheé, and Kaytranada, the musician unveils with Bird’s Eye an alternative R&B of striking maturity. In these meticulously lush compositions, one hears the elegiac touch of SZA, the graceful fervor of Erykah Badu, and the effortlessly cool experiments of Steve Lacy, who had already produced her Crush EP back in 2018.
-Your music is hard to pin down, wouldn’t you say?
-My music is all about feeling. I like to think I’m drawing inspiration from a world that doesn’t exist yet… a dreamlike space that’s fluid, flexible, and soft all at once. I weave it like an endless thread that embraces all kinds of waves. Why not call it a fairy tale?
Classick Studios: Chicago’s Creative Hub
The granddaughter of a pastor, Ravyn Lenae grew up attending a Christian church. Around age 15, she joined After School Matters, a summer program offering arts and music classes to Chicago teens to keep them off the streets during school breaks. After all, any artistic discipline could turn into a career. The teenager earned her first paycheck: 300 dollars.
She used it to book a session at Classick Studios, a hotspot for rising artists. There, she crossed paths with Noname, Chance the Rapper, and Mick Jenkins—three rappers whose careers now speak for themselves. But it was with Smino and producer Monte Booker that she formed a close bond. Together, they created the Zero Fatigue collective. Years later, Ravyn Lenae is a force on stage. In 2017, she joined fellow Chicagoan Noname on her Telefone Tour, then opened for none other than SZA…
The Stunning evolution of Ravyn Lenae
How better to gauge an artist than by tracing their evolution? Three tracks in particular reflect Ravyn Lenae’s transformation. First, Everything Above, a neo-soul gem—complete with lo-fi crackling percussion and silky bass—from her 2016 Moon Shoes EP. She already displayed undeniable talent, though she was still mimicking her idols. Then came Venom, a more electronic pivot from her 2022 album Hypnos. Here, her voice cuts through in an airy, striking track, revealing a new alter ego: a fierce femme fatale. Finally, there’s Love Is Blind, one of her favorite tracks from Bird’s Eye (2024). Her falsetto calls to mind the alternative R&B of FKA twigs—whose artistic universe extends far beyond the genre—and captures a perfect fusion of neo-soul and electronic experimentation.
– What’s your relationship with experimentation?
-Musical experimentation has always been a deep desire of mine. These days, I follow Virgil Abloh’s 3% rule: to write a song, start with something very familiar that anyone can relate to, then transform it by 3%. Just subtly enough to make it feel new… while still recognizable.
On tour with Sabrina Carpenter
Following a sold-out show at Paris’s La Machine du Moulin Rouge in November 2024, Ravyn Lenae recently joined pop star Sabrina Carpenter as the opening act for her U.S. tour, running through November 23, 2025. Meanwhile, her track Love Me Not, also from Bird’s Eye, is steadily gaining traction in France and abroad. The artist currently pulls in 300,000 monthly streams and nearly 300 million weekly views on TikTok—the new benchmark for American pop star popularity.
Today, Ravyn Lenae dares to dream of a parallel career. Why not in film? She took a few acting classes in high school but admits her memory still falters when it comes to memorizing long scripts. To be precise, she already has something in mind: voicing a Disney princess.
Bird’s Eye by Ravyn Lenae, available now.
