‘MUSIC IS A SAFE HAVEN’
Canadian R&B artist releases new album that questions our mortality
As she was putting the finishing touches on her full-length debut LP, Before Love Came to Kill Us, folky R&B singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez wanted listeners to think about their mortality.
But suddenly that became eerily prescient in the weeks leading up to its release earlier this week as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe.
Life and death, “has always been in front of me by the nature of how I was raised,” Reyez says from self-isolation in her Toronto home.
“My mother was spiritual and growing up, anytime someone asked her a question, ‘If God allows,’ was always part of her answer. That was always included in her sentences and it wasn’t until I got older that I realized that line was a reminder of the fragility of life.”
Now, the Toronto-born musician says, the album might give listeners pause.
“It’s a condensed picture of what my idea is and what my reality is regarding how I approach life.”
Music, she adds, has been a comfort to her when she’s been in pain or dealing with depression, so she hopes the record can be a salve in these uncertain times.
“Like it is for a lot of people, music is a safe haven,” she says. “In the past, there have been times I have felt I could hear my pain in other people’s songs and I didn’t feel alone. It made me feel like I had a friend.”
Since breaking out on the scene in 2016 with Figures, a sultry slow jam that was the centrepiece of her 2017 EP Kiddo and a hit on Youtube, Reyez, 28, has built a fan base eager to hang on her every lyric.
“Being honest helps me believe other people are going to be honest with me. It doesn’t always work out, but at least the energy I’m putting out isn’t bad.”
In her short career, Reyez, who was once a Toronto Argonauts cheerleader, has won two Juno Awards and been nominated for a Grammy. Adding to her impressive resumé, the songstress has also collaborated with superstar DJ Calvin Harris and rapper Eminem.
“It doesn’t seem real,” she says as the accolades are read back to her. “Things moved so fast that it’s rare that I get to take a minute to take it all in.”
But as she gained fame, Eminem, who invited her to appear on 2018’s Kamikaze and repays the favour on Reyez’s dark love song Coffin, helped serve as a reminder to stay true to herself.
“He has this quality to be authentically himself,” she says reflecting on her collaboration with the reclusive rap star.
“He’s relentless that way, and there’s something to be said for being fearlessly yourself.”
In the lead up to the release of Before Love Came to Kill Us, Reyez says she didn’t feel pressure an artist with her amount of hype might have.
But with a set of songs that intimately chart a path through untidy relationships (she namechecks Same Side as the record’s most personal), she found herself paralyzed by another word: cohesiveness.
With the LP scheduled to hit in the midst of an opening spot she had booked alongside superstar Billie Eilish, Reyez says for a moment she second-guessed herself.
“It wasn’t until a few months ago when I was getting ready to go on tour that I realized the sequencing was all about cohesiveness instead of just embracing who I am by nature.
“By nature I’m sporadic, but letting that word ‘cohesiveness’ slip into my thought process of how I wanted this to go was a mistake that I was able to catch.
“I was able to say, ‘f--- that,’ and rearrange the track listing and make a few changes to make sure it was a reflection of me being high and low and romantic and violent and black and white — all those things at the same time. There was a moment where I had to make sure I was being authentically me despite other people’s expectations of what my record was supposed to be.”
That authenticism applies to why now, even as a global pandemic threatens our very way of life, it was still the right time to release her new music.
“We can make as many plans as we want, but there’s just a lot of things that aren’t in our hands,” she says softly. “It’s something that’s been with me throughout my life.”