Kehlani (2024)

One Liner:  Generic poppy R&B with a parental advisory sticker on it

Wikipedia Genre: R&B, pop, hip hop, neo soul

Home: Oakland, CA

Poster Position: 2
Weekend One Only.
Sunday at 7:25.

Miller Lite Stage.

Thoughts:   Last here in 2015, but now she is way higher on the poster!

Back in 2015, my take was that she was a 20-year old ex-homeless gal who makes pretty typical sounding R&B music, except for the fact that she's a little more explicit and confessional in her lyrics.  Billboard did an interview with her that pretty well details who she is, but they really don't get into the fact that she has a song questioning "how does that sh*t taste" and how she likes the way she gets f**ked.  

Funny thing is, when she was here last time, she had no albums.  She had just recently put out her first ever mixtape, called You Should Be Here.  2015.  It quickly grabbed hundreds of thousands of listens for each track (except for the intro).  She has a good collaboration with Chance the Rapper, called "The Way"  144.7 million streams by now.

Here's the deal - I am no connoisseur of R&B.  This could be the best or worst R&B music to ever come out in the history of man, and I'd have no idea.  I can dig the groove of the sound, but I know well enough that I'd never seek this music out.  But I love that verse on here from Chance - fantastic sexual prowess brags.  Another one I liked is called "Jealous," which is a collaboration with a rapper named Lexii Alijai, that is all about her man taking pictures of their special time together, in order to post the pictures and make his other ladies jealous.  Well done tune.  Maybe I only like the songs where she has a guest rapper and her portion is relegated to the hook.  

Since then, she's kept at it - 2017's SweetSexySavage, 2019's While We Wait, 2020's It Was Good Until It Wasn't, 2022's blue water road, and 2024's CRASH.  From listening to the top tracks on Spotify, I don't notice much new in the sound.  Still just some R&B business with a lot of power and trills and the usual.  I've let the catalog play for a while and yeah, that is still my verdict.  Not my thing, but I understand if you are in to the R&B lady sound, that this should be your jam.

So, a little more background is available now than it was in 2015.  She was born in Oakland, and was originally in a teen pop group called PopLyfe.  That mixtape described up above actually was nominated for the Grammys, in the Best Urban Contemporary Album category.  She lost to The Weeknd.  Her full name is Kehlani Ashley Parrish, and she was adopted by her aunt after her father died when she was a toddler and then her mother spent some time in jail.  She attended the Oakland School for the Arts, practicing ballet and modern dance.  But after a knee injury in high school, she focused on singing, taking her teen pop group to fourth place on America's Got Talent.  During the final appearance on the show, a judge told Kehlani that she had real talent and didn't need the group.  In her senior year of high school, she moved to L.A. without anywhere to live.  She apparently stole iPhones and groceries to get by, but was able to release a track onto SoundCloud, which America's Got Talent host Nick Cannon liked enough to pay for an apartment and studio time for her.

One other fucked up little nugget of background to make you sad - in 2016 she was in a relationship with NBA point guard Kyrie Irving, but a singer named PartyNextDoor posted an Instagram photo insinuating that he was in bed with Kehlani, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of abusive posts against Kehlani.  Shortly after this, she attempted suicide before Irving revealed that they had broken up at the time.  That sucks ass.  Why do people feel the need to post about someone else's life, at all?  Assholes.  [obliviously writes 3,000 words about how I don't like this music]

Speaking of music, let's get back to that.  Her biggest streamer is from the 2019 While We Wait Album - "Nights Like This" and features Ty Dolla $ign.  599.2 million streams.

I do not enjoy Ty Dolla $ign.  His annoying to type name, or his rap stylings.  That song is so nonexistent in my head.  I literally just heard it for like the sixth time in the past two days, and I couldn't tell you a thing about it.  Just so you have one more reference point, here is the top single from her early stuff, her debut album.  "Gangsta" has 454.7 million streams.

That was apparently also on the soundtrack for Suicide Squad, per the YouTube video.  Yeah, more of the same, just explicit.  Actually, I'd say that at least the underlying track on that one is kind of cool and alien and ominous.  You know, let's go with one super recent one just to see if the vibe has changed. The top track from the CRASH album is called "After Hours" and has 64.5 million streams.

 

It is weird when YouTube makes the advertisement for a song be a video to a song.  So, when I clicked that, an NLE Chopper video started, as an ad, and I was like who the hell is this dude, no rappers are listed on this track.  But, as far as that song goes, I'd say that again, the underlying tune is pretty fun - bouncy and vibrant.  Man, she has a buttload of tattoos.  So many.

Caveat shield in place!  I know nothing about R&B or its history or stylings!  But this sure feels generic and uninspiring for me.  If you go, I hope it is mindblowing.