Written by “Watching who I’ve become, who’s my tribe?” Ravyn Lenae wondered aloud on 2022’s HYPNOS. That gossamer, hypnagogic debut established her as an R&B savant bridging Janet and Little Dragon, LaFace and Brainfeeder. Like a nectar-drunk hummingbird, her voice swooped, hovered, and soared across that record’s moonlit arrangements. But as the lyric hinted, that agility was fueled by pressure as much as style. “I felt like I had to prove myself… to Black people, to R&B listeners, to people who respect and love that genre like I do,” she said in 2024 while promoting her follow-up, Bird’s Eye, which made inroads into reggae, pop, and soft rock. “I was raised in R&B, so I’m not rejecting that in any sense… But, in hindsight, I placed a lot of weird expectations and rules on what it had to be.”
After the viral success of retro soul single “Love Me Not” in 2025, those questions of identity became external. Addressing her rapidly expanding audience late last year, Lenae responded to racist chatter about her Blackness: “If you really study Black aesthetic, you would know that I’m pulling directly from the women who have come before me, the Chaka Khans, the Minnie Rippertons, the Diana Rosses… We can be whatever we want to be.” Blue Island, named after her hometown in Illinois, follows through on that statement, charting a course that lets Lenae flex new muscles and offload genre anxieties. But even with this expanded palette, her writing still sounds overly self-conscious, never fully evoking the free spirit she yearns to be.
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Lenae aims to build on Bird’s Eye’s ethos of expansion, pushing further into an airy, lambent sound. She again calls on DJ Dahi, a fellow genre skeptic, to helm the production. Supported by multi-instrumentalist Ely Rise and guitarist Flanafi, Dahi provides ’80s-inspired arrangements that variously erupt with color and simmer into mellow grooves. It’s a good time. Unlike Jack Antonoff and crew on Doja Cat’s Vie, Dahi is more interested in function than pastiche. The instruments and rhythms dance with Lenae’s sinuous vocals, nudging her into odd pockets, uplifting her notes. The aesthetic conveys a shift in tack: “In the unusual I am finding peace/I’m letting go now, let go of me,” Lenae sings on gentle kiss-off “Wish You Well.”
“The unusual” requires a grain of salt given the familiarity of Blue Island’s sound, but the change of scenery bears fruit. Lenae storms out the gate with full-throated bays on opener “Handle,” tapping her inner Cyndi Lauper. She drops to a murmur for the verses, building to a big, electric guitar-backed hook. On slow jam “Never Let Me Go,” each verse swings between breathy, low notes and a springy Mariah Carey-like singsong. The vocals are so distinct in rhythm and texture that it sounds like Lenae’s duetting with herself. That flux is even more pronounced on “In & Out,” a pop joint about the frustration of unrequited love. She somehow stretches “Please” into eight wounded syllables on the hook, singing in three different registers. Lenae’s vocals have always been fluid; widening her repertoire just unlocks more melodic possibilities.
Her feathery upper pitch, a mainstay on past records, is less constant. She arcs up and down her range on “Familiar Dreams,” channeling the song’s dizzy tale of running into an old flame. On electro-funk cut “Saturday Night,” her cool, vaporous timbre sells the song’s anti-ex agenda. “I’m in here looking like the time of your life/But I’m still leaving without you,” she sings with killer nonchalance. Her highest notes stun—especially on funky highlight “Sew Me Back Together,” where she uses them to accent the most swooning lines. Lenae just lets those moments of rhapsody happen more naturally. That seems to be the draw of the ’80s for her: a sense of expanded artistic license. It was the decade of Prince, Sade, and N.W.A., after all.
The quest for permission sometimes feels a bit too front of mind. “If they knew the tale/The difference from the old me,” Lenae sings on attempted empowerment anthem “Babygirl,” sounding like the “They Don’t Know” meme. “Let Us In” is worse, pairing a pulsing electro-pop beat with a hook that’s more begging than insurgent. “We’ve been knocking/Let us in,” Lenae entreats like she’s been left in the rain outside a party. The plea doesn’t gel with the confidence she brings to the rest of the record, even the stinker “Reputation,” a schmaltzy pop-folk collab with Dominic Fike that could have been plundered from a Gym Class Heroes hard drive.
Blue Island is at its strongest when Lenae leaves the subtext buried and lets the craft do the work. Her fitful vocals capture the chaos of love, the maddening ability of a partner to absolutely wreck a mind or heal it. “My memories are talkin’/They’re telling me to reach for the keys/Start walking, I know I should but,” she sings with cheer, lovestruck despite the alarms going off in her head. Whatever genre she’s toying with is irrelevant: It’s a good Ravyn Lenae song.
