With ‘Love Me Not’ still on the global charts, surpassing one billion views and therefore becoming one of the biggest musical surprises of recent years on a commercial level, Ravyn Lenae announces her recording comeback with a new album that can be heard from August 7 and is titled ‘Blue Island’.
That “blue island” is a metaphorical place to which Lenae has returned “again and again during the last year,” according to what she says in a writing. He says that it is a place “defined by movement, heartbreak, desire, trust, loneliness, freedom, uncertainty and growth,” and that the album explores “the strange way that memories and change coexist side by side.”
With the first single, ‘Handle’, Ravyn has had to endure criticism from some fans who ask him to “don’t forget that he is an R&B artist.” Ravyn has answered: “I am whatever I want to be at the moment I consider; do not project on me.”
The reason is that ‘Handle’ is a guitar single that, in some way, responds to the success of ‘Love Me Not’ but without copying its formula. We are really facing a much more rhythmic and aggressive theme, close to the neo-grunge that is marking current alternative pop. In the lyrics, Ravyn sings about an unstable relationship, stating that she may be “more than you can handle.”
‘Handle’ is a powerful first preview of ‘Blue Island’, in which the contrast between Lenae’s light voice and the energy of the guitars stands out. With echoes of the electronic grunge of the nineties, which fused guitars and synthesizers, the song marks a clear evolution for Ravyn, but manages to propose a different aesthetic from that of his previous work.
