Ravyn Lenae: “I now know what’s possible – but that just makes me hungrier”

“Oh, she’s up next”, reads a comment under a recent performance video of Ravyn Lenae online – a prophecy for a star-in-waiting. ‘Love Me Not’, a track from her 2024 album ‘Bird’s Eye’, might have seemed like a miraculous delivery on that promise when it scored viral success months after its initial release. But to those in the know, the Chicago-born artist has already been “it” for years. As a fixture of the Zero Fatigue collective and across two albums and three EPs, Lenae was a beloved figure in R&B and alt-pop long before the rest of the world caught up. Today, Lenae is gearing up to release her third album ‘Blue Island’. Chatting with NME from a Warsaw hotel room, she’s laidback in leopard print, her signature red hair unmistakeable even on a Zoom screen. “A lot of the album was made during a really interesting time in my life,” she begins. “I was experiencing the biggest highs of my career whilst trying to manage the inevitable changes that came with it.” After being catapulted from respected up-and-comer to the front row of pop with ‘Love Me Not’, she spent the next year performing the track “at every college in America” while adjusting to the new shapes of popstar life. ...