‘We can find renewal despite the bullshit we navigate as Black women’: Kelela on stan armies and speaking up for Gaza

The genre-bending R&B artist’s new album finds fresh focus for her uncompromising vision, blending soul, sex and shoegazeMore than most musicians on a typical promo cycle, Kelela has been appearing on my social feeds in increasingly surreal combinations. In one clip, she blows kisses to an enormous crowd of onlookers on the streets of Soho New York; another sees her posing for fans against a fog-strewn background somewhere between South Central and survivalist video game Silent Hill. In the video for idea 1 the singer saunters down a corridor with windswept silver hair, looking like Storm if the X-Men movies had been directed by Hype Williams. In a widely circulated tribute/parody, the track is synced uncannily well to a cut of RuPaul in the 90s strutting her stuff to the song’s throbbing guitar, while sporting a remarkably similar sleek, platinum blonde wig.“If there were a fan competition amongst artists, I feel like I would win,” the actual Kelela tells me when we meet a