Top 70 Kelela Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Kelela Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

Innovating something that is familiar. That's the gener

Innovating something that is familiar. That’s the general approach, and that’s what I want to do with the melody as well. It should ring true – you should like every melody sequence without knowing what’s happening next.
Kelela
I want to empower.
Kelela
I don’t write lyrics. I hear the track and sing in gibberish over it, then I try and fit words into the phrasing and melody that I already have set. Everything is left to chance.
Kelela
Music in the U.K. is not racialised in the same way as it is in the U.S. In the U.S.. it’s more rigid and conservative. And white people in the U.K. have more close proximity with black people and people of colour in general.
Kelela
I would say there is a zone of R&B that hadn’t been quite innovative.
Kelela
I spent a lot of time in college. I was just being academic and discovering myself through reason and analysis.
Kelela
When I started making songs, some of them read as mixtape-y, and some of them read as album-y.
Kelela
It’s gratifying to hear something familiar and challenging at the same time.
Kelela
A lot of white men in the music industry are promoting and participating in black culture in a way that is pretty careless. They want the currency of blackness, but they don’t want the brunt that comes along with that.
Kelela
I guess the bottom line is I don’t make music that is consumed en masse.
Kelela
I’d like to change what people expect. I want to evoke something that’s not nameable, for people to go, ‘Huh?’
Kelela
I’m very into familiar things, popular things. I’m into things that no one seems to know about or be into. I’m trying to draw a line between those two things and make it clear… that it all makes sense to me. That it’s not disparate. That it’s all one thing inside me.
Kelela
I’ve always had this commitment to not being in one thing.
Kelela
The assumption is simply that I hit on all the things I’ve hit on so far by accident, that my talent is just this raw thing that pours out of me, and then white people feel like they have to come in and contain it, refine it, and bring it to the place where it can been released.
Kelela
That’s pretty much how every song of mine works – I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that.
Kelela
I was in school studying International Studies and Sociology. I was really into what was going on in school. I was affected by the ideas and engaged as a student, but not disciplined or motivated enough to do the work. That was a fear of mine for a while, that nothing was motivating.
Kelela
It is very rare that I am just coming up with melodies off the top of my head. I usually am responding to something – it could be chains dragging on the floor – but I am usually responding to something.
Kelela
Growing up in an Ethiopian household allowed me to feel like I had an audience before I had an audience.
Kelela
How much closer can I get to the common ear, the mainstream, and how much it can still be from this other world, this other place? That’s the line I keep trying to tread but have my wings extend more on both sides.
Kelela
As a black woman, there’s so much pride and communication through hair. It’s naturally something that you are excited to embellish on and be creative about.
Kelela
We are – as artists, we are racialized through genre and called black – without being called black – through genre.
Kelela
Growing up, Missy Elliot and Janet Jackson were definitely major references.
Kelela
I’ve grown up feeling very American but being constantly bothered by people – there’s internalized racism and feeling weird about being second-generation.
Kelela
‘Take Me Apart’ doesn’t feel cohesive in a singular way but in a varied way. You can fixate on individual songs, and there are references from all over the place: Anita Baker to Bjork. I wanted to show all the facets of myself.
Kelela
Sounding like I have agency in a song is important to me. I want to feel empowered by the music.
Kelela
A lot of people of color in the music industry are still more interested in embracing things that are considered white canon, and looking radical. Like when people point to punk in the indie world: If you point to the history of punk as what you see as your legacy, that’s more prized and praised.
Kelela
I am your homegirl, at the end of the day, but I also feel very… outside. So if you’re finding solace in feeling outside with me, then we’re good to go.
Kelela
Most of my friends, growing up, were upper-middle-class white kids, so it was a different reality at home both culturally and linguistically. It created a lot of insecurities for me, but it also did a lot of amazing things that I didn’t know were happening at the time.
Kelela
Before I collaborate, it’s important that I have a conversation about what I care about before we make anything, so that it’s very clear.
Kelela
As a black person on the outside, because there’s so much black art and so much of black people’s work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there’d be more black people on the business side. It didn’t cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.
Kelela
I think the Internet is more layered and complex than just hating it or liking it. I find it to be more purposeful to talk about the way that it’s conducive for relationships and making connections.
Kelela
The goal is to blow the audience's mind.

The goal is to blow the audience’s mind.
Kelela
Sometimes I learn by someone giving me warnings and giving me advice about what to do next. And other times, a lot of times, I have to put my hand into the fire.
Kelela
I know deep down I’m a star.
Kelela
I’m just tryna be honest about all the things that I dig in my music. It’s not just this over here, it’s also that over there.
Kelela
Fog and one blue light is all I need in life at the club. Just a dark room and loud music. I’m into that.
Kelela
As it pertains to my black womanhood, there’s just a lot of ground to cover. There’s a lot of stuff to say.
Kelela
It’s been hard for me to nail visual language and personal style because I like so many different things.
Kelela
At the end of the day, I would like to have the farthest reach in terms of being able to communicate to as many people as possible. So it’s not that I enjoy being obscure; it’s that I sonically don’t want to be situated here or there.
Kelela
Self-care is a requirement.
Kelela
I’m quite scrutinous when it comes to who I put myself in the room with.
Kelela
As much as we like to pretend we’re just getting on stage and whatever, it’s like, no, I practiced in front of the mirror my whole life.
Kelela
I’m pushing back against the white, misogynistic, heterosexual establishment in the music industry. Like, literally, in all its forms.
Kelela
I don’t care about the underground, even if that’s where I’m currently residing sonically.
Kelela
I’m finding out what part of punk culture or white indie culture I actually still want to hold onto – What are the values? What are the contributions that I actually like? – and it not coming from a place of desperation or wanting to be embraced or wanting approval, essentially.
Kelela
For those of us who make music together, I think it’s important to realize that generosity on both sides is actually going to produce the biggest possibility.
Kelela
There are no black women geniuses that are being named in canons. I could name a bunch, but it’s not part of common knowledge. It’s not how the world is taught to think about black women.
Kelela
I would love to do an album of standards!
Kelela
I’m coming from the zone of Faith Evans, but with weird production.
Kelela
When it comes to melodies, production, and sound in pop music, people try to be formulaic and solely concerned with what’s resonant in a way that is so cheap and ugly. It actually just devolves culture, ultimately.
Kelela
When I was little, my parents would have these gatherings, and it was a common thing for me and my cousins to have to put on, like, shows.
Kelela
I like smart rappers who aren’t necessarily trying to be deeper than you, like Danny Brown.
Kelela
My music sounds like one synergised thing, one message.
Kelela
In the music industry, you can’t create success without having to engage a white man. It’s just not possible. Whether it’s executives, A&Rs, and the people that hold the key to your paper, inevitably, you’ll be met with whiteness.
Kelela
In Maryland, I didn’t grow up around poor white people. Where I grew up, the white people were middle class or upper-middle class. It’s interesting how screwed up it is in reality, because most people who receive assistance from the government are white, but not in my head or in my experience.
Kelela
Popular music was this abstraction – an abstraction that I was relating to immensely but was ultimately far away.
Kelela
I really do like Solange, sincerely. I’m down for her, and I trust her judgment.
Kelela
I want to speak in the tradition of rhythm and blues and soul music, but also push how it’s dressed and how it’s delivered to the audience. And hopefully that gets embraced by as many people as possible, but the goal isn’t necessarily to speak to everyone. The goal is to get it out as exact as it is in my head.
Kelela
I just want to shed light, illuminate and turn the spotlight over to all of the black people who have been being futuristic and innovative since instruments were plugged into a wall. With computers, machines, and music, black people have been contributing to that a great deal for a long time.
Kelela
It’s such a challenging time, and in my small way, I will make it so that other younger women, and maybe older women, will be able to do the things they want to do, and accept themselves and their experience.
Kelela
I’ve talked about that with friends, about what genre makes sense to choose for each record and the strategy around that… Sometimes it’s more about the moment of time, and other times it’s more about the sound of the song. Sometimes it’s about what’s going on in larger life, in politics.
Kelela