KELELA – Take Me Apart
(Warp Records)
Reviewed by Kate Taylor.
If you’re looking for sexy, suggestive and seductive R&B then Kelela’s Take Me Apart is the album of sex jams for you. Take Me Apart’s cover image alone sets you up for what you can expect as it features a naked Kelela in all her nubian glory straddling her own impossibly long, thick locs as she thrusts her side boob at us with sex dungeon eyes…phwoar. With warm trap beat clicks and fuzz interwoven on Take Me Apart’s 14 tracks; L.A. and London based Kelela swoons and drips her overt sexuality over the smooth R&B, Trip-Hop and Electronica offerings on tracks like Waitin’, Enough, Blue Light, Truth or Dare, or indeed title track Take Me Apart; the latter of which, I think you’re starting to pick up on in terms of lyrical content.
Kelela displays her broad variety of vocal stylings all up, in and around the orifices of Take Me Apart; in one moment Keleka is a breathy, thirsty nymph cooing and tripping up and down the falsetto scale then brings bold, forceful directives on her flows. All while ‘found footage’ samples of lighter flicks, spliff puffs and skurr skurring away in cars plays under Kelela’s impeccable vocal choices. Fans of FKA Twigs and Grimes will do well to have their own encounter with Kelela as her vibe is unmistakably complimentary to those two women leaders in their genre. While there’s similarities to be gleaned from this, Kelela’s debut full length album; it is important to note that the most alluring aspect of Take Me Apart is the way that Kelela brings a classic 90s R&B vocal styling over fresh beats and new-age digital blips and beeps to create an excellent melding of two concepts together seamlessly.
