The Chicago R&B singer Ravyn Lenae has been picking up steam for a few years, touring with SZA and showing up on the Insecure soundtrack. Today, Lenae has released a new single that reunites her with Steve Lacy, the Internet member and Kendrick Lamar collaborator who produced a couple of tracks from her 2018 EP Crush. Together, they’ve made a soft, restrained track called “Skin Tight.”
“Skin Tight” is an atmospheric, stripped-down piece of music. Lenae sings softly over Lacy’s spidery guitar. The track is warm and pretty, and it casts a nice little spell. It’s also got a deeply strange animated video from the artist Zongbo Jiang, who shows up several CGI Ravyn Lenae’s dancing for a vaguely amorous pile of bodies that appear to be melting into one another. Check it out below.
In a press release, Ravyn Lenae says:
I wanted to snap people into my world through the sonics, so they can feel how I’ve felt over the past couple of years… It has those hypnotic elements, but it’s very simple, familiar, and fresh. Thematically, it’s about not being in a relationship with somebody, but still having those physical and mental ties. It speaks to sharing kinetic energy with another person, even if time has passed and you aren’t together anymore.
“Skin Tight” is out now on Atlantic.
38