“Somebody out there really needs to hear this,” Kehlani stated, with earned conviction, on the first track of her second mixtape, 2015’s You Should Be Here. That four-word title alone revealed her emotional intelligence and extraordinary empathy—attuned to the injustice of family members who died before they should have, to friends lost, and to how lovers can be physically present even when they are already long gone. “I’ve felt more pain than some will in their entire lives, all before the age of even being able to buy a fucking drink in a bar,” Kehlani continued on You Should Be Here’s opening monologue, setting the stage and clearing the air for all the raw feeling that would follow.
In her journey from a gauged-ear teen on “America’s Got Talent” to her current zen-like self—pop music sage, wellness app guru, “Come As You Are” tattooed above a portrait of Lauryn Hill on her left bicep—Kehlani, who is now 23, has spoken bluntly about her struggles with mental health and her difficult childhood, likening her parents to Bonnie and Clyde. But in an era of morbid sadness in pop and rap, Kehlani’s songs are tinged with optimism. “Piece of Mind,” the breezy highlight of her 2017 debut LP SweetSexySavage, was a poised anthem about regaining composure and self-worth after a psychologically fraught time. Kehlani’s music knows hurt, but its theme is survival.
While We Wait is Kehlani’s fourth project: her third mixtape and first since SweetSexySavage. Fittingly titled, it was made during her pregnancy (Kehlani’s daughter is due in March) and is her strongest, most distilled release. The playlistification of mainstream music has not hindered this refreshingly concise collection of pop, rap, and ’90s R&B resilience. The sparkling self-respect jam “Morning Glory” evokes TLC, autonomy, and collectedness. The tape’s most thrilling single, “Nunya,” is like Kehlani’s savage take on “Bug A Boo,” with a monster hook to match its monster kiss-off: “You put on a show/’Cause you don’t want the world to know/That you lost the girl who got it on her own.” And the opener “Footsteps” is angelic neo-soul with the piercing emotionality of Joni Mitchell. “When I walked away/I left footsteps in the mud so you could follow me,” Kehlani sings, a simply gorgeous sentiment about leaving a person even if you don’t want to.
The nine songs on While We Wait sometimes feel like a scripted drama about just how complicated love and communication can be in our hyper-mediated present. Kehlani meets peers like SZA and Drake in illustrating those messy realities and then some, sifting through past traumas, suppressed feelings, the shortcomings of language, and the constraints of masculinity. Her primary characters are broken people with baggage attempting to understand one another: “Shoulda never gave you my heart on consignment,” she sings on the aching, moody break-up banger “Nights Like This,” and things grow harder from there. But Kehlani treads into these seas, looks for anchors, and does not shy away from the crashing waves. “I see you duck and dodge at every bend,” she whisper-raps on the spare, vulnerable “Butterfly,” insuring a partner that, “It’ll make you no less of a man/To break your walls and simply grab my hand.” All of Kehlani’s music—but none so much as While We Wait—feels like taking TLC’s “Damaged” and trying to heal it.
An unlikely highlight, then, “Too Deep” is a labyrinth intervention, spiraling into a sublime girl-group choir of Kehlani’s who all narrate that suffocating titular state of feeling suddenly, perilously in over your head. “We was candy crushin,” Kehlani exclaims, “But this shit gettin’ too deep.” Despite its crestfallen subject matter, “Too Deep” is excellent fun. I like to imagine Kehlani listening to her hero, Mariah Carey, in her immortal song “We Belong Together,” remarking “this is too deep” about that one Bobby Womack tune on her radio, and then making a song based on that precise feeling.
The most crushing While We Wait track is “Footsteps,” an ode to honesty and patience in the wake of a dysfunctional relationship. It contains a magical melancholy, the kind that lifts you up. “Cheers to being honest/Neither of us knew what we wanted,” goes the resigned and uncommonly human refrain. An equally potent line—about the tendency of men to use women as therapy—comes later from the featured singer Musiq Soulchild: “I treated you like medicine/But I guess I wasn’t listening.” Kehlani’s truth, though, rings resoundingly. Across While We Wait, her lucidity is pure relief, but “Footsteps” is so eloquent and resolved that you want to bow your head when it ends. Kehlani is teaching us how to talk to one another, and in the process, her voice has emerged more clearly than ever.
