BACKSTORY: A dancefloor assassin with the ability to either turn up the club or shut it down
FROM: Born in Nigeria with time spent in New York for college; now living in Lagos
YOU MIGHT KNOW HER FROM: Her debut EP, The Arrival, and her work with UK producer Riton
NOW: Releasing her assured house-hop debut LP, pain/pleasure
Kah-Lo first turned heads as a featured guest on Riton’s 2016 hit “Rinse & Repeat.” Practically since that moment, she’s been itching to release her debut LP. Now, with pain/pleasure, that moment is finally here. The Nigerian vocalist and songwriter has been enchanting fans with her blend of pop sensibilities and deep-house rhythmic language since she began dropping tracks with Riton, infusing her music with sounds from across the world. Elements of amapiano flirt gracefully with American R&B, while global pop sounds infuse her rich, commanding voice.
The album was a long time coming, a period Kah-Lo knows has shaped her into the tough, determined artist she’s become. The title, pain/pleasure illustrates the highs and lows of working in the major-label system—dealing with bureaucracy because it’s the only way to honor your art in an honest way. Kah-Lo isn’t jaded, but she knows her art is also a job, the way she can sustain herself on a daily basis.
pain/pleasure is about the complexities of being an artist in this modern, broken landscape. Despite the horrors of dealing with streaming services, ticket conglomerates, and all the trappings of the industry, her debut is a sparkling testament to the power of perseverance. The album, in many senses, emerged from trauma, as she explains. “I’ve had a lot of PTSD dealing with very shady people in the industry,” she says. “There’s even some songs I perform to this day that I released earlier in my career that bring back really horrible memories for me, but people love them.”
“I literally stripped my songwriting process down to the fundamentals of how to write a song. Then I was able to channel all the anger that I was feeling into the record.”
When she released her first EP, The Arrival, she wanted to make an album of dance songs with no creative input from anyone but herself. It was the start of a new beginning, but those feelings of PTSD were hard to repress, and a global pandemic stopped her work in its tracks. “All of a sudden I’d released that into the universe and I was just like, OK, then what’s my album about?’ I was so angry and I was so upset during COVID with everything that had happened, and then also the cumulative sadness that everyone was going through.”
She adds, “I didn’t have a lot of positive experiences to pull from, because a lot of my stuff is very clubby.” How do you express the euphoric joy of dance music, the sort of music that Kah-Lo loves to make and create, when the feeling was so elusive on a day-to-day basis?
Cue Kah-Lo’s therapist. “At the advice of my wonderful therapist, I was told to channel that into the music, but it was weird because I’ve never written about negative emotions before.” So pain/pleasure is an album of dancefloor bangers to soundtrack the low points in your life. Despite the subject matter, though, the album is remarkably versatile. It can accompany long nights of joy or sharp bursts of pain; it’s an album for all moments, all seasons, that was made possible by another key philosophical contributor: Jeff Tweedy and his book How to Write One Song. “I bought that, and I literally stripped my songwriting process down to the fundamentals of how to write a song. Then I was able to channel all the anger that I was feeling into the record.”
“I love that I can mess with people, and I love that I can do it with my femininity in the boardroom and outside.”
While the album is split into songs of pain and pleasure, they’re also split into distinct eras. A lot of the older songs express moments of happiness, while a lot of the newer songs tap into her pain. “‘Euphoria’ is a much older song, ‘Play’ is a much older song. They came from the happier times of my life when I was very blissfully ignorant, and everything was happy,” she says.
pain/pleasure is also deeply inspired by her evolving femininity—her strength as a person, yes, but more specifically as a woman. “I’m at a point now where I love that I’m a woman. I love that I can mess with people, and I love that I can do it with my femininity in the boardroom and outside,” she explains.
This album is an ode to her confidence, to her triumph over the struggles she’s faced these past few years. “Whoever wants smoke can get it,” she says, before adding, “and I'll put lip gloss on after.” FL
