Images: Noe Cove
Story: Luna Bacce
New Jersey’s personal Rakiyah is placing the ending touches on some of the bold conceptual arcs in fashionable different R&B. Her debut album, “My Assortment of Boy Tears,” marks the triumphant conclusion to her Cosmic Love Odyssey trilogy.
The previous aerospace engineer has spent years developing a sprawling sci-fi lore round her alter ego, the Cosmic Queen. Throughout this last chapter, ambient manufacturing meets anime aesthetics and bilingual English-Korean songwriting to show heartbreak into uncooked energy.
The challenge transforms ache into tangible foreign money because the Cosmic Queen rises from a brutal fall by means of the cosmos. Rakiyah explores themes of revenge, therapeutic, and self-reclamation, drawing inspiration from martial arts coaching and the revenge-driven storytelling of Kill Invoice.
Reside rock performances of “Prepared or Not” already generated over 11 million Instagram views, highlighting the rising consideration round Rakiyah’s genre-blending strategy that merges different R&B, rock influences, and cinematic storytelling.
The Cosmic Queen might exist inside a universe of revenge, energy, and celestial mythology, however her story begins with one thing way more human. As “My Assortment of Boy Tears” brings the Cosmic Love Odyssey trilogy to its conclusion, Rakiyah takes us by means of the heartbreak, creativity, and private evolution that formed this last chapter.
“My Assortment of Boy Tears” turns tears into one thing virtually tangible, serving as reminiscence, foreign money, and energy inside the Cosmic Queen’s journey. When did that concept first turn into the emotional core of the story?
Over the three years of writing and creating this album, I went by means of phases the place I might cry as I used to be recounting recollections, re-feeling intense feelings, and shutting sure chapters in my life. I spotted all through this extremely weak course of that my tears and their goal had been altering. I may really feel a launch as I wrote these songs by means of the tears, and that turned a supply of energy. That realization motivated me to make use of tears as a supply of energy for the Cosmic Queen, for her to extract them from her victims in her villain arc, however of their purest type they turned therapeutic.
As the ultimate chapter of the Cosmic Love Odyssey trilogy, “My Assortment of Boy Tears” additionally marks your debut album. Wanting again, how has your relationship with the Cosmic Queen developed because you first met her, and what has she taught you about your self as each an artist and a girl?
Once I first began the Cosmic Love Odyssey, I considered the Cosmic Queen as only a character and as an alter ego. At first, I checked out her as somebody I admired and aspired to be, an ethereal being who may do issues I couldn’t do. Nonetheless, all through the private journey and experiences that I share on this album, I acquired this reward of confidence from the Cosmic Queen, and our identities started to merge. The powers you see the Cosmic Queen develop by means of this final chapter—the sword martial arts, for instance—required me to exit and study and practice to accumulate that talent. Embodying her empowered me. I realized from her, then I developed into her, and in that evolution I additionally discovered forgiveness. I used to be in a position to forgive myself for the errors I made, my naivete, and my anger. This forgiveness grants me grace not simply in how I expertise love but additionally on this very difficult pursuit of my music profession. The Cosmic Queen gave me the arrogance to belief my coronary heart and my artwork.
All through the album, the Cosmic Queen refuses to stay a sufferer of betrayal. Was it necessary so that you can create a feminine character whose response is transformation relatively than resignation?
Sure! I’m not somebody who offers up. I face the ideas, the doubts, and the fears, but it surely’s not in my programming to stop. I search options, so on this universe I assumed it was essential to create a personality that emulates that very same refusal to confess defeat. We want extra heroines, particularly in such a well-known battle. Slightly than resign, it was simply time to evolve.
Whereas “My Assortment of Boy Tears” exists inside the Cosmic Queen’s fictional universe, how a lot of her journey displays your personal experiences of progress, therapeutic, and self-discovery?
Actually, all of it. I mirrored a few of my real-life expertise by means of the Cosmic Queen’s journey on this universe all through this album.
Your inventive world blends alt-R&B, anime aesthetics, sci-fi mythology, and multilingual songwriting in a manner that feels seamless. How did you develop that inventive strategy?
I take delight in being very genuine. My self-expression, what comes out after I’m creating artwork, simply comes naturally. I spent years in South Korea after instructing myself the Korean language, in order that will get typically built-in into my lyrics. I really like anime, sci-fi, and all issues different, in order that exhibits up in my aesthetic and world-building.
Chatting with the references behind the album, what artists, anime, books, or movies would you advocate as companion items for listeners who need to higher perceive “My Assortment of Boy Tears”?
I might advocate the film Kill Invoice due to the inspiration for the revenge plotline on this album. There are additionally parallels between the Cosmic Queen and Harley Quinn’s character improvement. I created the Cosmic Queen from the archetype of the femme fatale who turned heartbreak, chaos, and emotional ache into her personal supply of energy.
Earlier than turning into a full-time artist, you skilled as an aerospace engineer. What parts of that mindset, whether or not it’s problem-solving, curiosity, or world-building, nonetheless seem in your inventive course of at this time?
The analytical, problem-solving, data-driven mindset from my science and engineering background remains to be very current as I pursue enterprise as a inventive. I nonetheless use arithmetic in budgeting for all of those inventive tasks. Making strategic selections about what to do with my artwork requires evaluation of the info I obtain from my followers. As a inventive, I nonetheless discover myself experimenting by means of my music creation course of. I’ll even subconsciously strategy creation as an equation, which may typically be to my detriment. There’s not all the time a solution or perhaps a end result on the opposite facet of inventive expression. So I’ve to ensure to extract that facet of myself typically if I discover it stunting my creativity.
Using each English and Korean provides one other layer to the worlds you create. How do you strategy selecting the language that carries every emotion or a part of a narrative?
English and Korean phonetics are so drastically completely different. I lean extra into my curiosity in how the sound enhances the manufacturing. My cadence that I select in Korean merges with my very own particular type of singing to create a particular sonic expertise. I at present seldom sing in Korean, however after I do, it’s to pay homage to the transformative expertise I had and as an inventive problem.
Now that this whole trilogy is full, what would you like listeners to really feel once they play the challenge during for the very first time?
I need them to flee into my universe and perceive what the Cosmic Queen skilled that took her down this path. I additionally need them to really feel pleasure and hope from the expansion and therapeutic that happens on the finish of the challenge.
Now that this chapter of the Cosmic Queen’s story has been accomplished, what are among the objectives, concepts, or inventive worlds you hope to carry to life within the subsequent part of your profession?
Now that this chapter is over, my intent is to dwell on this period. I need the world to have time to course of and expertise such an in-depth physique of labor. I feel whereas that’s taking place, I want to only dwell to be able to draw inspiration for the subsequent universe and journey for the Cosmic Queen. I do intend in some unspecified time in the future to create one other different R&B/darkish pop challenge, in addition to give the world the choice rock album they’ve been asking for. However for now, we’re right here on this period of “My Assortment of Boy Tears” with this present iteration and evolution of the Cosmic Queen.
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