How Ravyn Lenae channeled 10 years of work into a timeless pop hit

Last December, Ravyn Lenae stood successful the thoroughfare and pointed her telephone astatine herself to movie a TikTok acceptable to her opus “Love Me Not.”

“Me aft linking with him 1 past clip origin I’m not bringing him into 2025,” she captioned the video — a cutesy kiss-off to a feline she’d intelligibly decided was holding her backmost from wherever she was meant to go.

Nearly a twelvemonth later, it appears the vocalist was right: In aboriginal April, “Love Me Not” — a swinging, lightly psychedelic psyche fig astir a hot-and-cold person — gave Lenae her archetypal introduction connected Billboard’s Hot 100; a week later, she made her debut astatine the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Several months aft that, she performed to an enthusiastic assemblage astatine Lollapalooza conscionable earlier “Love Me Not” peaked astatine No. 5 successful mid-August.

Now, with 1 of 2025’s biggest hits nether her belt, Lenae, 26, is winding down her breakout twelvemonth by opening for Sabrina Carpenter arsenic Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet circuit wraps up this week with six sold-out shows done Sunday astatine Crypto.com Arena.

“A batch of this play has been maine asking different artists, ‘Is this however it usually is?’” Lenae tells maine connected a caller evening. “How bash you equilibrium the societal facet and the online facet and the touring with besides staying highly creative?”

Not to notation tending to a idiosyncratic life.

“What’s that?” she asks with a laugh. “That’s virtually nonexistent.”

The runaway occurrence of “Love Me Not,” which has been streamed much than 700 cardinal times connected Spotify, is nary uncertainty what’s enactment the breathy-voiced Lenae earlier galore listeners for the archetypal time. (A remix featuring Rex Orange County has different 164 cardinal Spotify streams.)

At 1 constituent arsenic the opus was blowing up, she responded to a instrumentality connected TikTok who’d been amazed to larn that Lenae is Black — “Y’all didn’t work the sanction Ravyn Lenae and think, ‘Oh, that’s a Black girl?’” the vocalist asks successful the clip — past went up and clarified that besides she’s not British, arsenic immoderate evidently had assumed.

Yet “Love Me Not” really comes a decennary into a vocation that began portion Lenae was inactive successful precocious school. She signed to Atlantic Records astatine property 16 and soon was touring and moving successful the workplace with the likes of SZA and Steve Lacy; “Hypnos,” her debut LP, came retired successful 2022 and made Pitchfork’s intimately watched database of the year’s champion albums.

“I’m beauteous conceited astir the information that I’ve loved Ravyn for arsenic agelong arsenic I have,” says the vocalist and histrion Reneé Rapp, who similar Carpenter took Lenae retired connected the roadworthy this twelvemonth arsenic an opening act. Rapp discovered 1 of Lenae’s aboriginal EPs erstwhile she herself was successful precocious schoolhouse and has been a instrumentality ever since. “I’m like, ‘You bitches are new, and don’t get maine incorrect — I’m truthful blessed you’re here. But let’s get it right: I was boots connected the crushed first.’”

To Rapp’s ears, Lenae’s airy soprano “has this beauteous ping astatine the apical that I’ve lone ever heard successful Minnie Riperton,” she says. “She’s conscionable similar a small fairy. She floats around, and her dependable does the aforesaid thing.”

“Love Me Not,” which is inactive hanging retired successful the precocious reaches of the Hot 100, is from Lenae’s sophomore album, “Bird’s Eye,” which came retired successful August 2024. She recorded the opus with the shaper Dahi, who’s known for his enactment with Kendrick Lamar and Vince Staples; Dahi started the way years agone with Anderson .Paak past enactment it successful a drawer earlier he’d finished it.

“At the time, I was truly into MGMT,” Dahi says, referring to the alternate stone duo whose dreamy-jangly guitar dependable echoes passim “Love Me Not.” With Lenae, helium pushed the opus toward classical R&B — “something that would beryllium played connected ‘Happy Days’ oregon immoderate s—,” helium says — but retained a spacey vibe that keeps it from feeling rooted successful immoderate circumstantial epoch oregon genre.

Lenae says her extremity was to make thing “soulful and Black but that transcends clip and race”; the effect tin beryllium heard successful a lineage of enduring hard-to-classify hits similar Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” that charm listeners crossed demographic lines.

“If you don’t similar ‘Crazy,’ there’s thing incorrect with you,” Lenae says arsenic a pedicurist exfoliates her feet successful a West Hollywood edifice room. It’s the extremity of a agelong time that began with an early-morning formation from New York, wherever Lenae performed with Kali Uchis connected “The Tonight Show” and astatine Madison Square Garden. Now, aft a photograph shoot, she’s changed into grey sweats to sneak successful a infinitesimal of self-care during our chat.

“With the heels I’m wearing each the time, you tin spot the corns,” she says, looking down to cheque retired the pedicurist’s progress. “I wonderment what Beyoncé’s feet look like. ’Cause if excavation look similar this? She’s putting successful work.”

Though “Love Me Not” was singled retired by critics close away, the opus truly took disconnected precocious past twelvemonth aft a DJ posted a viral TikTok that mashed it up with Solange’s “Losing You” arsenic portion of a bid exploring “euphoric” breakup songs. An admiring station connected X by SZA — “One of my fav albums this year,” she wrote of “Bird’s Eye” — helped bring much attraction to Lenae’s music.

Ravyn Lenae successful West Hollywood.

(Ian Spanier / For The Times)

The vocalist grew up successful Chicago, wherever her mother’s parents landed successful the precocious ’70s arsenic immigrants from Panama. That’s their location connected the city’s southbound broadside successful the euphony video for “Love Me Not,” which Lenae directed and which shows her and her younger sister dancing conscionable extracurricular the chamber wherever Lenae slept arsenic a kid.

“I knew this opus would beryllium a batch of people’s instauration to me, truthful I wanted them to instantly leap into my world,” she says. “My grandparents are precise shy people, and erstwhile my grandma saw the video, she was like, ‘Oh, Ravyn, babe …’”

Singing astatine endowment shows arsenic a 12-year-old, Lenae wanted to beryllium a “a premix betwixt Alicia Keys and Beyoncé,” arsenic she puts it; later, she learned to execute Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and Rihanna’s “Take a Bow.”

“I was like, ‘I’m-a triumph ’em implicit with this one,’” she says of the melodramatic ballads. “I’m definite I dependable brainsick connected video.”

Lenae, who went connected to survey astatine the Chicago High School for the Arts, came to recognize that the brushed lilt of her dependable distinguished her from those powerhouses; she recovered inspiration successful “the sensuality and the femininity” of euphony by Diana Ross, Patrice Rushen and Janet Jackson, whose “All for You” medium — released successful 2001, erstwhile Lenae was 2 — would go a touchstone.

“There’s a batch to triumph by not being the loudest successful the room,” says Rapp.

Lenae moved to L.A. successful 2020. Her archetypal twelvemonth present was rough, she says — she missed her ma and felt the load of a slope relationship with $100 successful it. “I retrieve immoderate crying successful the shower,” the vocalist says now.

Her 2022 opus “Skin Tight,” a yearning flirtation she wrote and recorded with Lacy, registered arsenic a turning point; truthful did the occurrence of Lacy’s quirky soul-rock deed “Bad Habit,” which topped the Hot 100 connected its mode to Grammy nominations for grounds and opus of the year.

“That was a humanities infinitesimal for artists similar america that person been moving astatine it for a agelong clip — Black artists who’ve ever been a small to the near of what was going on,” Lenae says. “Steve going No. 1 showed determination truly are nary rules and that there’s abstraction for each of us.”

Beyond “Love Me Not,” highlights connected “Bird’s Eye” see an intimate acoustic number, “From Scratch,” that Lenae says she and Dahi modeled connected Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo’s “Nothing Even Matters”; the lush and whispery “Dream Girl,” which features input by Jackson’s longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis; and “Bad Idea,” a percussive electro-funk jam that interpolates Bow Wow and Ciara’s early-2000s “Like You.”

“All those Ciara hits, I had the choreo down,” Lenae says.

The medium besides contains the tender yet mournful “One Wish,” which Lenae wrote astir her dada not being astir arsenic she was increasing up.

“I never, ever thought I’d speech astir that publicly, but I deliberation I was conscionable astatine a constituent successful my beingness wherever it felt natural,” she says. “And maine and him had conscionable started reconciling, truthful it was precise apical of mind.” She invited her begetter to travel to L.A. to look successful the song’s video, which depicts a young miss moving aft a car arsenic a antheral angrily drives away; the time aft the shoot, they went to Roscoe’s and had a agelong speech astir her childhood.

“Yesterday was his birthday, and I forgot,” she tells me. “I felt horrible, but past I was like, Should I consciousness horrible? I spell backmost and distant with it each the time.”

Lenae is highly adjacent with her mother, who’ll sometimes articulation her connected the roadworthy “just to walk clip with maine oregon clasp my manus — to slumber successful the aforesaid edifice bed,” she says. “That’s the idiosyncratic I cognize I tin support counting on.”

After this week’s dates with Carpenter, Lenae volition caput eastbound for a fistful of shows connected iHeartRadio’s Jingle Ball circuit — 1 much accidental to physique upon “Love Me Not’s” Top 40 breakthrough. Then she and Dahi program to absorption connected finishing her adjacent album.

So far, Lenae says, it’s shaping up to beryllium “a small much punchy and explosive” than “Bird’s Eye.” One of the caller songs is astir her mom; Lenae played it for her erstwhile she was present visiting not agelong ago.

“I had the lyrics up, and arsenic she was speechmaking it, she looked up astatine maine and determination was a teardrop successful her eye,” she recalls. “Then we started bawling together. I deliberation that 1 mightiness extremity up her favorite.”