December 8, 2015 The 107 Best Songs of 2015

27. Kehlani f. Coucheron, “Alive”

Being a fan of Kehlani is like being a fan of J. Cole. You believe that full projects should be loved as much as singles, that stars should be socially conscious, and that lyrics should be revealing. You want them to make it to radio, but by defying radio’s norms. You cling to others who feel the same way. You see them at the concerts you buy tickets for, wearing the same T-shirt you purchased.

Kehlani isn’t for every target demo, she’s just for her people. Lots of young women, more than a few young men, and anyone who’s felt good after proving—to themselves or others—a capability to pick themselves up after a shitty time. Resilience is the subject of countless pop songs, but few people embody it as well as Kehlani, who looked after herself through a tumultuous childhood, and has found purpose in looking after others. “Alive,” the closer of her album-presented-as-mixtape You Should Be Here, is a pact between one self-empowered artist and her self-empowered fans. You can start over as many times as you want, it promises. I believe her. —Naomi Zeichner

October 6, 2015 Catching up with Kehlani She discusses her writing process, being inspired by partynextdoor, and rainy days

"Sorry, I'm just writing a song," Kehlani says between interview questions as her French tips clack away at her iPhone screen. Her genuine apology proves two things: One, that she has enviable multitasking skills, and two, that even with all of the attention she's gained, the R&B singer hasn't lost sight of what it is that drew her dedicated fanbase—her uncanny ability to write lyrics that strike a chord within her listeners, and to sing them with a raw and moving emotion. She first caught our eye back in April, and she's come a long way even since then, from dropping her second mixtape You Should Be Here—and selling out its accompanying North American tour—to turning just 20 years old.

We braved the pre-Hurricane Joaquin storm to catch up with her backstage at The FADER and Vitaminwater's #uncapped concert series in New York City and, trust us, you should've been there.

You sold out a couple of shows from the European extension of your You Should Be Here tour. Yeah! I sold out [the North American leg] and I sold out London in eight hours, so we added another show. We sold out the second show in four hours. I’m excited to go out of the States. I’ve never left the country, except for Canada.

Any funny stories from the road? In Hawaii, after the show they were like, “Okay, we’re gonna do this dramatic thing where you’re gonna run off the stage and we’re gonna film you.” So I ran off the stage, and all of a sudden they yell, “Surprise!” and they pop and pour eight bottles of Champagne all over me! It ended up being used for the “Alive” video. That was a good moment.

Even with all of the attention you’ve been getting, you’ve still maintained a close connection with your fans. What do you attribute that to? Having idols that I couldn’t get in contact with. It’s not necessarily because they didn’t want to. We’re just in a different time. When I was growing up, looking up to Aaliyah, TLC, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, we didn’t have Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat. There was a cool mystery that celebrities had, but you wanted to know more. I wasn’t reading magazines when I was little. I wasn’t reading people’s interviews online. I didn’t really have that connection, but we have that now. My whole purpose of making music is for people who have similar stories and can relate. It would make no sense that my music offers so much help to other people, but I don’t actually make connections [with my fans].

When did you realize that that connection was so important? When I started getting feedback. People would say, “You had the courage to tell your story and you saved my life.” At first, I said, "There’s no way. I made this song in this random room and I just thought it was tight, and it saved your life?" But it just kept happening. People started telling me I fueled their weight-loss journey, or their coming out to their parents, or things like that. So, once I got the feedback and I knew that I was doing good for other people, then I realized I could only keep going.

A huge part of that connection with your fans is the fact you write your own songs—you’re literally doing it right now! How has your writing process changed over time? At first, I used to only be able to write based on whether I was going through something. Recently, I’ve been able to just tell stories. I’ve been able to challenge myself like, let me think of a situation—say a guy goes to the army, his legs get chopped off and he gets sent home, and his wife has these crazy feelings; “Well, now, I have a husband who’s paralyzed, but I love him to death, but I have to help him get his self-confidence back.” I’ve never met a man with his legs chopped off, or loved him, or had to nurse him back to being confident. But I’m able to put myself in that perspective and write from that perspective.

How will that translate to your next project? My next project definitely has a consistent theme and it all flows into each other, rather than just a bunch of collections of stories.

You’ve worked with a good number of artists. Who’s been the most insightful? We didn’t collab, but PARTYNEXTDOOR gives me the best advice. He knows what he’s doing. It’s calculated, but also there’s so much talent involved that half of it just comes naturally. He’s just always teaching me to be mindful and be aware of what I’m doing. He’s a very smart man.

One of your collabs we've had on repeat is your “Hotline Bling” remix with Charlie Puth. How did that come about? We were at the studio. It was the last 30 minutes of our session and I said, “We should make a cover. Your song is crackin’ right now, my mixtape’s gonna be good. Let’s just do it for the fans.” We thought of “Hotline Bling” and we made a remix. Somebody got the instrumental and put our version on Drake’s version, and it’s been playing on the radio. I actually got into an Uber the other day in San Francisco literally two days ago, and it was playing. I told the Uber driver, “That’s me!” He was like, “I don’t believe you! You’re a liar!” Like, I don’t think I’d be frantically Snapchatting myself if it wasn’t me, sir, but I’ll take that. [Laughs]

There have been so many good covers of that song, too. Erykah Badu just dropped one. It’s ridiculous. I’m a fan.

Who else have you been listening to? Bryson Tiller’s [TRAPSOUL] is so good. But when you’re in album-mode as an artist, you try not to listen to too many things that are currently going on, so I’m pretty much listening to my friends, people that I know, and my music. I downloaded a bunch of albums that were sonically different, that could challenge my ear—a lot of old Amy Winehouse, a lot of Jazmine Sullivan, a lot of old Musiq Soulchild. I have a brand-new computer, so I had to download a lot of stuff anyways, but I have an inspiration folder with old stuff that’ll just remind me of golden times in music that I’m trying to get back to.

You mention your friends a lot, and there’s a stigma associated with having your friends on your team as you break into the industry. How have you guys maintained your balance? One, none of my friends are yes-men. When they became part of my team, I told them I will not allow them to ever put me on a pedestal. Even if I say things the wrong way, they let me know because I never want to become crazy. It’s just so opposite of me right now, I couldn’t even imagine transforming into that. But we keep each other grounded. We’re going to all of these places, but we count our blessings and remember that we should be very thankful for this because we’re lucky to even be able to do any of these things. And we always team meetings and talk about problems as they come up—things always go wrong with people’s teams when they stop talking to each other. If everyone knows everything, it’s gonna be fine.

Last question: Considering the weather we’re having in New York today, what’s your rainy- day routine like? Man, I love rainy days. I live in Los Angeles and we’re in a drought, so we really don’t get too much rain. I’d rather write and record in the rain, as dramatic as that sounds. It’s a beautiful thing for an R&B singer to be able to sit by a window, watch it rain, listen to it rain, smell the rain, and just write and think. I like to clean when it rains, stay in and clean. Burn incense, write. It’s an excuse to not be outside being crazy, so it’s my time to just reflect. People say weather and time really affect people’s moods: You’re completely different in the morning than you are before you go to sleep. You are completely different in the rain than you are in the heat, as you are in the snow, or anything else. It’s also why I choose to make certain music at certain times in certain places. So on rainy days, I just wanna write.

February 26, 2015

R&B Artist Kehlani Is on the Verge of Blowing Up

There are very few 19-year-olds who are touring the country performing at sold-out shows, but I guess that's further proof that Kehlani is special. She's come a long way since she was a top four finalist on season six of America's Got Talent, where, during her audition with her band, Poplyfe, Piers Morgan told her, "You are a very good singer... I think you've got real talent, but I don't think you need the group." In true mythology-making fashion, 16-year-old Kehlani defiantly responded: "We thought we'd show our talent by giving it an acoustic setting, but when we get into an electric set, you won't say what you just said," to the approving roar of the audience. Sharon Osbourne, another one of the judges, told her, "I think you're a star."

Five years later, Kehlani is making good on that prediction. Off the strength of a single mixtape ( Cloud 19, which Complex named one of the best albums of 2014) she's gotten co-signs from G-Eazy, PartyNextDoor, and Chance the Rapper. She just finished her first national tour. Her Soundcloud recently surpassed 10 million plays. She's a regular fixture in the top ten of Billboard's Emerging Artists chart. And her movement—the "Tsunami Mob," which has its own apparel and aesthetic—is growing by the day.

Her appeal is refreshingly old-school: a voice that doesn't need Autotune; lyrics about happiness, love, and anti-materialism, and an unmanaged image—she has Star Warstattoos, loves Backwoods-brand blunt wraps, and flaunts no-makeup looks on social media.

Her story is uniquely American. Her ancestry is black, white, Native American, Hispanic, and Filipino. (She's also openly bisexual.) She was born to a drug-addicted mother, and ultimately taken in by her aunt, who had to sacrifice being the first person in her family to graduate from college to raise her. I met up with in Kehlani during her four-day tour stint in New York City and we talked about her tour, how she's dealing with success at such a young age, and her next project.

VICE: How's tour going? Kehlani: Tour's super crazy. I've never experienced anything like this. Getting to do what I love to do, every day, back to back to back. It's crazy what can happen every day from just being in a van with the same eight people 24/7. It's cool too, because I'm becoming a businesswoman.I'm learning how to work out budgets. And I enjoy paying people. I enjoy saying, "You worked hard, let me give you this envelope today." I'm being forced to have self-discipline. I don't go to the afterparties, because I don't want to lose my voice. After the show, I don't want to watch the set and yell because I'll lose my voice. And I try to just maintain a better diet in general for my career.

My schedule is ridiculous though. I feel like the down time I have now, I just sleep. Today, I just had a chance to just walk outside. We got food and walked around the city. It was really refreshing. It was beautiful. It makes you really appreciate a simple day of vibing and smoking.

Have you been working on your next project? What can people expect? My next project is dropping in spring. It's called, You Should Be Here (YSBH). This is my first time saying any of this [to the media], but the whole inspiration behind it is that a lot of people are coming into my life and a lot of people are leaving my life. I'm at a point where I'm on this consistent upwards path. There's a lot of times where I'm just like,Damn, this person should be here to see this. Whether that's family, people I just met, people relationship-wise, whatever. It's like, You should be here right now. You should've been here, you could be here. Production wise, I got a little bit more cinematic. It's a little bigger. Less samples. And I think as a woman, I'm just in a different state of mind. When I made Cloud 19, I was getting to be in a situation where I was attempting to love somebody when I didn't love myself. It was me desperately trying to get you to understand my feelings, 'cause I can only say it in song.

With this new project, I'm learning myself and loving myself. I'm making songs that have more insight to me, rather than just being dedicated to someone else. And it's about moving on. Making sure I'm fully present with who I am now, as I'm going up. 'Cause a lot of people just get crazy and lose themselves. I just want to remain grounded.

How are you navigating your success? I stay around solid people and I talk to solid people and I pray every day.

Are you religious? Yeah, I am. I definitely believe in God. I'm very spiritual too, so I wear a lot of healing crystals at all times. In general, I think it's just about keeping yourself in check. You can have the right people around you, and they can check you all you want, but you have to be mature enough to be receptive. Like if someone's telling you that you are being crazy, you are being cocky, you have to be mature enough to be like, "Are you serious? What did I do? Let me chill."

I'm getting really good at that. Like someone will be getting attitude, and I'll be like, "Hey, you know this is a blessing? This tour is a beautiful thing. Yes, it's going to get stressful, but we're doing things that 19- to 20-year-olds won't ever get to do at some point." I know niggas who never left Oakland. They never left the Bay. So to be traveling across the country in a van and then going to Canada? Like, that's just crazy.

How was Canada? Beautiful as fuck. Everyone's incredibly nice. Everyone's super beautiful. The architecture is inspiring. Artists out there, in Toronto, they have a tastefulness about them. They're like the tastemakers right now. And also, I'm legal there. So we went to the club, I got my first table, I bought my first bottle. It was tight, even though I'm not a big club person.

How are your relationships with people changing as you're experiencing success? I think people weed themselves out. This is what [my mentor] Nick Cannon told me when he first linked up with me. He said, "You're going to get in this position where all your shit is right here in front of you. And you can literally watch what's going on. Because you're in a position of controlling it." I have my own brand now, I have my own shit now. People work for me now. So it's like, fuck. I literally have to run everything in my brain. I can't freak out about it. I have to remain completely under control at all times. I can just peep people. They start being extra friendly. They start wanting to bring up memories on Twitter all the time. They will tweet you things they could be texting you. It's like, don't tweet me that, you have my number!

I've had dudes who told me I was ugly and all type of shit in high school, and now they're like, "Damn you so fine, I wish I knew." I'm like, "You are so crazy!" I think with things like that you just have to think, I'm so glad this happened. This is God just shedding light, just opening my eyes. Because what if those people did come along with me, and then they'd do all type of crazy, thirsty, weird shit when things got popping.

Because this is nothing right now... Don't get me wrong, all this means the world to me. But I don't have plaques or major credits yet. I got on the Kevin Gates project, I wrote one of those records. But I need a movie placement, or something that's bigger, that's hitting the charts, that's selling X amount of copies when I drop my album. Just stuff that's factual and written down in the music world.

Have you been getting recognized on the street at all? Yeah, it's been happening since America's Got Talent, so it's been past the weird factor. But now it's just on heavy. Lately people have been crying when they meet me. It feels good, but it makes me cry every time. It makes me cry because they're whispering in my ear some crazy story about how I saved their life. Like, last night: This girl walks up to me, she hugs me, she starts crying on my shoulder. And then she's like, "I just want to let you know that I'm struggling with my sexuality. I thought about committing suicide. And then you came along as a singer who's making bisexual music..." And she was like, "Your mixtape gave me hope and taught me what I deserve, taught me my self-worth... I can't thank you enough cause it really saved my life..."

I was in tears. I gave her my email when I signed her poster and said, "You can email me if you want to talk. Coming out is a hard process, but I'll walk you through it." I was fortunate that my auntie was very accepting.

How does your aunt feel about what's been going on? She's so excited, because my auntie is the reason I'm anything. She's the reason I'm alive. Like, I'd be in some foster care wilding out if it wasn't for her. She put me in all the art classes. She told me I could do whatever I wanted to do in life. She's not extremely financially stable and she's not able to provide a bunch to all her kids, and sometimes she's like, Damn what's my purpose? And I'm like, "You realize you gave birth to me and you raised me and you trained me to go to against the world?" Without her, I probably wouldn't even be writing these songs. I wouldn't be able to see the world how I see it if she didn't give me the glasses. The effect I have on other kids, the fact that they can look at me like that, is how I looked at her when she was teaching me these lessons that I'm using directly in my songs. Everything comes from her.

June 17, 2015

8 Things to Know About Kehlani, R&B’s Current “It Girl”

“Our music should be who we are.”

Kehlani Parrish is in an Uber trying to order Chick-Fil-A. She’s a month away from kicking off her tour in support of her 2015 mixtape, You Should Be Here — a collection of songs so good, even Billboard wants to call it an album.

The 19-year-old’s personality and voice first turned heads on the sixth season of America’s Got Talent as the frontwoman and only female member of Poplyfe. Following the show, the singer took judge Piers Morgan’s advice to shed the band and pursue music as a solo artist — she shed her last name, too. Kehlani has since released two mixtapes, collaborated with Chance the Rapper and BJ the Chicago Kid, and blossomed into R&B’s current “it girl.” Scroll through the eight things you should know about Kehlani below, and check out her music here.

Kehlani was 12 years old when she performed as a singer for the first time. It was at a showcase in her hometown of Oakland, California, and the other performers, twelfth-graders, were six years older than her. Kehlani’s guts and spunk pushed her to take part in the showcase, despite the age disparity. “It was this showcase in Oakland, where this guy came to my performing arts school and just said, ’Anybody who wants to do this showcase can hop in this audition.’ It was me and twelfth-graders, and I was a sixth-grader,” she says. “I just got into the vocal class because I was out of dance because I had some knee issues. A lot of those kids were there for a couple of years and I had just switched over. So I was low-key like, ’Not only am I super young, but I’m the new kid in the class, so they already don’t consider me a singer, yet. I’m still the dancer that transferred.'”

With the exception of four dates, Kehlani’s You Should Be Here tour has sold out.

Billboard named Kehlani’s You Should Be Here project the “year’s first great R&B album.” Even though YSBH is a mixtape, Billboard is right. Rarely does someone barely out of her teens imbue a project with such confidence, and that’s what Kehlani did on YSBH.

“I was driving back from the Bay to go back to L.A., and we didn’t have an AUX cord,” she says. “We had the radio, but it kept getting too static-y, so we turned it off. We pulled into a gas station, and I’m half- asleep. My song comes on and I start yelling, ’I’m too sleepy, you guys are playing games. Who fixed the AUX cord? There was an AUX cord the whole time?’ They’re saying, ’No, this is the radio!’ I’m saying, ’Oh shit. Turn it up!’ It’s two, three in the morning at this random gas station in who-knows-where. It was crazy, it was tight.”

Lani Tsunami beasting in these streets.

Kehlani fell in love with dance before she fell in love with music. Problems with her knee led the singer to stop dancing for a while, during which time she started singing, only to find out that she can do both equally well.

Kehlani is openly bisexual, and uses “he” and “she” interchangeably in her songs. “I didn’t put a song that had anything to do with homosexuality on You Should Be Here,” she says. “I felt like I put it out there on Cloud 19. Sometimes I don’t have any of those songs. Sometimes a lot of the songs will be about girls. Sometimes I make songs about girls and I say ’he’ or I’ll make songs about guys and I say ’she,’ or sometimes they’re exactly what they’re about. I feel like it just allows me to get a lot more perspective.”

Kehlani was raised in a single family home, where she learned what it meant to “be a strong woman.” “That made me a really strong woman,” she says of her upbringing. “Therefore, my music comes off preaching about being a strong woman. I think, as musicians, our music should be who we are. Sometimes it’s not — it’s someone else’s. All heartfelt music and all honest music, it’s who we are. Of course our upbringing has everything to do with it.”

July 23, 2015 Kehlani goes from couch-hopping to breaking big onto music scene

Kehlani, an alumna of Oakland’s School for the Arts, returns to the Bay Area as part of a six-week cross- country club tour.

Kehlani Parrish has come a long way in two years — from crashing on friends’ couches in Oakland to landing a place of her own in Los Angeles courtesy of Nick Cannon. She calls the actor, rapper and TV talent-show host — until recently the husband of Mariah Carey — her mentor.

The Oakland-born R&B singer-songwriter, who goes professionally by her first name only, released two highly successfully online-only albums before signing with Atlantic Records in May. Having toured as an opener for Bay Area hip-hop star G-Eazy earlier this year, she is now in the middle of her own six-week cross-country club tour.

The majority of her 27 dates had sold out even before she, her two dancers, DJ and keyboardist hit the road in early July. All 500 $19 tickets to her show at Slim’s on Monday, July 27, sold within one minute of being placed on sale. A second show, tonight at the San Francisco club, was added several days later and sold out in 10 minutes.

Kehlani and Cannon met briefly four years ago when he was hosting NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” and she was competing on the show as a member of PopLyfe. The teenage Oakland R&B band placed in the top five for the show’s 2011 season but broke up not long after. “We weren’t really allowed to associate,” Kehlani, 20, says of initially meeting Cannon, with whom she says she now has an “uncle/niece” relationship. “He was super nice. He was nice to all the acts. He’s a very good person. A couple of years later, he hit me up.

“He saved my life. When I was living in the bay, I was couch-hopping. He got me down to L.A. and set me up with being able to record in his studio when I wanted to and being able to work with him when I wanted to and allowed me to stay somewhere.”

After returning briefly to the Bay Area to get a diploma from a continuation high school in Berkeley, she returned to Southern California, where, she says, Cannon “got me my first apartment.”

The sounds of friends, musical associates and other noise can be heard in the background as she speaks by phone from her apartment before leaving on tour.

“I’m riding around in my living room on one of those Space Board things,” she explains. “They’re really cool.”

Kehlani is of mixed black, white, American Indian, Latina and Filipino heritage. She was raised by an aunt in North Oakland because of her mother’s drug addiction.

“If you weren’t gonna guide me, why bring me into the light? Must have done something to make you run and hide,” Kehlani sings gently in breathy mezzo tones on “The Letter,” a song from her second CD that addresses her estrangement from her mother.

She even had her mother move in with her at the apartment, but the reunion was short-lived. “It happened for a second,” the singer says. She has no plans, however, to highlight such problems on national television, as Oakland soul singer Keyshia Cole has done on her various BET reality shows.

“I think Keyshia Cole has a story that a lot of Oakland women share in common,” Kehlani says. “If I was to have a reality show, it wouldn’t be a show based on my personal life. I’d want it to showcase me and my girls on tour, like living life as a young artist, not exposing what goes on in my family situations.”

Kehlani began work on her first Atlantic CD with producers Jahaan Sweet, Harmony Samuels, Cook Classics and others — “just a bunch of dope people, pretty much anybody who’s down to get in” — before going on tour.

More to write about

“I’ve made about 20 tracks that I’m completely obsessed with, but I know once I go on tour and I experience all those things I’ll be experiencing that I’ll have lots more to write about,” she says. “I write most of my songs to beats. I play around on guitar, but not enough to where I can compose my own stuff or play solos. I can accompany myself ’cause most songs are like four chords.”

Kehlani spent several weeks rehearsing before the tour, during which she will be performing 70-minute sets. Her lively routines with her two female dancers were choreographed by Antoine Troupe, whose other current clients include Chris Brown and Prince.

Being a ballet dancer had been an early dream for Kehlani, but a knee injury forced her to instead study voice and production design at Oakland School for the Arts. “I really wanted to learn how to run my own shows,” she explains. Among the numerous tattoos that adorn her arms and legs is one of Lauryn Hill just above the elbow of her left arm. She cites the singer as her main role model.

“She was a woman who was fully clothed and had intense sex appeal,” Kehlani says. “She was a woman who said always what she needed to say without the fear of anybody’s backlash. She just always rocked to the beat of her own drum. And ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ is, of course, the most iconic album of all time.”

Asked why she uses the past tense when speaking about the still-active Hill, Kehlani responds, “Maybe I’m doing that by accident because I’m always referring to ‘Miseducation’ more. No matter who Lauryn is, we will always see her at her greatest because it made her who she is.”

Heavy promotion

With all the hype and heavy promotion from Atlantic Records and sold-out shows across the country, Kehlani may well be on the verge of major stardom.

“I don’t even think about those things,” she says. “I just wanna play bigger shows and touch more people and make more songs. Stardom is a crazy thought. If that’s what my path is, then that’s where I’m excited to be headed towards.”

October 7, 2015 We Spent A Day With Kehlani And Her Squad In New York

Before Kehlani brought the heat with Thundercat at Friday's #uncapped show, presented by The FADER and vitaminwater®, the FADER cover star took her whole squad to the Lower East Side's Baohaus for dinner. The FADER got to tag along with the R&B singer in the hours before the show to find out why she works with her best friends, how she bonds with fans on social media, and why her music is always 100% her. Check out Kehlani's edition of The FADER's Earlier That Day video series above to see her freestyling with her friends, and footage from her powerful headlining set.

September 30, 2015

Song I Have on Repeat: "You Should Be Here" by Kehlani

Confession: I have a soft spot for female-driven R&B ballads. My Spotify feed is comprised solely of Lauryn Hill, Brandy, and Jhené Aiko, and now, I have a new creative chanteuse to add to my roster: Kehlani.

During a recent trip to San Francisco, I was pleased to discover the Oakland-based singer-songwriter's title track from her first studio album, You Should Be Here, blasting in my Uber, and I've pretty much had it on loop ever since. In the moody, sultry ballad about a failing relationship, you can feel her pain through her highly visual lyrics:

I'm looking right at you, but you're not there I'm seeing right past you, but you seem well aware Your body is here but your mind is somewhere else So far gone and you think I can't tell

Coupled with a smoldering beat, this song showcases why Kehlani is on the shortlist to become the next R&B princess. And if that's not enough to sway you, she just wrapped a nationwide tour, which included guest appearances from none other than Chance the Rapper. Heartbreak never sounded so cool.