At long last, Kelela‘s sophomore album, Raven is upon us. Yesterday, she finally released Raven nearly six years after her critically-acclaimed debut, Take Me Apart. To celebrate this milestone, Kelela paid a visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where she performed a Raven album cut, “Enough For Love.”
On the song itself, Kelela addresses the hypermasculine tendency for men to reject affection and softness. However, she reiterates that the toughest thing anyone can do is to welcome and invite in love.
“‘You forgot about us / But you’re not alone, not alone / Are you tough enough for love? / Give it up /But you forgot about us / No, you’re not alone, not alone / Are you tough enough for love? / You’re tough enough, not enough for love,” she sings on the song’s chorus.
During the performance, she wore shimmering make-up, with her hair styled up in a platinum-blonde bob. Though she was not joined by a backing band, her soft, silky vocals carried the performance, as she sang against a backdrop depicting a beautiful sunrise.
In a recent interview with New York Times, Kelela revealed the healing process behind crafting the melodies and lyrics for Raven.
While she didn’t set out to create a specific theme for the record, she wanted to write lyrics to “help Black femmes heal,” she said. “It’s gotta be a lyric that Black and brown women and nonbinary people, marginalized people, can scream in their cars on the way to work a job that they actually don’t want to do.”
You can watch the full performance above.
Raven is out now via Warp. You can stream it here.