Arlo Parks is as complex as she is uncomplicated. “I definitely think that my purpose in the world is to try and spread light in two different ways,” she says over the phone, “In one way being honest with myself and shedding light on the darker corners of myself and trying to bring a sense […]

Five on it image: cover art for new podcast, On Wednesdays We Wear Black Ciao! Au revoir! Auf wiedersehn! Sayonara – and goodbye to the Trump era. This week’s inauguration of the new United States president Joe Biden and Madam VP Kamala Harris has been a salve on the blight of the past four years […]

“It’s turning into something I never expected,” Jazmine Sullivan tells me from her Philadelphia apartment, cupping a mug of tea to her chest. After a six-year hiatus, Jazmine has dropped Heaux Tales, a 14-track conceptual EP, tackling love, confidence and heartbreak with an unrivalled level of maturity and nuance. “I didn’t know it was going […]

Photo: Lana Del Rey album artwork in pink duotone Hello, I’m… not Tara – surprise! I’m Kayleigh and I’m super stoked to be caretaking this weekly run-down of new music for gal-dem, a lovely start to my 2021. Let’s all agree, however: this week has already been a long year. I am worn, weathered, drained […]

Five on it image: MF DOOM via Wikimedia Commons by Possan It feels weird in the midst of everything to have started a new year. The arbitrary “fresh start” energy seems even more arbitrary right now, but still it feels right to acknowledge that there is a lot we’re leaving behind in 2020. I imagine […]

Clubhouse, Verzuz, No Signal – by the tail-end of 2020, it was an inescapable truth that conversations around Black music were being driven by these online communities. For decades, community has been a fundamental aspect of our experience with music, creating an avenue to unite people and form bonds that might not exist otherwise. For […]

Illustration by Anu Ambasna 2020 was, of course, a year of chaos, grief and strangeness. Sometimes, even listening to anything felt like a chore – there were days where I would press play on an album and clock hours later that the record was over and I was sitting in silence, not having taken any […]

Jorja Smith and Enny via COLORS YouTube, Amia Brave via YouTube, backdrop: Peng Black Girls artwork Two months ago, southeast London rapper Enny released the video for her song ‘Peng Black Girls’ featuring the singer Amia Brave. Its simplicity was striking and there was so much beauty in seeing black women just be – it […]

After a year like 2020, what do you ask for this Christmas? I’m still trying to figure that out.  In the grand scheme of things, this might seem like a pretty trivial thing to dedicate so much of my time to thinking about. But between protesting and lockdown purgatory, 2020 has been one long financial […]

Saweetie has had a hectic couple of years, but in the best possible way.  The California rapper has had a string of hits, including – thanks to Gen Z’s approval on TikTok – two enormous tracks that soundtracked both summer 2019 and summer 2020 (‘My Type’ and ‘Tap In’, respectively). Known for her catchy tunes, […]

There’s something about Evermore, the new album by Taylor Swift, that takes me back to my nine-year-old self listening to ‘Love Story’ on repeat in front of my desktop computer. That was more than a decade ago, but the arrival of Folklore and Evermore this year seem to have opened a time capsule for me.  […]

Five on it image: Canva composite of album artwork It feels hard to believe in the concept of  time when it has stretched out and sped up simultaneously, but it’s arriving at that weird part of the year where, in the UK at least, things are starting to wind down. All of which is to […]