Neo-soul – C-VILLE Weekly

Solo spotlight: Frequent collaborator Reagan Riley steps to the front of the stage

On the enclosed patio of the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, Reagan Riley reclines into a stack of jewel-toned pillows scattered on the bench behind her as grey-white wisps of fruit-flavored tobacco vapor curl through the afternoon air, dissipating into a thin haze that’s more sunshine than hookah smoke. The room’s hardworking window A/C unit hums while Riley takes a sip of a matcha cooler—a deep, emerald green iced tea with a slight vegetal flavor, recommended by the tea house owner for its ability to take the edge off of a July afternoon in Charlottesville. Riley deems it “so nice.”

The whole scene is chill as fuck and therefore the perfect setting for Riley to discuss her electronic/neo-soul music.

Riley was raised in Charlottesville by musician parents—mom’s a singer and flutist, dad’s an a cappella singer and trumpet player—who encouraged their only child to pursue any and every creative interest: painting, drawing, poetry, singing. She’d always loved singing along to R&B and rap tracks and, in 2016, at age 18, stepped into the recording booth herself. Since then, she’s sung the hook on a slew of local rap tracks and appeared onstage with her collaborators. She’s released a good amount of her own original material, too, including the Summer Complex EP (2016), the Grown Since full-length album (2018), and a number of singles. After three years of writing and recording, Riley will perform her first-ever solo set on Wednesday night at The Garage (and her second on Sunday at IX Art Park). So, what’s taken her so long?

The short answer, says Riley, is fear. But the long answer—the real answer—is that Riley, just 21, has been taking her time finding her sound and herself.

“I’m an introvert,” says Riley. “I’ve always been kind of shy,” a singer who stepped into the booth not necessarily with the intention of sharing her work with others, but to grow confident in her voice and her lyrics.

Music “makes it very easy” for Riley to express whatever she’s thinking or feeling. “I’m always writing about my experiences, so in that sense, it’s always just my truth, however that comes out,” she says.

What comes out, says Riley, is a style that’s “definitely R&B, neo-soul-like. Chill vocals, kind of sensual and sexy. I don’t have a super big voice; my thing is more of a vibe. It’s a mood.” She’s been compared to Syd Tha Kyd (from The Internet) and SZA, and she says she feels a bit of vocal and vibe kinship with local indie folk-pop artist Kate Bollinger.

Riley sings on several local projects including the hook on Sondai’s “Silver Linings,” and on “Shadow,” off CLARKBAR$’ Tasty project. She’s collaborated with Keese a number of times.

“Reagan is dope,” says Keese. “Her style is unique. All you have to do is send her the track, she’ll write and come up with her own ideas. She turns a good song into a great song.”

Riley likes to mix up her process. Sometimes she’ll get a line in her head, write it down, and the next day, incorporate it into a song. Sometimes, she’s in the mood to write poetry instead, but when she looks back on it weeks or months later, it sounds like pretty good lyrics.

“I try not to do it the same way every time,” says Riley. “I think that’s dangerous…being creative is just being in the now, and if you’re caught up on doing something a certain way, you might miss up on an opportunity for something beautiful and organic to happen.”

Sometimes she hears the perfect beat—either given to her by a producer, or sourced from YouTube—and will have a song on the page in 10 minutes, without a change. That’s how it went with “Weekend,” her newest single, recorded after Riley hadn’t sung into a mic for about a year.

“It’s good to be back,” Riley declares at the start of “Weekend,” which is about the aftermath of a relationship that she was ready to end. It’s a song about self-rediscovery, Riley’s realization that she can’t lift people up if someone’s holding her down. It’s the kind of song that you might put on the stereo of a convertible as you drive a little too fast on a beachside highway, experiencing the freedom of movement that’s in your ears.

“The End,” another of Riley’s recent Spotify releases, is about her ability to see through bullshit. “This foamy sticky humidity, I look right past what eyes can see,” she sings at the start of this song. It’s an acknowledgment of how far she’s come already, and how past relationships have shaped her future—as a person and as an artist hoping to connect with her audience.

And right now, that means stepping into the spotlight as a solo artist on stage (with a little help from her rapper friends, at times), fear be damned.

Music “feeds me,” she says, settling deeper into the pillows and taking a sip of the matcha cooler. “It feeds my soul. It makes me happy, in the simplest sense. It’s good for me. And I’m always trying to do things that are good for me.”

Reagan Riley will perform her first solo sets this week: she’s at The Garage Wednesday, July 24, and at IX Art Park Sunday, July 28.

UPDATE: Wednesday, July 24, 11:15am. The show at The Garage has been cancelled.

Time to play: After nearly a decade, Nathaniel Star returns to the stage

Nathaniel Star gets most of his ideas in the shower. It’s where he ruminates on a beat, hums melodies, and devises lyrics.

When he knows he has something good, he’ll hop out of the shower, wrap himself in a towel and dash, water dripping all over the floor, into his studio to record it.

“I’ll be recording wet,” he says over pita-wrapped falafel, a cup of Moroccan stew, and a mug of “Soul Soother” tea at Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar.

He laughs while describing his song-making process, noting that while other musicians might use candles, incense, or lush fabrics to create a certain in-studio mood, all he needs is “a microphone, my computer, and some software. I don’t need candles.”

Star (a moniker, not his real name), who will play his first local live show in about a decade at The Front Porch on Saturday, grew up on South First Street and has been making music his entire conscious life. At first, he harmonized on gospel songs with his mom and sister; then he wrote country-esque songs with titles like “Hey You” on an electric guitar; and as a home-schooled teen, he snuck over to the Music Resource Center, back when it was on the UVA Corner, to rap.

Those raps, Star says, were “good from a lyrical standpoint” but also “extremely violent,” and he felt it wasn’t music he could put out into the world. If it wasn’t something his religious mother’s ears could hear, he wouldn’t release it.

<a href="http://nathanielstar.bandcamp.com/album/collide-a-scope">Collide a Scope by Nathaniel Star</a>

Inspired by singers and songwriters like D’Angelo and Bilal, Star later sang and played guitar in local neo-soul act Acoustic Groove Trio. “Everyone [in] the audience making out, because it was real sensual music,” he says, laughing. Acoustic Groove Trio broke up about 10 years ago when the percussionist and bass guitarist moved out of town. Star stopped performing, but he continued making music.

Star released his debut solo album, Collide-A-Scope, in December 2016, and two EPs, Nat-Blac Presents: EH-SUH-TER-IK and C.R.A.C.K., this year. He works with Vintagebeatwitsoul, making beats for other artists, and he writes music for documentary films, including Tanesha Hudson’s forthcoming A Legacy Unbroken: The Story of Black Charlottesville, directed by Lorenzo Dickerson and produced by Sarad Davenport. Star has also written music for Maxine Jones (a founding member of En Vogue). By day, he’s an elevator mechanic.

All the while, he’s waited for the right moment to return to the stage. “It’s time, it’s time. It just felt right again,” he says.

“I breathe music and bleed lyrics. You can’t live without breath and blood,” Star says of his songs about life and love, songs that are influenced by black culture and by African culture, by the potential of music to heal.

“Ghetto Physics,” off of Collide-A-Scope, is a song about overcoming, and “Via Dolorosa” is a song that compares Jesus’ walk to his crucifixion to black people’s walk through life. “Everything imaginable, in a wicked way, was done to Jesus right before they killed him. Everything imaginable, in a wicked way, has been done to black people the world over,” says Star. “But in the end, of course, it’s triumphant.” Jesus rose, says Star, and in the song, he and others will, too. “Stab me, shoot me, do whatever you can, but ultimately, I will rise again,” he says.

Star plays with genre on all of his records, oscillating between neo-soul, 1980s and ’90s R&B, funk, go-go, soul, and rap, sometimes blending the closely related genres together. He likes to make people think, including double, even triple meanings in many of the record and song titles, and in the lyrics, too. On the C.R.A.C.K. track “Respect the Shooter,” Star could very well be singing about shooting a gun, or shooting drugs. But he’s actually talking about a guy who’s taking a shot with his girl.

<a href="http://nathanielstar.bandcamp.com/album/c-r-a-c-k">C.R.A.C.K. by Nathaniel Star</a>

“You need to make people feel,” says Star. “A lot of music now just gets you amped. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I like a full scope of emotions—get hyped, but feel vulnerable, too. Feel like you wanna go march down the street. Feel emboldened to do.”

Star records lyrics on the fly so he can capture that full scope of feeling, and he doesn’t mess with the words much after the fact—he might switch parts around, or lay down some harmonies. “If you can create from that place, that’s the purest form,” he says. “How do you refine that?”

And while that purity, that genuine reflection of a moment, is important to Star as a musician, there’s more to it. He looks down at his bowl of Moroccan stew, chock-full of vegetables, then looks back up, inspired.

“Music should be an onion,” he says earnestly. It should be of the earth. It should be strong and sharp and robust. It should taste good, and it should make you cry. There should be layers in layers in layers. “It’s seasoning,” says Star. “And even when it’s gone, it lingers.”

Nathaniel Star and Kinfolk play The Front Porch Saturday, October 6.