Release Date: Jun 8, 2018
Genre(s): R&B
Record label: Fat Possum Records
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Kadhja Bonet's remarkable ability to approach and expose her animus had already been properly showcased in her debut LP The Visitor, released a couple of years ago. The arrival of Childqueen, however, demonstrates how we are now confronted with a whole new set of powerful Amazonian sensibilities that seem foreign and familiar at the same time: they reignite an area of our collective unconscious we thought was fast asleep, making us drink of this strange water that instantly restores our forces and propels us to battle. This is a cosmopolitan voyage throughout markedly different places and eras, humbling touching a variety of more or less exotic influences without merely appropriating them -- showcasing their uncanniest beauty with the highest respect instead.
Childhood used to be a phase. Now, it's a lifestyle. Whether your inner child seeks coloring books, Capri Suns, or gourmet PB&J, those urges can easily be satiated. This surplus of nostalgia has become so normalized that we have a term for when responsibilities disrupt the sugar rush: adulting ….
Legend has it that Kadhja Bonet was born in 1784, in the back seat of an intergalactic seafoam-green Ford Pinto. Her glittering, celestial debut The Visitor - an eight-song album of baroque and stardust-smattered R&B/soul/jazz beamed down for earthly consumption back in 2016 - can certainly be taken as evidence for this claim. Now, the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist returns with Childqueen, which retains stylistic elements of The Visitor but packs a groovier, struttier punch.
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