Her voice is chameleonic and present in every guise: quirky lilt delicate head voice and, often and best, a blown-out, purposefully ragged belt that sounds like it’s trying to claw its way out of the recording. Reyez’s songwriting is extremely online-on one track she mentally Twitter-mutes a scrub-and extremely death-driven, whether she portrays herself as the death or the killer. It’s the kind of thing young women are encouraged to quietly write out of their career narrative or else, and a genuine risk.īefore Love Came to Kill Us showcases more of that high-stakes swagger. And while Before Love Came to Kill Us is technically her debut, it follows several EPs of similarly unsparing music like “Gatekeeper,” a vicious, Clockwork Orange-referencing exposé of sexual harassment by a former producer (whom she later named as Detail). On the axis from 0 to Kelis’ “ Caught Out There,” Reyez is at the far furious end. From there, she claws in deeper, addressing her ex in a deceptively sweet croon: “I’m the monster that you made, yeah, you made me/Now I’m just like you, so don’t complain.” She threatens to Goodfella them. Jessie Reyez’s Before Love Came to Kill Us begins with this hook.
