Last Friday’s Blackfest: Art & Soul concert was a mellow and refreshing scene, thanks to one artist in particular. With a small and casual crowd, Elhae, an Atlanta based rapper-singer hybrid, came on stage and made what could have been an uncoordinated affair into a laid-back communion. Elhae (pronounced “L.A.” and standing for Every Life Has An End) brought both the kind of wistful allure elicited by his name along with a more playful charisma, delighting the crowd with a humble, cool and sweetly restorative sound.

A rappy, soulful, contemporary R&B singer — like a cross between Usher and Chance The Rapper — Elhae had a sound that felt heavy, twinged with yearning and somehow lighthearted. His voice is clear while also grittily alive, carrying with it both the cracks and grace of feeling, breaking through the nameless hum to really be heard. At the same time, his voice did not feel egotistical, overly embellished or artificially clean, but instead was used as a mere tool to express something — a meaning — that needed it. The sound churned with emotional, voluptuous melodies that felt like they were emanating from some deeper, darker cavity. Darkness enveloped the words as thick and viscous melodies swayed with jazzy vibrations. Swiftly dispersing into a more jaunty, quicker beat, the songs broke up this thickness and heaviness of feeling with almost tropical undertones as an audience was at last allowed to breath again, eyes uncloaked. Lyrically as well, Elhae’s anthems mirror this fusion of light and heavy with sorrowful and tender yearning for what cannot be had along with more playful jabs of word play.

Still, much of this sort of music can feel general and anonymous in the way that it can sound so everyday and scriptable — but that doesn’t necessarily detract from its value. There’s a comfort in the emotional singularity and indulgence of unbridled yearning and self-conscious-less sorrow that comes in popular R&B as it revels in the things that we will not admit, covering us in a united feeling while still maintaining a cool and coy flavor. At the same time, the music is endowed with a certain untouchability that comes from its inherent motion or continuousness. If music is especially good, it can never be held but flows through you, seeps into you inconspicuously. Ceaselessly streaming forward into twisting and dipping melodies, it can remain elusive, and in a way, untouchable, unholdable, allowing only time to feel and no time to logically judge or evaluate.

While still holding on to this emotional resonance, Elhae made his performance feel authentic and fun. Bolstered by the intimacy of the crowd, the set did not feel like a performance in some artificially manufactured, plastic way, but just was what it was. With an animated, brisk and nimble persona but also one vulnerable enough to make you want to listen, Elhae did not play a part, and seemed to have no concern for strict roles of audience and performer. He was wholly, simply and charmingly there, unafraid of his own humanness and not in that deep emotionally wounded way but in an every way. This is what I will listen to, art that is not compartmentalized as some codified function but as being itself, in all its glory of significance and insignificance.

 

You can contact Tess Michaelson at tess18 ‘at’ stanford.edu.