He calls For the Deported his “most natural” and “most cohesive work yet,” and in contrast, says the 8-track Anyway I Can is “the most professional project” he’s ever done, the first without the touch of any Brits besides himself, one that he feels could be subtitled: Oh Sh*t, Elmiene’s Gone to America.
Elmiene says he creatively operates under a similar ethos as Prince did: write for the vault with no restrictions. The release of Anyway I Can and For the Deported is another crag to climb to reach the mountaintop, the next step of exploration as to what kind of art he is capable of creating, and all the kinds of R&B he’s ever wanted to dive into.
When we speak again over Zoom in the summertime, it’s the eve of his 23rd birthday and he’s about “3%” done with his album. He’s taking his time to learn from each record he’s already put out into the world before going full throttle and writing “some weird left sh*t” like he did on 2023’s bonafide neo soul EP Marking My Time. He is priming his audience for his next chapter of sonic play.
While drastically different songs from Anyway I Can like “Ode to Win” and “Light Work” pushed him in practice, there are songs he is saving for his debut studio album that speak deeper to his own musical identity. He describes one such song called “Fire Away,” that he says is like “half of a Weezer song” that he’s saving for the album. “That one, no one’s ready for that yet,” he says with pride.
“I didn’t know I could do ‘Light Work’ either,” he admits of the successful, up-tempo single. “Once I wrote ‘Light Work,’ I was like, ‘Whoa, what was that? That was really cool. What else can I do?’ …I think [album-writing] has been going pretty well. I’m just very much just in an experimental bag. There’s a moment when an artist projects the experimental side that he’s trying to show, but in a very cohesive way, and that’s what I’m searching for right now. Kind of what Blonde was to Frank Ocean, where it’s like, ‘What the hell is this? But also it makes perfect sense.’”
The Soul
In one of his early interviews, Elmiene once said that his litmus test for writing a song is whether or not he gets a lump in his throat. He started out as a poet. It may seem melodramatic, but it tracks; listening to Elmiene hurts.
