On ‘Form Up,’ Leikeli47 needs you to look and pay attention deeper : NPR

In an trade that locations excessive premium on aesthetics, Leikeli47 has all the time challenged her listeners to look and pay attention deeper than what’s on the floor. 4 years — and a complete pandemic — faraway from the rapper’s final launch, Leikeli47’s Form Up marks the third and remaining installment of what 47 has anointed the Magnificence Sequence trilogy. This newest LP builds on the messages of 2017’s Wash & Set and 2018’s Acrylic: magnificence as self care, self care as communal work and the real, intrinsic development required for each.

The place Wash & Set marked her introduction and Acrylic walked into the secure area of a salon, Form Up walks out of that metaphorical salon feeling model new. “Therefore, the closure,” she tells NPR. “I am leaving the store and I’ve simply what I would like.”

Sitting in a Brooklyn studio sporting a black Celine tracksuit with matching masks, gold chains and elaborate orange eyeliner, 47 concurrently seems to be cozy and coiffed. The MC broke down some important tracks off the mission for this unique Listening Get together interview on NPR Music’s YouTube channel. “Zoom” makes comedic fodder out of an actual life confrontation. “BITM” is a soundtrack to the fiercest of walks, whether or not at a vogue ball or in aisle 5 on the grocery retailer. “Maintain My Hand” is a letter to God for by no means leaving her facet. “Carry Anne” creeps, then bellows with a desperately wanted feminist name for 2022’s misogynistic lots in and out of doors of the music trade.

Collectively, Form Up tracks 47’s studying course of to embody the boldness she so usually preaches onstage to others. “Form Up got here and mentioned, ‘You understand that woman that you simply thought you was? Now you actually her now.’ Form Up is the boldness I have been praying for,” 47 says. “Like my masks, it grew to become my finest buddy. I lived with it for 4 [years] … We tugged, we pulled, nevertheless it was a assured pull. It was a unique form of pull from the Wash & Set and Acrylic eras, I actually stood on mines with this.”

The way in which she sees it, this album is for the positive as a lot because the not sure. “Even in the event you’re sitting in your palms, you feeling slightly lazy about it. It isn’t what it seems to be like,” she declares. “Learn these books. Rise up. Meditate. Pray. Reverse your considering. The identical method you thought you could not is identical method you understand you possibly can.”