Dawn Richard will go back to the beginning on her forthcoming studio album, Creole Culture. Out Oct. 9, the record draws extensively from the artist’s New Orleans roots without relying too heavily on historical nostalgia.
“Creole Culture is my way of saying
that New Orleans culture doesn’t have to live in the past to be authentic,” Richard shared in a statement. “It can be progressive. It can be global. It can be pop culture. It can look like me.” The record follows her albums New Breed (2019) and Second Line (2021), which approached New Orleans culture from distinct perspectives.
Richard previews Creole Culture on the record’s latest single, “Enough.” The song opens with the sound of Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam” and builds on the riddim with blaring jazz horns. “I never really knew love could really be like this,” Richard sings. “I’m usually better at doing my own shit/But I’ma try to own up and do this love drip.” She uses the song to push back on “the lie that your value has to be earned,” she says. “Sometimes the greatest act of resistance is believing you were always worthy.”
The singer is riding solo on “Enough,” but has plenty of features in store for the album. New Orleans icon Big Freedia will open the record with “A Creole Culture Intro,” while Durand Bernarr will join on “Baby, Can We?” Richard also recruited vocalists Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, Tank and the Bangas’ Tarriona “Tank” Ball, and her farther, Frank Richard of the funk and soul group Chocolate Milk. Richard worked on the album alongside the musical collective Katalyst.
“New Breed was the story of New Orleans through my father’s eyes,” Richard explains. “I used his samples, his music, his cultures, his work with Chocolate Milk, his side of the family.Second Line was my mom — her interludes riddled the album with her depiction of what is meant to be a Creole woman in New Orleans. The masculine and feminine sides of King Creole had expressed themselves through them, but the story felt unfinished, like my version of the story was untold.”
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