Let us dispense with the pleasantries and address the central fact of this record: Ekelle can *sing*. Not merely carry a tune, not merely hold her own against a beat — she can genuinely, properly sing, which is a rarer gift in contemporary pop than anyone in the industry seems comfortable admitting. Her voice moves through the track with the ease of someone who has already had the argument, already won it, and is now simply enjoying the aftermath. The melodic passages drift over Audio Gibbs' production like smoke — unhurried, purposeful, slightly dangerous.
And Gibbs deserves his own paragraph here, frankly. The production on *(Turn Me) Loose* is the kind of work that sounds effortless precisely because enormous craft has gone into it. The electronic framework pulses with a cool urgency — not the frantic desperation of a producer trying to chase trends, but the confidence of someone who understands that restraint is the most powerful tool in the arsenal. The driving rhythms push the track forward without ever muscling Ekelle out of the spotlight. Dance music, yes — but dance music with *architecture*.
The lyrical conceit is beautifully simple, which is to say it is not simple at all. The breakup anthem is perhaps the most exhausted form in popular music, having been flogged by everyone from Alanis Morissette to Taylor Swift to every third contestant on every talent competition since roughly 2004. And yet Ekelle finds oxygen in it. The line about blowing up a goldmine — delivered with a raised eyebrow you can practically *hear* — reframes the entire relationship dynamic in four words. She is not crying at the kitchen table. She is standing in the doorway with her coat on, mildly amused that anyone thought she could be taken for granted. It is a fundamentally different emotional register, and it makes the song land.
The music video amplifies all of this with an aesthetic sensibility that feels genuinely considered. Ekelle moves through each frame with the languid authority of someone who has read the room and found it beneath her — which is, of course, the entire emotional thesis of the track. The visual palette is warm but not saccharine, vivid without tipping into the garish maximalism that plagues so many independent releases desperate to signal their own ambition. Someone on this team understands that less, deployed correctly, hits harder.
What also bears mentioning is how *(Turn Me) Loose* expands the Hood Pop template Ekelle has been developing rather than merely repeating it. The electronic elements push her into new sonic territory — this is not a rapper dabbling in pop, nor a pop singer cosplaying at toughness. It is a genuine hybrid, the seams invisible, the confidence total. She raps and she sings and she never once signals which mode is the real one, because for Ekelle, apparently, they simply both *are*.
Spring is the correct season for this. January heartbreak needs January music — grey, unresolved, slightly damp. But April heartbreak, the kind that has been processed and metabolised and transformed into something useful, needs exactly this: something with sunlight in it, something that moves, something that arrives at the dancefloor and the therapy session with equal conviction.
Ekelle is not the finished article. She is something considerably more interesting — an artist in the act of becoming, with enough talent and enough clarity of vision that the becoming is genuinely thrilling to witness. *(Turn Me) Loose* is the sound of someone deciding, very calmly, that they are done. The rest of us are left to catch up.
*Released April 22 on all major streaming platforms.*