“And my body’s like, ‘Let’s not do this forever.’” Then my spirit is spiritual and it’s intellectual-my spirit will be the thinking, the voice of reason.” She takes a drag, looking at what is lit between her fingers, “Every time I smoke a cigarette, my spirit will be like, ‘Why do you do this?’ And my soul is like, ‘Because it’s fun!’” she laughs. She takes a sip of tea and expresses, “For me, my soul is what’s in me as feelings and what makes me a human-my feelings, my anger, my pain, my happiness, my euphoria, my joy, my hatred-everything, that’s my soul. “There’s always real bodies, like your blanket-what protects your soul.” I ask her the difference between spirit and soul. For me, they are the three parts of any type of human,” she explains. “In French, we say ‘aime’ and ‘esprit.’ We say you have three things: body, soul, and spirit. “Love could be a beautiful thing, if you work on it, and if you also have the gravity to let go, which I think is the hardest thing-to let go.”Īn anagram for soul, Lous always looks within for guidance and reassurance. Because no one can predict the tides of the heart, Lous shares how love is kismet no matter what the ending might be. She repeats, “kisé”-or ‘who knows’ in English-questioning how the passage of time and how fleeting our feelings can truly be. “I wanna be talking for the next two years about love.”įittingly, her latest release, “Kisé,” speaks of how quickly love can take form and bloom, but also how it can just as quickly be lost. I feel like I wanna give space for love.” Her arms are open wide, physically making the space for the love to creep in. But I missed talking about love.” She divulges, “It’s my favorite thing. It’s about being in the street, rape, war, and all these things. “Gore was from the horror movies and everything, and was literally what the first album is about. Ready to become anew, Lous and the Yakuza sets free old sentiments and makes way for topical subject matter she has yet to explore lyrically. “Music is literally the place where I express everything,” Lous admits, “I feel like a song is always clear in what it says.” I don’t really talk about my feelings in real life.” She approaches writing as less a means of catharsis, but more a reflection of what she sees, or a message to somebody she knows. “I realize that my music is really all the things I’m not able to say in real life. Everything I haven’t really talked about,” she confesses. She sees self-isolation as freedom, allowing her to untie herself from the constraints of external expectations or desires. The 10-track effort includes her standout single, “Dilemme,” which speaks of the sacrifices we might encounter to keep ourselves safe. While Lous does write about the consequences of war, the trials of youth, and the depravity that waits for us, her seraphic voice softens the torment she writes of, tangled together on a bed of lush soundscapes sewn with trap-style beats and R&B sentiments. They spent a brief time in Rwanda, before permanently moving to Brussels, and she’s since transposed her memories, experiences, and dreams from her childhood into deeply felt lyrical retellings. When she was just a child, her family moved to Belgium, fleeing the Second Congo War. And it’s true-she has been busy.Īt the end of 2020, Lous released her debut album, Gore, an autobiographical account of the journey she has endured towards self-discovery, acceptance, and ascension. “And then I immediately start thinking about work,” she laughs. “Then, I believe I say grace because I feel grateful to be alive and healthy.” We sit and listen to the breeze, both enjoying the air not yet tainted by the city, absorbing the natural sounds of the earth. ![]() ![]() Lous takes a sip of her tea, “I meditate in intense silence, just quiet, trying my best not to be thinking,” she says. Born Marie-Pierra Kakoma, the Congolese-Rwandan-Belgian artist known for diaristic sounds and storytelling lyricism had to first understand the art of silence. The first few moments are filled with nothing but the sound of plastic unwrapping from the pack of Camels she holds in her hand, and the flicker of the lighter. We converge on a Saturday afternoon over tea on her terrace somewhere in the hills, posed on a picnic table where we can see the greenery reflected off the pool. On the cusp of her twenty-sixth birthday, artist, songwriter, and Louis Vuitton muse, Lous and the Yakuza, is in Los Angeles, away from her home in Belgium, continuing to foster her sound. Even the trees are unmoving in the breeze, like they are also waiting for us to begin. It’s a comfortable one, but it’s wordless and still nonetheless.
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