Rachel Chinouriri embraces her mess on new album “I think I spoke too soon” – Texx and the City
Last week, Rachel Chinouriri saw posters for her sophomore album I think I spoke too soon being ripped off walls in London by fans of fellow popstar Adela.
“It’s tough enough for black artists in pop to get exposure, but ripping down a poster I paid a lot of money and put 10 years of hard work convincing people I’m good enough for this marketing…is just quite mean and makes me pretty sad right now,” Chinouriri posted to TikTok. The whole debacle highlights a fight for visibility in the pop music ecosystem that sits at the centre of I think I spoke too soon, an album that arrives at a time when Chinouriri is navigating not only her place as a popstar, but as a person.
Freshly sober, calibrating the expectations placed upon her by an industry that tries to pigeonhole her based on the colour of her skin, and thinking about the complexities of being the first child in her family to be born outside of Zimbabwe, Chinouriri distils this through the narrative device of a night out. It starts with the tentative disco shuffle of “One song away from crying”, which finds Chinouriri asking if she even wants to be where she is right now: “I’ve never looked better and I’ve never felt worse.”
On “I’m a Star”, that fight for visibility becomes a demand: “I’ve worked so hard to earn my place, Don’t you dare turn away,” Chinouriri sings, swaggering through jangly guitars and tambourine rattles, insisting that she has earned her place and won’t be ignored. But there’s something almost desperate beneath the bravado.
“AAAHHH!!!” captures the frustration that simmers beneath the album’s mirror ball surface, its rubbery bassline and punkish guitars giving way to a lovesick spiral of screams and “la la la”s. Chinouriri makes a virtue of emotional overreaction, turning the indignities of being alive, young and perpetually misunderstood into something you can dance to. It’s messy, occasionally ridiculous, and all the more convincing for it.
That tension is what makes “Broken Chair” such a revealing moment. Over an insistent, squiggling synth line, Chinouriri projects her loneliness onto a discarded chair on the street, finding something of herself in an object that has been cast aside. It’s a funny, oddly tender image, but it also speaks to the album’s larger preoccupation with worth. Chinouriri is caught between wanting to be taken seriously and wanting to let herself be a bit of a disaster.
I think I spoke too soon moves away from the grungier indie-rock textures of What A Devastating Turn of Events towards a brighter, more maximalist pop sound, full of glistening synths, infectious hooks and dancefloor-ready rhythms. It’s an exciting evolution, even if the production occasionally feels a little too tidy for the feelings underneath it.
Chinouriri is one of the most singular artists in pop right now, and not because she has mastered the art of being a popstar. It’s because she’s wrestling with what that means, and that makes her songs feel lived-in. Yet, she’s dressing her mess up and taking it dancing — making it palatable before allowing it to be seen. Chinouriri is at her most compelling when the polish starts to crack and something less controlled emerges.
