Ravyn Lenae Used to Be Chicago’s Best-Kept Secret. Now, She’s a Bona Fide Star. ~ VOUX MAG

Ravyn Lenae Used to Be Chicago's BestKept Secret. Now, She's a Bona Fide Star. story By Bianca Betancourt, Photograph by PhilipDaniel Ducasse; Styling by Gabriella KarefaJohnsonAugust 19, 2025 at 6:08 AM Ravyn Lenae Loves a Slow Burn PHILIPDANIEL DUCASSE "Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commissi...

- - Ravyn Lenae Used to Be Chicago's Best-Kept Secret. Now, She's a Bona Fide Star.

story By Bianca Betancourt, Photograph by Philip-Daniel Ducasse; Styling by Gabriella Karefa-JohnsonAugust 19, 2025 at 6:08 AM

Ravyn Lenae Loves a Slow Burn PHILIP-DANIEL DUCASSE

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Dress, Ralph Lauren Collection. Serpenti Viper earrings, bracelets, and rings; Tubogas bracelets; Serpenti Tubogas watch; and B.zero1 rings, Bulgari. PHILIP-DANIEL DUCASSE

Something happened this past spring: Though it was released over a year ago, the delightfully hypnotic single "Love Me Not" from Ravyn Lenae's sophomore album, Bird's Eye, was suddenly everywhere. It rose to the top 10 of the Billboard 100 (where it still sits) and has been streamed a staggering 400 million times on Spotify. It became the soundtrack for seemingly every other video on everyone's TikTok For You feed, with an accompanying two-step dance challenge to match.

Though the 26-year-old R&B singer-songwriter from the South Side of Chicago had a bona fide hit on her hands, the world struggled to place her. Lenae was a bit of a musical enigma: Was she from the U.K., some wondered? Did the song sample a vintage hit from yesteryear? More grimly, was she an AI industry invention? Who was responsible for such an inescapable earworm? One X user wrote, "Ravyn Lenae has had industry plant, white, and British allegations. This is a true sign of destined stardom."

"Love Me Not," inspired by its petal-picking namesake game, finds Lenae pondering whether or not she and a lover are truly meant to be. Produced by Dahi and cowritten with Anderson.Paak, it's the type of sultry summer anthem where once you truly get it, you can't ever let go of it—or get it out of your head. Commenters on social media have joked that the song sounds like it's from 50 years ago, and that's exactly the type of timeless quality that Lenae was searching for when she was creating Bird's Eye.

Ravyn Lenae performing at Coachella 2025 Jennifer McCord

"I knew a big part of the story of the album was me returning back to those basic parts of me that make me Ravyn," the singer tells me early one summer morning from her home in Los Angeles. The project features multiple nods to the people and places that inform her sense of self, from her grandmother's home on the South Side of Chicago, which she featured in the music video for "Love Me Not," to the accompanying album cover that shows Lenae draped over her family basement's sink, where she dyed her hair flaming red for the first time. "I wanted it to be an homage piece that lives on forever that I can look back on to remember those special parts of me. It makes so much sense that this is the album that has changed everything. From the moment I finished it, I kept saying, This one just feels different. I just knew and felt that my life was about to shift—and not because I felt like I had big songs on it, but because I felt this internal, spiritual movement happening."

Inspired by the enduring appeal of songs from some of her own favorite artists, including Outkast, Kelis, Solange, Beyoncé, and Prince, as well as the Cranberries, the Smiths, and No Doubt, Lenae wanted to stretch past the limits of pop and R&B and venture into a not-so-easily-definable sound.

"I think we're moving into a space where people aren't really that concerned about genre and just want to get into music that feels good for them," she says. "It's opening a really good conversation about what we identify as Black music, what we identify as white music, and how we can start to challenge that idea and have fun with it. The discourse really opened my eyes to [thinking] maybe what I'm doing is really providing a new type of representation for other younger Black girls who want to make any type of music that they're feeling."

Ravyn Lenae performing at Coachella 2025 Jennifer McCord

Bird's Eye has brought long-overdue recognition for what Lenae is creating within R&B and pop. Her sweet soprano vocals (which recall Minnie Riperton's range) and her hypnotizing melodies have been an if-you-know-you-know secret within the industry for years, thanks to perfectly paired collaborations with peers like Noname, Smino, Doechii, and Kaytranada. Finally front and center after a decade of releasing music that flew more or less under the radar, Lenae is ready for the spotlight, even if she's still grappling with what fame really means.

Minimizing Lenae's cultural output to just "Love Me Not" or Birds Eye, however, would be doing a disservice to the impressive catalog of work she's been building since she was just a teen. When she learned "Love Me Not" had broken the top 10 on Billboard, she acknowledged every EP she had ever released that led to the moment.

"I've loved her since her first EP, Moon Shoes, and have been obsessed with her since high school. She has such an incredible voice," Renée Rapp says of her longtime appreciation of Lenae, who will open for her on tour later this fall. "[When it came time to plan my tour] everyone started saying there's a new girl named Ravyn, and she has this song 'Love Me Not,' and I was like, new girl? I [already] know and love her. I knew before all you bitches!"

Lenae came up in the 2010s in Chicago, when the city began to hold its weight within hip-hop. Young, promising talent captured the airwaves, and artists like Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, Noname, and Smino, by way of St. Louis, regularly sold out shows across the country with Lenae often in tow as their creative little sister of sorts. (Her first tour-opening gig was alongside No Name and SZA. Not a bad debut.)

"The Midwest is so weirdly soulful. It's there, but you just have to find it," says Lenae's friend and fellow musician and Midwesterner Omar Apollo. Too often diminished as a "second city" or as flyover country, it's a region that has birthed the musicians that have shaped our culture. Think Prince, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, and Michael Jackson. "There's not too much good music coming out of there these days, so it makes it special when someone has a developed sound. Ravyn is one of those people," he continues. "Her voice, her authenticity, her look, the music, the melodies—it's all there, and she embodies mysticism. Her essence is rosy…like daisies in an endless garden. It's not a matter of having what it takes. She has always had it; people are just waking up. I love reminding her that I was her first fan."

Ravyn Lenae performing at Lollapalooza 2025 Getty Images

The first time I ever spoke with Lenae, we were both in Chicago, but in very different places professionally. I was fresh out of college and dipping my toes into freelance writing, rushing home to my garden unit apartment from a waitressing shift to be able to catch Lenae for a 20-minute phone interview for a British indie magazine. Lenae could chat only in the early evening because she was just 16 and balancing school and recording. I remember hearing the chatter of her family home in the background of our call, proof of a loving support system that still surrounds her today. And I remember the quiet conviction in her voice even then when she spoke about her dreams and her refusal to let a ruthless industry toss her aside.

"There was no point where I felt pressured or I had to be anything other than myself," Lenae says now. "I'm just so happy that I stayed true to myself throughout all this time."

Each of Lenae's EPs symbolizes not just her creative growth but also her journey into womanhood. True fans can still hear glimmers of the girl who sang "Spice" and "Sticky" (tracks from her EPs Moonlight and Crush), even as she's experimented across genres and leaned musically into a more sultry and sensual sound. (New fans found themselves blushing once they discovered Lenae's 2024 collaboration "Video" with producer Kaytranada. The song details, well, let's say a rendezvous of sorts filmed for the camera.)

Ravyn Lenae performing in 2025 Jennifer McCord

"I love all of my projects equally for completely different reasons, and I feel like they all talk to each other and inform each other in a way. It's been a long time since I've listened back from the beginning," Lenae says. "But if anything, my projects really pinpoint a time in my life where there were so many questions, maybe some doubt, and curiosities. That obviously changes dramatically from 15 to 25. When I do listen back to those early years, I hear Baby Ray; I hear someone who was confident but also maybe a little scared, maybe a little naive, but knew that she had a voice and had something to say. A lot of Bird's Eye was returning back to that idea and back to that same girl that might've got a little lost along the way."

Lenae appreciates a slow burn, though. No part of her wishes that her newfound success had come at any time except for right now.

"Patience and endurance have been the main things I've learned through this process—and that timing really is divine. I've thought about, what if this moment happened for me five years ago or even in the beginning, 10 years ago? I don't think I would've been ready or prepared or as confident in my decisions as I am now," she shares. "There've been times along my journey where I was confused about why it all wasn't happening for me faster, why I had a bad habit of looking at other people's success and measuring my success to them and my timeline, wondering what is it about me that's not attracting these amazing things to happen. But looking back, I'm like, oh, thank God it didn't happen when I was 16. I'm just better equipped now to handle everything that's coming."

Lenae has embraced her divine timing. She commanded crowds at tentpole music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza and joined superstar Sabrina Carpenter on the road at her sold-out Short n' Sweet tour. Mariah Carey included "Love Me Not" on her personal summer playlist on Apple Music, which resulted in an impassioned reaction from the singer on social media. Later this fall, she'll join Renée Rapp on tour and even venture on a few solo headlining dates across the country herself.

Ravyn Lenae performing at Coachella 2025 Getty Images

Lollapalooza specifically is a moment worth commemorating for Lenae. It's not just being able to perform in front of the biggest hometown crowd of her career yet, it's also recognizing all that it took to get her to this moment. "Chicago has held me down," she says. "I had such a unique experience, being able to grow up and see artists like Noname or Chance or Vic or Jean Deaux, people that I really looked up to doing it on such a high level that really inspired me and made me feel like, Oh, this isn't impossible for me. I see the roadway," she says.

"I just wrote a song about leaving Chicago a few days ago," she continues. "The act of leaving everything behind in search of something almost unknown. I remember that first year in L.A., feeling like, Why did I do this? I was crying in the shower every day, calling my mom every chance I got. But with time, with any transition, you find your comforts, you find your community, and I'm so happy that I made that shift."

Lenae is ready to give more. In between sold-out shows and climbing her way up the charts, she's still finding time to get to the recording studio to create her next record, which she promises will be a natural graduation from Bird's Eye.

"My fans know that they're always getting something new every time—a new feeling, a new emotion moving forward. I want people to be able to hear me and know that there's no cap and there's no real expectation other than I'm going to put the effort, time, and intention into everything I put out," says Lenae. "I'm ready to welcome even more people into my world."

Hair: Evanie Frausto for Redken; makeup: Kennedy for Dior Beauty; manicures: Marisa Carmichael for Essie; casting: Anita Bitton at the Establishment; production: Day Int.; set design: Bette Adams

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