Both artists, though commanding presences, surrender to the anonymity of the affair, singing some variation on “my name is fuck it, ’cause my name is not important.” The album takes its title from “Kill Us,” a power ballad built atop guitar heroics, like something Miguel would do. Equally alluring and disturbing is the woozy 6LACK duet “Imported.” Reyez’s and 6LACK’s vocals slip from background to foreground on the chorus Reyez’s verses dissolve mid-flirt into nothing. “Intruders,” with shades of Kali Uchis’ “ Tyrant,” is as romantic as it is subtly unsettling: “a love song, a war song,” and a metaphor of love as colonialism, of scorching other people’s earth. No matter the arrangement, she powers across it at full force. What’s most satisfying about Before Love Came to Kill Us isn’t that Reyez whizzes across multiple genres-these days, who doesn’t?-but the skill she displays at each. Her voice is chameleonic and present in every guise: quirky lilt delicate head voice and, often and best, a blown-out, purposefully ragged belt that sounds like it’s trying to claw its way out of the recording. Reyez’s songwriting is extremely online-on one track she mentally Twitter-mutes a scrub-and extremely death-driven, whether she portrays herself as the death or the killer. It’s the kind of thing young women are encouraged to quietly write out of their career narrative or else, and a genuine risk.īefore Love Came to Kill Us showcases more of that high-stakes swagger. And while Before Love Came to Kill Us is technically her debut, it follows several EPs of similarly unsparing music like “Gatekeeper,” a vicious, Clockwork Orange-referencing exposé of sexual harassment by a former producer (whom she later named as Detail). On the axis from 0 to Kelis’ “ Caught Out There,” Reyez is at the far furious end. From there, she claws in deeper, addressing her ex in a deceptively sweet croon: “I’m the monster that you made, yeah, you made me/Now I’m just like you, so don’t complain.” She threatens to Goodfella them. Jessie Reyez’s Before Love Came to Kill Us begins with this hook.

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