A peace emanates from Mereba, even amidst unsettled circumstances. On the day NME is scheduled to speak with the LA-based artist, the newly inaugurated US President happens to be visiting town, creating gridlocked traffic and throwing our interview into doubt. Nonetheless, Mereba hops on from her car while on the move, calm and collected even as the signal dips in and out.
The poise is no accident. It’s a mark of the deep inner work and healing that the Ethiopian-American artist has pursued in recent years. In place of the frantic anticipation you’d expect for an artist preparing to release her first album in five years (and her first project on a new label), a steady self-possession envelops Mereba instead. “I do feel a sense of release happening”, she begins. “It’s energising. It feels good to step back into my purpose in this way, and be back in a place of connection with people.”
Mereba’s artistry is a point of emotional and musical connection, a grounded, resonant blend of the human experiences that have shaped her. Melding sensual, vibrational R&B with vibrant folk storytelling and rap flows on her debut album, ‘The Jungle Is The Only Way Out’, her musical world is an embrace in which people seek refuge, finding warmth and compassion in her exploration of life and love. With her forthcoming second album, ‘The Breeze Grew A Fire’, Mereba luxuriates fully in the soothing sides of her artistry, crafting a glowing sonic world around healing and maternal love.
Mereba’s love affair with music has always transcended boundaries. Growing up between Alabama, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, she fell in love with folk guitar as a child and gained further inspiration from roots, blues and other musical styles as her family moved across the country. Her journey eventually led her to Atlanta, where she joined hip-hop collective Spillage Village in 2014, collaborating with the likes of J.I.D, Earthgang and 6LACK. She held her own as the group’s only female, carving out a beloved place in the group with her intimate storytelling, soulful cadence and presence of thought.
In the years following that “hustle-focused era of life”, the artist embarked on a new chapter centred around “slowing and softening”, one that informs her second album. Allowing herself to step away from music for a prolonged period for the first time in her career, and becoming a new mother to a son in 2021, gave Mereba the space to finally “sit down and process all of the scars, lessons and wounds – all the things that took place in that jungle”.
“These past few years have been hard for everybody,” says Mereba. “There’s so much uncertainty in the world, so many things bubbling up in society and draining us. I’ve been a pretty consistent optimist throughout my life, but between everything going on in the world and the adult responsibilities, family issues, money stuff and becoming a mum… I began to feel my fire dimming. I really started to understand why people’s lights go out.” She yearned for rest, bunkering down in the isolation of new motherhood and taking solace in her closest family and friends.
Out of the softness, reflections came. New perspectives unfolded slowly and beautifully, caressing everything in Mereba’s life, from memories of her childhood to her relationships with friends, family and her own inner child. “When we feel depressed, a lot of the time we’ll focus on how to ‘get strong again’,” Mereba says. “I had this slow, beautiful epiphany that it was actually only the gentle, loving relationships of care in my life that were able to bring my fire back. Those aren’t the relationships I usually sing about, but they’re the true cornerstones of my life.”
Mereba adds that “everything shifted” after she started to see the world “from a new place of understanding and acceptance”. “It replaced all the angst I used to hold,” she says. This honey-coloured view flows into songs like ‘Counterfeit’, Mereba’s more empathetic take on the “complexity and grit” of LA and “this very exploitative industry we’re in”. With its thinly veiled references to “friends transactions” and “money-drenched passions”, it’s an anthem about insisting on integrity and authenticity in spite of your surroundings.
“Between everything going on in the world and the adult responsibilities, I began to feel my fire dimming. I really started to understand why people’s lights go out”
“I found myself always leaning towards ‘message music’ growing up. I really love artists who are completely unafraid to take it there. Your Stevie Wonders, Nina Simone and Bob Dylans,” she notes. “I wanted to finally try to write about that subject, but now from a less judgmental perspective. I think we would all fare better in this industry if we were realer with each other, and stood up a bit more to certain practices that are considered ‘normal’.”
Mereba began to liken her slow, unfurling realisations to the feeling of a breeze brushing against her skin. The awakening effect of these reflections became the force behind the album title – stillness igniting clarity and inspiration, “learning to find strength in softness”. Its titular song is as a poetry vignette, a trademark of the multi-hyphenate’s recent projects and an homage to her poetic origins. “A breeze slowly [stirs] its way into my spirit,” she recites, “brought my burning thing back to life, a passion set aside some place deep inside of me.”.
Sonically, ‘Breeze’ is a deeper exploration of Mereba’s formative influences, a homecoming to her folk roots and return to the instinctive way she began making music as a girl. “I was just spread too thin to overthink”, she recalls. “All I had time for was to ask: ‘Does it feel good? Then I’m gonna follow it’.” Craving space to create and separation from her home life, she worked out of a cheap rented studio in LA, making demos like ‘Heart of a Child’ that formed the album’s foundations.
Conscious of the “longtime fans who are sure to remind me that I should be rapping more and I shouldn’t lose that part of my artistry”, Mereba assures that ‘Breeze’ is the fullest encapsulation of her sound to date. “All of my influences are there, on every single song”, she notes. “The ‘Mereba sound’ is so glued together at this point. It’s in the attitude, the flow, the cadences in which I write. I feel really proud of that.”
On a spiritual level, the project is a vessel for what she wants to say to the world in this moment. “In the last few years, all I’ve wanted to make is healing, comforting music,” she says. “As a mother in the presence of a baby, there’s a natural tenderness in me, a maternal energy, that comes out. That’s not just for my child, but for myself and everyone else.”
That comes through most on the luminous ‘Starlight (My Baby)’, a tender dedication to her son that all the light he seeks from the world is already within him to grasp. “I wanted to drop all of the game I have, and all the wisdom I can think of, into the coolest song I could make,” Mereba says. Unbeknownst to both of us, the LA sky darkens outside her car window as we speak and soon, it’s completely dark.
“I was a stubborn child myself and didn’t listen to anything people told me. Maybe 15 years down the line when he’s not listening to me, he might listen to this,” Mereba continues as the car sits still. Stationary in the driveway, she is enveloped in the wisdom and serenity of lessons learned, a sanctuary in and of herself, sheltered from the world outside. “There’s so much about life that I want him to understand.”
Mereba’s sophomore album ‘The Breeze Grew A Fire’ is due out February 14 via Secretly Canadian.