South Africa’s Kaien Cruz on Identity, Upbringing and Fusing Genre [@KAIENCRUZ]

Genre-blending R&B model/artist, Kaien Cruz hails from South Africa. Early on in their career, they opened up for Justin Bieber while he was in South Africa, and they haven’t taken their foot off the pedal since, going from strength to strength while blending Afro sounds and R&B.

Kat: Are there any elements of your upbringing in South Africa that you like translating into your music?

Kaien Cruz: Growing up in South Africa was very culturally diverse and so I think naturally growing up around a lot of different genres of music it adds into what I do now with my art. I’m kind of able to hop on different genres – I think that has a lot to do with my capabilities of understanding different genres and cultures. 

Kat: Are there any artists that inspired the way that you write? 

Kaien Cruz: Growing up my dad would play a lot of old school Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie [and] Earth, Wind & Fire. When I was younger I didn’t have a phone or an iPod or just any means to listen to music on my own, how I got my music intake was through radio and through what my dad would play. He played a lot of old school jazzy stuff and I think that influences me a lot, listening to old school love songs and songs that have more depth in the lyrics.

Kat: Your first performance was in front of 90,000 people. What was that experience like and how do you feel like that has prepared you for the performances to come? 

Kaien Cruz: I mean it was literally nuts. Growing up in a small town, I never envisioned doing a stadium show that early on in my music career. It definitely was a huge learning experience. I didn’t know anything about performing at the time. I didn’t understand the stage dynamics or the sound dynamics or how in-ears worked and all of the stuff that you need to know – I had no idea. Jumping into the deep end with that has all the way prepared me for all the shows I do now. I think starting off with something like that definitely was the best way to learn because at least for me, I learned by going through something physically versus someone just telling me about it.

Kat: How do the two singles you dropped this year differ from each other?

Kaien Cruz: They are hugely different from each other. ‘Black Ice’ is the first single that I dropped and that’s an acoustic, pop, R&B kind of song. Writing that song, I was just in my feels. I grew up playing guitar and writing songs on guitar, so anytime I’m working with an acoustic [guitar] I feel like I’m going back to the OG stuff for me, so that was fun.

Then ‘I Lay’ dropped – that song is completely different. It’s Afro, Latin inspired and upbeat and what I was saying before, being able to create music that sounds like ‘Black Ice’ and then music that also sounds like ‘I Lay’ is mostly because of my South African upbringing and being able to understand different sounds and different cultures ’cause that’s what I was exposed to growing up.

Kat: Given that for a long time the genre has maintained heteronormativity in its music, how does it feel to be making queer R&B? 

Kaien Cruz: It feels really good. It feels fresh. It feels like there’s finally this representation being shown. I mean, other than me, I feel like there’s a lot of queer artists in the whole entertainment industry and I quite enjoy that being highlighted now. I think it’s always actually been there, just never shown. The other day I was watching the Whitney Houston biopic and it just reminds me that queer people have always been there. They’ve always been a part of history. They’ve always been doing really cool things and kind of been in the shadows or that part of them hasn’t been highlighted, but I think now we’re living in a time where people can celebrate that more and I think that’s really cool. 

Kat: Do you feel that there are lots of barriers being non-binary in the music industry? 

Kaien Cruz: I think naturally there are barriers because society’s newly shifting and there’s still a lot of people that are not fully educated or haven’t been exposed to anything outside of the bubbles that they live in. I think naturally when you are representing people in a space that is new, that comes with a lot of obstacles and navigating things that haven’t really been navigated before but I enjoy the challenges and wouldn’t really give that up. I think it’s worth being authentic – the challenges that it comes with – and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. 

Kat: I feel like the music that you work with transcends genre. What’s your creative process behind that when it comes to production and fusing different genres? 

Kaien Cruz: It depends a lot on my mood that day. Unless I’m working with a brief for a specific project – I like to go off of my emotions and what I’m feeling that day. If I’m feeling a little down about something or something is weighing on me, I treat my decisions as a therapy session. I just let whatever’s inside of me come out. It’s funny ’cause a lot of times when I’m in the studio and I go on the mic for the first take, I kind of black out and sometimes the producers that I work with have to be like “Okay, you need to stop now. You just did four songs back to back in one take,”. I go into this trance type state and come out on the other end and listen back and have to remember what I just did – it’s always different. It’s always just in flow and whatever feels the most natural in the moment. I enjoy that you never know what it’s going to be.

Kat: What’s next in the pipeline for you? 

Kaien Cruz: Definitely doing a lot of shows once the project drops. I’m working on an album that is set to drop at the end of August, once that is out hopefully go on a tour and really just perform. I haven’t done a real proper live show in a good few months, [I’ve] just been working on this project and focusing on myself and just being out in nature and enjoying life but I definitely wanna do more shows.

KAIEN, their debut album is set to drop 26th October.

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