L'Rain

Taja Cheek performs as L'Rain, a Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist whose songs braid r&b, jazz, noise, and gospel into something that resists easy filing. She calls her method "approaching songness," building tracks from voice memos, tape loops, and reworked samples rather than conventional verse-chorus scaffolding. Her three albums - the 2017 self-titled debut, 2021's Fatigue, and 2023's I Killed Your Dog - have each landed on year-end best-of lists from outlets including Pitchfork, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, with The Wire naming Fatigue its album of the year. Beyond her own catalog, Cheek has collaborated with Vagabon, Helado Negro, and Naama Tsabar, and has curated performance programs at MoMA PS1, Performance Space New York, and the Whitney Museum. Her fourth album, fata morgana, is the newest turn in a career built on treating genre as raw material rather than destination.