Album Review: Hooke’s Law by keiyaA
keiyaA bends back against every pressure that tried to flatten her: label demands, self-doubt, the myth of composure. Hooke’s Law is the resistance that keeps a Black woman’s world from collapsing.
When keiyaA dropped Forever, Ya Girl in 2020, it was a self‑released manifesto of bedroom‑born soul. She sang, played, and produced nearly everything herself; the grit and intimacy of those songs carried her from Chicago house parties to New York residencies and eventually to international stages. The acclaim brought pressure, and the pandemic‑era touring cycle left her depleted. Instead of chasing a polished, major‑label follow‑up, she retreated to a small Brooklyn apartment, wrote and played each part again, and came up with Hooke’s Law, her first record for XL Recordings. It’s her sophomore statement in name but feels like a second debut: unruly, fiercely self‑produced, and stubbornly her own. She details this cycle rather than a linear narrative, a journey of self‑love that pushes against the commodified “self‑care” industry and the expectation that dark‑skinned, fat Black and brown women should remain docile. She rejects mammyism and confronts anger, conflict, and longing on her own terms.
The title (Hooke’s Law) is a nod to a physics principle, which states that when a force is applied to a spring, it deforms proportionally until it reaches its limit, then snaps back. keiyaA uses that metaphor to frame the record’s constant tension between survival and freedom, commodification and autonomy. The album opens with “Waltz d’Hethert,” a brief invocation, then immediately throws listeners into a protest song disguised as a lullaby. On “I H8 U,” she rails against landlords and the system that enables them: “My landlord is a fool… The whole system is a scam/The poor suffering is the plan.” The low end tugs against her voice, like it’s straining to breathe but refuses to back down, and when she sings “Fuck my rent, but I’m thanking God/For my home and a safe facade,” the anger snaps back into gratitude. This push‑and‑pull repeats across the record; moments of fury deform the music only to be countered by prayer, desire, or defiance.
keiyaA’s background explains both her compositional rigor and her refusal to be boxed in. Raised on Chicago’s South Side, she grew up listening to ghettotech, gospel, and jazz. In college at the University of Illinois at Chicago and later Columbia College, she played alto saxophone and studied jazz, but she became disillusioned with the hierarchical conservatory model. Working a full‑time job while studying left her overwhelmed; she dropped out and focused instead on improvisation and community‑driven shows. That jazz training still shows up in her harmonic choices and the way she stacks her own voice, but she’s not beholden to any syllabus. She plays every instrument on Hooke’s Law and produced the entire album herself over five years, pulling from R&B, club music, punk, and psychedelia like a multi‑instrumentalist who refuses to pick a lane.
“Stupid Prizes” was recorded and produced in one late‑night session in her Brooklyn living room; she sampled Percy Faith’s lush orchestral music to create a “bed of irony” on which she sings about being miserable. “I wrote, recorded, and produced ‘Stupid Prizes’ all in one sitting… late at night in my living room,” she said. The sample’s romance contrasts with her exhaustion, underscoring a central refrain: “How I’m supposed to thrive/When all I’ve known is to survive.” That line recurs across the album, a spine for her self‑interrogation. “Take It,” the second single, flips the mood entirely. Over shuddering drums and pitch‑bent synths, she sings, “I’m gonna give you all my lovin’/It could be one night of rubbin’, kissin’ and touchin’, downin’ and fuckin’” before commanding a partner to “take it and shove it in your face… Taste of the nugget inside, it’s sweet‑sensitive cherry pie.” The song’s video, co‑directed by keiyaA and Caity Arthur, bathes her in dim blue light as she stares down the camera. If “Stupid Prizes” is weary and political, “Take It” is a sensual, assertive come‑on. Together they mapped the album’s extremes: fury and desire, refusal and pleasure.
keiyaA is often labeled an alt‑R&B artist, but Hooke’s Law expands her palette in ways that reflect the record’s themes. The jazz chords and layered harmonies of Forever, Ya Girl are still present, but they rub against club rhythms and guitar distortion. “Be Quiet!!!” features jagged drum programming and a fuzzed‑out bass that feels like midwestern nu‑metal; the lyrics demand space: “Please try to be quiet, I need silence… Don’t beep my line expecting an immediate reply”. Her voice multiplies into a choir, turning a personal boundary into a communal chant. On “Get Close 2 Me,” she sings over moody synths and laid‑back drums: “Everybody thinks they know what’s best for me… Just give me space, aight.” The arrangement is minimal (chopped piano keys, off‑kilter hi‑hats), so her words land like a confession to a friend. These sonic gestures mirror Hooke’s law itself. The more force she applies, the more the music stretches; sometimes it snaps back into beauty, sometimes it stays bent.
Her jazz training emerges not as virtuosic solos but in improvisational structures. “Motions” glides between sensuality and introspection. Her hips swing in the lyrics (“My hips swing around like there’s a potion… my bloodstream drips sweet like it’s compotion”), while the instrumentation swirls with psychedelic R&B pads and a warm bassline. “Break It” edges toward an experimental uptempo soundscape; the hook is an anti‑relationship rant delivered over distorted drum patterns. Later, “Devotions” strips everything back to an almost gospel dirge. She pleads, “I don’t want to die/I can’t take living no more” before begging, “So why don’t you fill my cup with something warm and holy.” The call‑and‑response echoes church, but the synths wobble like an underwater hymn. This push‑pull between prayer and despair (between stretching and returning) recurs throughout the record.
keiyaA’s lyrics are often blunt, sometimes messy, and diaristic. That messiness is part of the album’s honesty. When she sings “My landlord is a fool… The whole system is a scam,” it’s not a nuanced critique of housing policy. However, it’s a cathartic screed that connects personal frustration to broader exploitation. Some verses wander, but the sprawl feels intentional by refusing to tidy up her feelings for easy consumption. “I’ve been around the way… Montégo Bay to south Spain… Still, I claim the pain,” she admits on “Stupid Prizes,” letting travelogue details slip through because life rarely organizes itself into neat metaphors.
Elsewhere, she ties grief to revenge. “Until We Meet Again” recounts a death that haunts her. She’s tired of crying for her dead friends and wants retribution: “I want to fill them up with steel,” she confesses, before stopping herself: “An eye for an eye is not the way.” That single line holds rage and restraint in the same breath, a lyric that snaps back like a spring. She follows it with an adage—“I can start again”—turning the record’s physics metaphor into a promise of rebound.
A few songs meander into diaristic loops, layering self‑interrogations without always earning their length. “Think About It/What U Think?” starts strong with a sly bar scene confession (“Pardon me… I might’ve just had too much to drink”) but drifts into repetitive introspection. Yet even these weaker sections stress her refusal to prune, and she’s uninterested in making perfect pop songs. Instead, she foregrounds process—the sound of a mind bending under force and slowly springing back.
KeiyaA’s sophomore record is messy, jagged, and deeply compelling. It expands on the DIY warmth of Forever, Ya Girl while refusing to succumb to major‑label polish. Her jazz schooling and punk impulses collide in arrangements that feel like they’re under compression, constantly stretching and rebounding. The songwriting veers between incisive (“My landlord is a fool… The whole system is a scam”) and indulgent, but her voice (both literal and authorial) remains unmistakable. Hooke’s Law isn’t an easy listen, nor is it meant to be. It’s a record about force and elasticity, capitalism’s chokehold and domestic gratitude, the demand for quiet and the urge to scream. Its imperfections are part of its integrity.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Get Close 2 Me,” “Devotions,” “Until We Meet Again”