Ever feel like we’re at the end of the world? For the Sudanese-American artist Dua Saleh, the apocalypse has been a lived experience. As real as a white balloon flying into the vision in the very first minutes of our conversation. We determine it a good sign. Right now, we’d accept any luck we can get. Similarly, in their debut album, I SHOULD CALL THEM, Dua holds onto love, with a story of a star-crossed couple at the brink of humanity and environmental demise. “When they find each other, it’s literally at the apex of human existence, as the world is falling apart in whatever reality people think,” they say.
Alongside their breakout role in Sex Education, the R&B extraordinaire has reinvented the genre since their 2019 EP Nūr. Music was always the so-needed healing balm for their soul and a remedy for their mental health. “It warmed me up inside and allowed me to release and not think about how it may come off to another person,” Dua says.
In the new record, they build a sanctuary to reconcile before moving forward. “I was love-struck. I was thinking about my past relationships and situationships, which I never really processed,” Dua says. From the playful pursuit of a crush in ‘chi girl’ to meeting a beautiful stranger in ‘bo peep’ to the lyrically steaming (“Your bitch she always be crowding me / Says I’m her new sexuality”) ‘coast’, they’re knee-deep in the feelings. “I want people to laugh, and it’s a little horny,” they admit.
In the silly wrapping of the titular nod to a meme, Dua sells priceless insights: “It all ties together, and it’s all about this circle of love that we feel, and desire for love and desire to cherish ourselves, other people, and the earth all at once.” Dua’s dream is for R&B’s antidote to our multi-dimensional angst spreading worldwide. “It brings me back to childhood, growing up in the Midwest and being in a historically Black American, African American neighbourhood. It just feels warm. It feels nice, and it’s really calming for the nerves.” Their version of the genre also offers a cathartic emancipation, especially in ‘2excited’, mixing laid-backness, Black metal and: “the sound of me yelling and screeching during our session figuring out how to communicate exactly what I was thinking”.
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