keiyaA
Chakeiya Camille Richmond (b. 1992) is a Chicago-born, New York-based artist who’s released two albums of immersive, introspective neo-soul under her artist name keiyaA: Forever, Ya Girl (2020) and hooke’s law (2025). Having grown up in Chicago’s South Side, she took part in different cultural arts programs and eventually studied jazz before focusing on making electronic music and R&B. While much of her output has been self-produced, she embraced a more collaborative spirit when creating and performing in her avant-garde theatrical production milk thot (2025) at the Abrons Art Center. To experience her work is to be led into an unfurling investigation and interrogation of trauma, family, loneliness, and self. She also makes footwork under the moniker dj cowriiie. keiyaA is currently on tour and will have a performance in MoMA PS1’s Warm Up series on August 28th. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with keiyaA on July 22nd, 2026 via Zoom to discuss the evolving nature of her live shows, the online communities that made her who she is, and the making of both milk thot and hooke’s law.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I saw your tweet the other day about the Odyssey tattoo you got as a teenager.
keiyaA: Yeah, you can’t really see it now but it says, “Hardship he sent to you, and you must bear it.” It’s really kind of sad because I had a childhood with kind of abusive parents and a crazy family life. I was trying to cope, and a burden tattoo sounded great. We were reading the Odyssey in AP English Literature and it’s this scene where Odysseus has almost died and this woman, Nausicaa, saves him. He’s complaining, like, “Zeus is so mean to me!” and she’s like, you gotta deal with it babe.
I was at the Chicago show recently and I know you had family come to see you. Who came?
They surprised me. It was my dad, my stepmom, and some people from my mom’s side of the family like my uncle, my aunts, and my older cousins. My dad has seen me perform before, but he hasn’t seen me perform since Pitchfork Festival [in 2021]. My mom’s side of the family has never seen me perform like that.
Did you guys chat afterwards? What did they think?
They were in this state of being enamored, they were gushing. I think they were also a little overstimulated by the show and the energy and the crowd because they don’t go to shows like that. I’m glad it was at Schubas too because they have those benches at the front so they could sit down. It was mutually a lot because my family relationship is really, really complicated. I’ve been conditioned as a child, and because of the nature of our relationship dynamic, to lean into positivity and gratefulness and gratitude. I found myself doing the exact same thing because it was a really special moment. I cried several times because I was really grateful that they got to see me and my true self. It meant a lot. I hope that they feel proud. They had records that they asked me to sign, which was really cool. I am really curious, more so than anything, what it was like for them and what they took away from it.
Can you talk about how your relationship with your parents and family has changed over the years? I imagined it’s changed a lot since you’ve moved away from Chicago to New York. It’s also hard not to wonder about that with the themes of your two albums.
Both of my records are me coping with the wake of my family dynamic as an adult. I’m still torn about how I talk about my family in the press because I don’t wanna bash them or anything. There’s a book by Christina Sharpe called In the Wake (2016) that I lean on quite a bit. She talks about how this is the wake of slavery, this is the wake of colonization. I understand that outside of my acute, specific-to-Chakeiya trauma and experiences, our families are traumatized and there are internal things that we perpetuate amongst each other. Sometimes it’s not even that we’re perpetuating; we’re just suffering under these conditions and this is what the wake of that looks like. This is how it impacts our family dynamics, and it’s by design. I’ve been thinking about it like that since college when I learned about systemic everything. Like, it’s not just Chakeiya is going through a lot; the world is structured in a way that makes people act the way they do and cope with things. My parents were teenagers when I was born. I had teen parents, my mom was adopted, her family is immigrants—there’s a lot of layers of complexity. My dad went through the prison system and was in gangs. He had a two-parent household but was still selling drugs. That’s the reality of our lives.
This is a long-winded way of saying that it was complex for me then and it is for me now. I’ve been conditioned, both through my family and through the world, to be silent about my pain and to suffer and to put people’s needs before my own. My music is my only safe place, it feels like, to truly talk about my pain from my experience. That’s probably why it’s so intense. A lot of Forever, Ya Girl (2020) is about me making sense of the fact that I spent most of my life feeling really sad, that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t worthy, that I was ugly. I’ve had a lot of relationship dynamics, in friendship and in romance, that were shaped by my family dynamics. hooke’s law (2025) was me being like, I’m gonna take my power back, and when I try to do that, I feel a lot of anger, I feel a lot of shame, and now I’m angry that I feel ashamed. I’m angry that I went through what I went through. I was innocent and deserved better. People did their best, but they still could’ve did better, you know?
It’s kind of bustin’ my head because making that record was conjure work. I was definitely doing shadow work when I was making the record. But then my family showed up at my show, and this was after being like, “Actually, fuck y’all,” and that feels really significant in a way that I still need a lot of time to unpack. I was no contact with a majority of my family before they surprised me. It was a lot easier. I’m not going to fingerpoint at any of the people who came to support me, but it’s just like… and I don’t know if anyone can relate to me when I say this, but after a while, it’s easier to just not talk to anybody. You’re not getting the accountability you need from specific people, and I think it’s easier in family dynamics, especially those that are built patriarchally, to coddle and enable men while the women suffer, and then we all just move on because we’ve all collectively moved on. And then you become a problem if you don’t wanna move on, so it’s just easier to just step away from everyone.
That’s kind of how it’s been for me since I was in high school. But now I’m in my 30s. I don’t have children, but they had children who were teenagers by the time they were my age, and I can’t imagine that, so now it’s like, alright, the empathy is coming and it’s actually not that simple. Now I’m facing a new challenge of not… I’m not letting them off the hook, but I’m not letting me tend to my own healing get off the hook in exchange for being open to seeing my family in a new light, especially for those who hurt me the most. It’s really weird, but I do think it’s part of my healing too.
Everything you’re saying reminds me of the song on hooke’s law, “nobody show,” where you say the lines, “I ain’t never had nobody show / Me most of the things that I know / I used to be proud of that / Now if you ask me, I’m mad about it.” Do you know when you realized that switch, of finding pride in being self-sufficient but then recognizing that this is really because you didn’t have people walk you through these things.
The switch started to happen when I started a specific type of therapy. I’ve been through quite a few therapists and the one I work with now is trauma-focused. I’ve been able to see myself as a couple of parts, and for the first time ever, I see my adult self—Chakeiya, 33—as a different person than 19-year-old, 17-year-old, 7-year-old, 5-year-old Chakeiya. I thought we were all the same person until now. Through that work, I’ve been able to be like, oh, I was just an innocent kid, and kids aren’t supposed to walk alone. When I started to think about all the things I navigated growing up, I’d get angry. A child is not supposed to do that! Even at 17 you’re still a child. It’s a human thing to be like, “Yeah, I did that. I tore that on my own.” Especially when you’re a teenager, but I was just coping with the fact that I was alone for a lot of my life. I was neglected both emotionally and physically. I was made to be a caretaker for the adults in my life, who were supposed to be my caretakers. Anger’s kind of my bag right now, getting mad at everything.
That’s an interesting thing to say, to give yourself the permission to recognize that you’re not the same person you were years ago. I’ve thought about this a lot and I also have thought about it with my parents, too. I have various qualms with them and it’s hard to not just get angry about certain things, and there’s this frustration where I’m just like, ugh, I’m bringing up stuff that happened when I was a teenager. And it’s not that I’m excusing anything, but can I have the same mindset that I have for myself with them? It’s such a hard point to get to: realizing that my mother 20 years ago or 15 years ago isn’t the same person she is today. In some sense, you don’t want to believe that people can change.
No, I get it. And at least for me, then you have to accept that… yeah, it was wrong, and you didn’t deserve it, but there’s no get back. They weren’t prepared or they did their best and it wasn’t enough or… it’s really hard to describe and it sucks. It’s like, “Oh well.” But you’re right, because why would you hold yourself to task for a mistake you made 20 years ago? There’s still more to it, too, because we’re talking about a human life. But still.
Earlier you said hooke’s law was about shadow work. What do you mean by that?
Shadow work is essentially doing work, whether it’s active spiritual work or just journaling, thinking, or processing with a therapist or life coach. It’s about looking at your flaws, the mistakes you’ve made and aspects of yourself that you’re unhappy with, and instead of avoiding it, you’re naming it, understanding it, and working with it. I guess that’s why I perform, because embodiment is a big thing for me. In shadow work, they’ll ask you to imagine your flaws as a separate part of you, as a separate person. And you try to get that separate person to work for you instead of against you. On Forever, Ya Girl, I was like, “I’m the victim,” and on hooke’s law I was like, “Y’all got my fucked up, actually.” It’s a little different. It’s like, I’m a player in this as well, and y’all actually did me wrong, and this is what I’m actually gonna do about it, but also I was wrong, and here’s what I gotta do about it.
Do you feel like there are things that have happened as a result of making that album and performing it live that have played out in real life? What has happened as a result of this shadow work and making that album?
I think I’ve become a lot more vocal and fiery. I’m not necessarily combative, but I’m arguing a lot more, I’m cussing people out. Like, “Can you actually not do that?” instead of “Okay, thank you so much, are you sure? Could it be possible to do… oh, no? Okay.” Now it’s like, “How dare you. Stop that.” I haven’t played in Chicago in a couple years, but I have played a handful of times since Pitchfork Festival, so it was a little odd to see them come all the way here to Schubas [on the North Side]. Everyone lives in the South Side, Southeast Side. I’ve tried to get them to come in the past but they said they’d say they couldn’t make it. That’s what I mean about “conjure,” like something is happening in the air.
There were a number of relationships in my personal and work life that were really problematic. It was like, “I guess we’re gonna wait ’til the wheels fall off before we walk away. We’re gonna wait ’til it gets as worse as it could possibly get.” A lot of those relationships just ended really abruptly, and whatever was in rupture or fractured has gone away. I also have invited more bad landlords. The landlord I have now is worse than when I made these songs. So, I’m not gonna do that again (laughter). I manifested a terrible landlord! But that’s life, that’s New York City.
On “i h8 u” you say that your landlord started out cool. Can you talk more about that?
It was in a building that his family owned, so it was him and his brother and they both had separate apartments, and my friend also lived there. He was a musician and they smoked weed all the time and be loud late at night. It was one of those things. Like “Oh, these are the landlords that are loud on the porch, smoking weed, talkin’ shit, barbequing all night. These aren’t the can-you-keep-it-down landlords.” It was just one of those situations where they were really lazy, the apartment was in really bad condition, and when things were wrong, it took way too long to fix. It’s like, you live downstairs—there’s no excuse! It was the classic thing where instead of hiring a professional or even hiring a Taskrabbit, we’re gonna go to Home Depot and get the user-friendly version. My tub was cracking and the paint was peeling, so it was like, you need to resurface the tub. Instead, he went to Home Depot and got Rust-Oleum and it’s like, I coulda did that! Don’t come with a Rust-Oleum kit and you’re just painting over it. It was a lot of that.
It got to a point where they tried to get me out so they could get someone else in. They wanted to raise the rent. If you want to be like that, I expect it to be a new apartment in pristine condition. They were already overcharging me—I was paying so much more than what that place was worth. It was a situation where I learned that there’s no such thing as a cool landlord. The nature of being in that position means that you’re inherently exploitative. Like, I know they needed my rent to pay their mortgage. They needed it for their own bread and butter. It’s part of the thing where we’re abusing each other because of the conditions we’re under, and not because we’re inherently abusive people.
You had your theatrical production, milk thot. I know you’ve said in the past that theater performances were something important and meaningful for you in the past. When did you get first exposed to that, and what do you remember about them? What stuck out about those experiences that then informed the way you made your own work?
I didn’t really see a lot, to be honest. Before Tyler Perry was who he is, there were the Madea plays, and the taping of those plays would circulate around the Black community. I remember we would watch those plays at home, or when I’d be at the braids shop, they’d have those on. I think Diary of a Mad Black Woman (stage play, 2001; film, 2005) was kind of the first one that put him on the map, and then he made more works and things started to shift. It was like a Black soap opera with the matriarch, and Madea would be the comedic foil. It didn’t feel as damaging to the Black community at the time. It was like, whoa, this is like higher quality church theater.
There’s a program on the Southeast Side of Chicago called eta. I think it came from the Black Arts Movement era. My grandmother and I had a really interesting relationship where, to be honest, she was really abusive to my mother and she enabled my uncle to be really physically abusive to my mother. I grew up witnessing that. But to me, even though she was cold, she really tried to nurture me as an artist. She gave me Push (1996) by Sapphire when I was a little too young. She gave it to me when I was 12 years old and said to read it. I think it was her way of saying, like, “Hey, you’re not alone, and there is a legacy of Black mothers abusing their daughters that is unspoken of. Here’s some art about it.” And my grandmother was a poet too, and I was writing poetry then.
So she took me to eta, and it was an after-school and weekend community theater. You would spend the day going through these different immersive workshops. We would have choir, and we would sing Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He has a song called “Blacknuss” where they’re just like, “B-L-A-C-K, N-U-S-S.” There was a poetry performance class where we had to read Langston Hughes poems. I remember one time I was so nervous that I just started sobbing. I don’t know why I was so nervous but I cried. Then there was dance class, and we studied Katherine Dunham. There was a seasonal play but I never made it to any. I can’t remember if I psyched myself out or if I got in trouble and kept getting taken away. I was in Chicago in probably the last heyday of free, culturally Black arts programs. Now there aren’t any left, or they’re not free, or if they are then you have to score on the millionth percentile on your standardized test to get access. But I was in the Chicago Children’s Choir, which was free and after school. And I was in eta, which was free and on weekends. At the time, I was beefin’ with my mom a lot so she would take me out of stuff as punishment.
So yeah, I just really wanted to return to that [with milk thot]. I never did theater when I was younger, I never did anything like that ever again. I did band, but I was just like, damn, I really miss that. No shade to theater kids, but when I got to college and was able to make my own choices again I was like, “I’m good off y’all.” I needed the context of Black performance arts, and I also needed to come to New York and see Downtown theater. I needed to see the cool, hip, avant-garde people to get re-enrolled in it mentally. For a while I thought theater was just Broadway.
Obviously milk thot and hooke’s law are intertwined. If you hadn’t made milk thot, though, what do you think you wouldn’t have learned about yourself? What are you most grateful for in having gone through that process?
I made milk thot and hooke’s law at the same time. I had demos, but milk thot was the thing I made first, and once we finished the first run, I was able to finish hooke’s law. I truly think it saved my life. I was super depressed, I was in a really bad mental state, and obviously we’ve made a lot of strides with mental health, but I still think there’s a long way to go with depression and Black people, queer people, and women in particular. Nobody really believed me. And I think to this day, a lot of people still don’t believe me. A lot of the way I was treated was, “Actually, I think you’re just lazy” or “Actually, I don’t really see what the problem is.” They’d say things like, “You’re signed to a label! You just need to put a record out!” It was giving a lot of that.
The fact that I had to physically go somewhere was… like, I had to fight to get a lot of things. But by the time I got them, it was like, I have a place to physically be at for five days a week for six weeks. My choreographer and co-director, Lambkin, we were doing calisthenics and planks to warm up, sometimes just to read. I’m grateful for that more than everything else: to have the opportunity for people to be motivated and physically active. That did a lot for my brain and my body. Also, I’m grateful for Abrons and the staff for believing in this work about my mother wounds and trauma.
That’s basically what milk thot was about. At the end of the day, I got awarded grant money so I could pay people to help me put on something that I made up. I made this shit up! I’m tellin’ y’all a story. I won’t say that it’s not saving lives, because it saved my life and it touched other people, and I know it touched a lot of women in particular because it illustrates something that’s hard to talk about. But at the end of the day, this isn’t work that’s really important to the state of the world. We’re roasting alive outside. The genocides are insane. Capitalism is usurping our brain power. And the world is about to be The Day After Tomorrow today. I’m making work like, my life is so sad, guys. I know it’s not necessarily the most urgent thing, even though others would argue that it is. So I won’t shame or devalue my work too much, but I’m grateful because it could’ve been someone else. I could’ve found a job and found some meds and found another way, which is what a lot of us have to do, ultimately.
Do you have a tendency to devalue your own work?
Clocked me (laughter). I think I do. I’ve not departed from anything I talk about in hooke’s law or milk thot, so I’m still working on not making myself small. Maybe I overcompensate because I’m an American and have relative privilege. I know I have privilege being cisgender, I know have privilege being brown skin and not dark skin. I have privilege because I can pretty much pay my rent and bills from music. We’re makin’ it work. I think I’m just trying to be aware of that. But it definitely is also driven by this condition to make myself small, maybe as a way to avoid persecution because that was some of my experiences growing up for sure.
The collaborative nature of milk thot makes me think of “be quiet!!!” In that song you say “I need silence” and then later say “Free me from my own reclusive nature.” There’s this vacillation there. And then on “stupid prizes” you say “Can’t take the blame / But I can’t stay the same.” You’re always aware of these tensions and contradictions. I’ve read in other interviews where you talk about how loneliness can be productive, so I’m curious what’s on your mind nowadays with this aspect of your life and personality.
I was talking to a friend of mine and she was describing how she described me to another friend. She was like, “Yeah, keiyaA’s a loner” and I was like, damn, hate that (laughter). But it’s true! I was definitely that kid that was like, “Get out of my room!” And also, the internet. I was on them forums. We’re around the same age, so you remember when there were pockets of the internet you could crawl into and you could be freaky with these people about this one thing. And social media was like, “Let’s take the real life online.” Like, “Who are you? What are you into? I wanna read your longform thoughts about stuff.” I think it’s funny we complain about Substack now because it’s like, y’all don’t remember Xanga?
I had a Xanga!
I had a Xanga too! We were blogging! We were thought daughters and sons for many years. I was one of those people that was like, I’m a black sheep and I love my friends, but I’m finding more of myself online and it’s fascinating. But also, COVID did a number on my brain. And even before lockdown era, my life has led me to these phases where it was just me and my phone. Also, I relocated. When I left Chicago, it was because it was hard to find myself in the music scene there. I have a lot of respect and love for all the art that comes out of Chicago, but I found it hard to find my way into a scene. I’ve been away from the Chicago underground scene for a few years so I’m trying to relearn it, but at the time I was around, it felt like you had to be part of a crew. I was like, I don’t really have my crew, so I guess I gotta go.
When I relocated to New York, I really relied on social media to find out what was happening and to connect with people. I think some of that is reinforced by my positionality now with how people interact with me. Like, I don’t know y’all but y’all think you know me, fuck (laughter). And also, the misogynoir is really rampant out here in these streets. A lot of my friends are helping me understand that I’m not just a recluse, it’s also just really violent out here for fat Black women. So all of that has really conditioned me for my default mode to be in the house. I like to be loud and I like to laugh and be around a lot of people, so it’s not about resisting or fighting so much as creating new habits. I don’t want to engineer loneliness in my life—it’s really easy to go back to that.
What were those pockets of the internet you were on back then? Where’d you find your friends?
MySpace groups. There was a group called “Killer Kids of Kolor.” I don’t wanna reveal who else was in the group because they should also tell that, but there are people I’m friends with who are journalists and artists and it’s like, “Remember when we were in that group, y’all?” It’s cool to see us now. That was a big one. And Tumblr… Tumblr down. I was more of an observer on Tumblr. There were quite a few people who work in media—production, music, film, fashion—that I remember I followed on Tumblr because I was like, here are my Tumblr feminist icons. And Twitter, too. This was when Twitter was an extension of the blog. Now it’s just some other shit. I remember when Twitter was for thinkers and writers or whatever. Now it’s fun because we’re mutual friends because they like my work, but I’ll say, “I remember you. I used to follow you for your Tumblr essays.” And random music forums too, like Gearslutz. It’s really bad now (laughter). I started getting into modular synths and I went back on there and I was like, damn, everyone’s so mean on here, bye. And Reddit. I’m not so much on Reddit anymore, though, because we’re way past the point of finding real people talking with nuance on Reddit. Those were my pockets.
Especially after doing milk thot, how do you feel like your concerts have changed at all? I don’t know if you were doing concerts back in 2015 when you released Work, but I’m curious about the trajectory of your live performances.
Wow, the Work EP. I was doing local yokel gigs where there’s more people on the bill than in the crowd (laughter). I think I understand what my goals with performance are now. Before, with coming up in music school, my brain was like “live performance means you play instruments and you play the song and you sound great” and everything else is an afterthought. And things have changed now, and partly from opening for people like Ravyn Lenae and getting to watch her perform every night for a couple weeks. I saw what her audience responded to with me. That tore me out a lot because I was like, oh, by the time we get here, they want to hear you sing to them. The beats are cool, but nobody cares about me bending over my laptop doing a sick-ass transition. They care about me singing my runs and how I’m embodying and emoting in my performance.
When we stopped milk thot I was like, that’s fun but now it’s back to the real world. But it’s like, no—the more theatrics, the better. I released myself from this feeling that I need to show off my technical skills and have people know that I composed this. Now it’s more of me performing songs with the depth of the emotional range that I can. I’m singing about my life and my feelings, so I should show them how it feels and what it feels like. It also makes me feel more connected to the work. I thought I’d feel more connected through playing it, but I feel more connected through embodiment and emotionality.
How do you feel like the act of singing for you has changed? What’s your relationship with your voice like?
I love myself a lot more. It’s interesting you brought up the Work EP because I could tell I was trying to bury my voice under the tracks. I was just not comfortable with my voice at the time, and I feel like I can actually sing. That sounds silly. My voice is an instrument and a tool for expression, and people are coming for my voice too. I didn’t give myself credit around that. I thought people were just coming for the overall vibe—the beats, the message. But I feel almost a responsibility to be a vocalist. Not in a technical sense like I need to be the best singer, but that is part of my power and expression and I ought to see what my best is. If I sing at my best, what does that actually sound like?
What does it mean to be at your best?
Not holding anything back. I feel like I’m 85% there. I feel like the run I did where I ended in Chicago, I improved quite a lot, but I think there’s a lot further I can go.
What do you think is necessary then to go from the 85% to the 100%?
I think it’s mostly in resources and structure, to be honest. I want to set myself up so that when I’m on stage, I have the lights, I have the look, and I have the sound that makes me feel like it’s nothing to do but the show at that point. It’s funny because I thought that doing everything myself was the way, but the more I delegate to other people, the more I can be better.
I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
I love that I have to interrogate everything, including myself. I question everything, I question what I’m doing, and it results in me being more authentic. And I love my tenacity. I think the world just wants to give people like me less, and I would get a lot less if I wasn’t like, “Are you sure? Let me see.” I used to be really ashamed of that. I used to think I was too much or annoying people, but now I understand that it’s powerful and important to be a fighter.
When did that change happen, where you went from thinking you were being annoying to really owning it?
It’s honestly still ongoing. Sometimes I’m like, damn, did I go too hard? Shit… (laughter). But having a community of Black queer women and femmes, and a lot of them are in similar positions as singers and musicians, I’ll have conversations with them. They’ll affirm me and tell me that they had to change their personality, too. That’s when the switch happened. Like, not only am I not alone, but it’s probably a quality that is saving my life and has saved my life in the past.
keiyaA’s latest album, hooke’s law, is out now via XL Recordings. keiyaA is playing more tour dates throughout the next few months, find the dates here. She’s also playing as part of MoMA PS1’s Warm Up series on August 28th. More info here.
Thank you for reading the 235th issue of Tone Glow. Please let me know if you were also in Killer Kids of Kolor.
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i always appreciate the high levels of vulnerability keiyaA shares in her music and in conversation with others, thank you for facilitating it and sharing! this is too great
cannot believe you found an 18 year old montage of black emo girls...black history moment