Kelela's Take Me Apart

A listening session for her debut album...

Time and Location

Jul 23, 2026, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Head HiFi, 146 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205, USA

July 23rd Join Special Instructions and Head Hi family for the 7th installment of our deep listening and learning sessions. One of my favorite albums of the 2010’s!

Kelela’s debut studio album, Take Me Apart, was released on October 6, 2017. It landed with a sonic sophistication and emotional precision that felt thoroughly futuristic, yet perfectly captured the timelessly relatable, messy complexities of intimacy and heartbreak. Influenced by the boundary-pushing spirits of Janet Jackson and Björk, she crafted tracks that feel both deeply sensual and meticulously avant-garde. Working alongside producers Bok-Bok, Arca and Jam City, reuniting after their collaborations on Cut 4 Me and Hallucinogen. The album is a genre-blending journey of glitchy electronic production, sultry layered vocals, and cathartic lyrics that explore desire, vulnerability, autonomy, and self-reclamation. Its standout singles, “LMK” and “Frontline,” revealed an artist unafraid of emotional exposure and confrontation.

Take Me Apart established Kelela as a singular visionary whose radical honesty and audible innovation continue to reshape the landscape of alternative R&B. Speaking directly to the historic tradition of Black female R&B and jazz vocalists in America, the album stands as an ode to wearing your heart on your sleeve despite a world that resists your humanity. A radical act of disarming others and making them feel vulnerability over everything. Special Instructions welcome you to come, learn more, and listen with others!

There will be journals present to jot down thoughts, ideas, etc while listening along with free zines and a reader to go along!

for more info & RSVP here.

Looking forward to seeing you there and taking each other apart through the music.

My special instruction for you as of now is to think of where you were when this album dropped and the initial feeling it gave you. LMK in the comments!