L’Rain (aka Taja Cheek) is a multi-instrumentalist experimental composer and curator. Born and raised in Brooklyn, L’Rain grew up playing a multitude of instruments and studying ballet and modern dance, eventually attending Yale University for music and American studies. She’s worked as a curator for New York institutions like MoMA PS1 and Celebrate Brooklyn, and is curating the performances for the upcoming Whitney Biennial. Her third studio album, I Killed Your Dog, is an experimental genre-blurring epic that met critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, Tidal, and the New York Times. L’Rain is one of the most multifaceted and prolific artists in New York right now, and I can’t wait to see what she does next. Lucky for us, L’Rain is here to tell us what she’s been into.
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The places dreams are made of. I feel like my best, most creative self in 99 cent stores and beauty supply stores. I could honestly spend hours perusing the aisles! When I’m feeling down, I go hang out at the ones in my neighborhood and I always come out feeling a little better.
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I didn’t watch TV for many years of my life and missed out on a lot of big cultural moments and even though I spent the early pandemic years catching up, I still don’t know a lot and now it’s fun to be blissfully unaware of things that millions of people love.
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Especially now that I’m committed to being blonde, I like throwing away all of my money into a void. That financial void helps fill the void in my heart and I pack it with miscellaneous nice-smelling chemicals that claim to make my hair longer, stronger, healthier, and shinier. I somehow believe it will make me more beautiful and more powerful than ever before (I’m still not beautiful nor powerful). I always *think* it’s kind of maybe almost working if I squint in the mirror and think happy thoughts but despite the ambiguity I keep buying and buying and buying anyway, bewitched by the creative descriptions and captivating packaging engineered to trick suckers like me into false hope. Even though I understand the deception on an intellectual level, the emotional high of collecting far outweighs the acknowledgement of an inconvenient truth. The sweet smell of denial!
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It’s my birthright to be a jerk and I really exploit that right to the fullest (especially because one of my bandmates is from Long Island).
I’m not like a real musician so I love seeing incredible musicians being their effortlessly amazing selves, singers (sangers) especially. This song has been stuck in my head for the past 7 years.
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