Janette King is Breaking the Traditional R&B Mould

With her sophomore album, Incantation, the rising star blends ’80s nostalgia with fresh R&B sounds.

by Natasha Rainey

Published on October 31, 2024

Montreal alt-R&B singer Janette King knows exactly what it really means to be indie. Dialling in from a Montreal canal bank while sipping wine with her best friend and manager, Sarah Armiento, the Caribbean-Canadian artist is having one of those easy days that are few and far between.

Beyond her music career, King “supplements the art” with web development, hair styling and DJing. Giving triple threat a new definition, the artist scuppers any idea that she chose the easy life, commenting that “the biggest struggle as an independent artist is having the financial means to just create your art.” The prickly position as an independent artist without a financial stronghold creates an aching yet entirely superficial fracture between emerging and headlining. Nonetheless, King maintains spirits foreign to a Monday morning – in fact, she’s grateful to be an independent artist in Canada with access to grant funding bodies.

Emerging as a force with What We Lost in 2021, King carved out a distinct space in her R&B lane through experimentation. The effort, which she dubs a “collage of music,” harks back to her parents’ catalogue of lovers rock and street jazz. Working with different artists and producers along the way, the concept of the album became muddled in its definition, ultimately underlined by themes of loss – and seemingly, being lost. This time around, on sophomore project Incantation, the production process was “intentional from the beginning.”

“Sonically, we wanted to incorporate a lot of ‘80s soundscapes, but with an R&B element, like a modern R&B take on Sade,” King says. Finding influence in more than Sade’s discography, King respects their music as a group effort, insistently crediting the band and iterating that it was never a solo project. “I love how Sade was a person, but was also the name of their whole band and they would always write together. I really like that, that synergy.”

Stepping into a new chapter, Incantation is a fresh blend of nostalgia, a revitalization of old school R&B while pondering themes of identity in unfamiliar forms. While no one would argue that queerness within R&B is a well-rehearsed saga, it’s still invigorating for King to explore the relationship that has been there in new art. “In the inception of R&B, I think there intrinsically is queerness. It’s like a departure from secularism,” King explains. “On the other hand, queerness within R&B I think is its own thing. It needs its own spotlight because I, at the same time, think there is a lot of heteronormativity within R&B as well.”

In resisting traditional categorization, King is truly fronting a path for new artists. But the bricks cemented along the way were not born out of comfort. Speaking about how the power of music can floor us all, King admits “I definitely use music as a tool through which I can heal and hopefully heal others through the listening of it.”

“It’s like a form of therapy for me,” she continues. “I get to fully express myself without any inhibition and I just hope that the people that listen to the album resonate with that if they’ve gone through something similar to me, they can see themselves reflected in the music and use the music as a mirror – like I’m not alone in this kind of feeling, whatever it may be.”

On the horizon, King confesses her dream collab would be with rapper and fellow Montreal-based artist Backxwash. “Do you remember the days when emo was like mixing with rap, like Linkin Park? I’m going to make a song with Backxwash in the vibes of Linkin Park,” she says. “I don’t know if I should’ve told you that, but I’m going to do it.” King’s desire to revisit that specific musical era once again displays her intentions: nostalgic, yet also pushing the edges of alternative R&B further.

The great Canadian R&B race continues, and King is bending the tracks. Absconding genre confines, she says “I don’t know if we really fit into an already created R&B Canadian landscape, but I feel like we’re almost creating something new, which is exciting.”

Janette King is performing this fall across Canada, with stops at Winnipeg’s Jazz at the Fort Garry Hotel (Nov 3), Saskatoon’s Capitol Music Club (Nov 4), Calgary’s Modern Love (Nov 5), Vancouver’s Guilt & Co (Nov 7), Montreal’s La Sotterenea (Nov 9), Toronto’s The Cave (Nov 16), and Ottawa’s NAC (Nov 23).