Kaash Paige

Kaash Paige doesn’t want to exert herself too much. That ethic shows up over and over in the R&B singer/songwriter’s life, and it’s revealed in her aesthetic, which is pleasurably unforced: she says, for instance, that she freestyles all her lyrics. She’s one face of 21st-century R&B, which has become, under the guidance of luminaries like Frank Ocean, the music of narcotic self-revelation rather than simple seduction. A disciple of artists such as SZA, Drake and Erykah Badu, Paige was born D’Kyla Paige Woolen in Dallas, Texas, in 2001. She was a sporty kid who enjoyed athletics and played football, but she grew disillusioned with both school and sports as a teenager and started throwing parties and writing songs instead. (She’s not a big fan of work, either: in a 2020 interview with Uproxx, she recited a hilarious list of all the service jobs she’s had and quit.) Her ethereal, intimately personal songs found a receptive audience on SoundCloud, which translated into major-label interest—she signed to Def Jam before she was out of school. Paige made an immediate splash with her debut EP, 2019’s Parked Car Convos, with its restless, moody vibe and the delicious “Love Songs”, which became a breakout hit. She’s gained some famous fans, including Travis Scott, with whom she collaborated on “Euphoria”. But she hasn’t let the attention mess with her fountain of inspiration: for her first LP, 2020’s Teenage Fever, she sourced the beats from friends and recorded the songs in her brother’s university room, retaining that fresh, off-the-cuff energy that makes her such a beguiling artist.