Moon Shoes EP

The Artist

Ravyn Lenae is a Chicago-born singer-songwriter whose music sits at the intersection of neo-soul, R&B, and art pop — a sound built on prismatic vocal runs, dreamy production, and a lyrical preoccupation with youth, longing, and self-discovery. She began releasing music as a teenager, cutting her teeth in Chicago's fertile independent scene alongside frequent collaborators like Steve Lacy and the broader Saba and Smino orbit. Her voice — light and crystalline, capable of floating above a groove or sinking into it — became her signature almost immediately. Moon Shoes EP arrived in 2017 as her second extended project, cementing her reputation as one of her generation's most distinctive young voices before she had even turned twenty.

The Album

Moon Shoes EP was released in February 2017 through Atlantic Records, produced entirely by Monte Booker, a Chicago beatmaker known for his elastic, funk-inflected approach to production. Booker's fingerprints are all over the record — rubbery bass lines, warped synths, and rhythms that feel simultaneously loose and locked-in create a bed that lets Lenae's voice move freely. The EP was recorded while Lenae was still in high school, and that context is felt rather than stated — there's a sense of wide-eyed curiosity in both the sound and the subject matter. Thematically, the project circles adolescent desire, the thrill of new feeling, and the particular texture of youth that feels infinite and fleeting at once.

Listen For

Monte Booker's production palette. Notice how the beats feel both vintage and alien — rubbery synth bass, chopped vocal samples, and off-kilter drum programming give the EP a sound that doesn't quite belong to any single era.

Lenae's vocal agility. On tracks like "Sticky" and "Venom," she glides between registers with a casual ease that belies her age — listen for the way she ornaments a phrase and then strips it back to something almost bare.

Dynamics and space. Booker and Lenae resist the urge to fill every moment; the production breathes, letting silence and negative space carry as much weight as the notes themselves.

Lyrical texture in "Sticky." The song's central metaphor — attraction as something adhesive, inescapable — is delivered with a playfulness that keeps it from feeling heavy, a balance Lenae strikes throughout the record.

Themes of youthful longing. Across "Fly Me Away" and "Free Room," Lenae maps the emotional geography of being young and restless — the hunger for escape, connection, and the feeling that something larger is just out of reach.