anaiis, a being of light, unveiling her 5th project “Devotion & the Black Divine”
- wedomiel210
- Sep 29, 2025
- 3 min read
Released on September 26, 2025, via 5dB; anaiis, a being of light, unveiling her 5th project “Devotion & the Black Divine” explores soul and R’n’B recorded live on tape between London and Los Angeles, written and composed with producer Josh Grant. The album brings together fourteen tracks: ten songs and four interludes featuring the voices of Ja’Tovia Gary, Sanah Ahsan, and Adrienne Maree Brown. Strings and choirs structure the work, creating a continuous atmosphere conceived as a ceremony where the sacred meets the intimate.
« God, for me, is nature: the beauty of the Earth, we, human beings, and everything around us,” the artist confides.
In 2024, anaiis released anaiis & Grupo Cosmo, a mini-album recorded in Brazil during six days of isolation on an island with the collective of musicians. Together, they improvised and captured seven tracks on tape, without any additional production, including B.P.E (Black People Everywhere), an anthem to the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. This pursuit of simplicity and authenticity finds a natural continuation in Devotion & the Black Divine, conceived as direct, intimate, and collective music.
The visuals follow the same coherence. In Jamaica, where she learned of her pregnancy, anaiis worked with Tayo Rapoport to film the video for “Deus Deus” and the visualizers “My World (Beyond)” and “Dreamer Too”, highlighting the Maroons, women descended from enslaved people who won their own freedom. In 2023, in Senegal, on her ancestral land, she created OPENHEARTED, a short film paying tribute to her roots and her people.
By placing her work in the lineage of thinkers such as bell hooks and Adrienne Maree Brown, anaiis asserts that her music is not only an aesthetic experience. Where bell hooks saw love as a force of liberation, Adrienne Maree Brown calls for transforming society through creativity, pleasure, and community. Devotion & the Black Divine follows in this continuity: an album where each arrangement, each image, and each interlude resonates with the idea that art can be a way of inhabiting the world differently — close to memory, nature, and struggles.
“My work revolves around the Afro-Caribbean diaspora and all those who have been displaced. My music, everything I believe in, everything I fight for, is connected to that,” she states.
Invited by the artist to the listening party, Miel discovered the album in its entirety. anaiis also announced on this occasion the creation of a new short film designed to accompany Devotion & the Black Divine, extending the sound universe into an original visual narrative.
Born in Toulouse, of Franco-Senegalese origin, anaiis grew up between Oakland, New York, and Dublin before settling in London. Since her debut single Nina (2018), she has collaborated with Kokoroko, Chronixx, Oscar Jerome, and Luedji Luna, sung alongside Erykah Badu, opened for Daniel Caesar, and delivered a noted reinterpretation of To Zion by Lauryn Hill at the Meltdown Festival curated by Chaka Khan. She has also spoken at TEDxLondonWomen, toured the United States with Mereba, and performed at SXSW London.
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