On the early morning of a Saturday in September, Xenia is emphatic on our FaceTime call as she tells me about an audio recording she has just received from her grandparents. “I’ve been asking them for this recording for ages,” the singer-songwriter tells me. It is a recording of them singing a Swahili song traditionally sung to bid farewell to a bride, not too dissimilar to her debut album Love/Hate Pt.1’s opener: G.I’s Intro that is also sung by her grandfather. “I was crying on the phone with them,” she says with a slightly plaintive chuckle. “I have no idea when I'm gonna get married. These guys, nyanya and babu are old now, they might not be there when I do. But now I have that audio of them singing that song.”
Xenia is certain she wants to get married one day. Although she doesn’t imagine it to be a traditional union. “I don’t feel like I have witnessed a lot of marriages being love centred, often I think they could use more balance” she thinks aloud. For someone whose music explores love, both as an ailment and as a source of healing, it is unsurprising to hear ruminating on the ways it takes shape in her own life. Love/Hate Pt.1 and the recently released sequel Love/Hate Pt.2 are refined versions of these ruminations. In the two albums, Xenia offers to her listeners a two-sides-of-the-same-coin era in which she maintains that love’s enigma is its ability to be both the worst and the best thing that could happen to us.
While Love/Hate Pt.1 speaks to hope and playfulness, Pt.2 is a gritty, detached and at times angry response at her love interests. Anger, an emotion the singer-songwriter is still learning to express freely in her own life, can sometimes make her feel like she is in character. “I often feel like people will listen to songs on the album like Dare You and be like, ‘wow she doesn’t even look like she would say these things,’ you know?” she says while laughing to herself. In the reggae infused AVB produced track featuring Waye, she gives an ex love interest a fair warning; “you like to play these games a lot but this one you won’t win/ know you ain’t trying to test a bitch whose patience running thin.” She leans further into the emotion in another AVB production, Fire. This time her anger is combined with derisive amusement as she sings, “so crazy how these niggas got points to prove, don’t know why they think it’d amaze me/…calling me baby…how they act amused, egos bruised, yeah they got the girl on fire.”
Xenia’s personal experiences heavily inform her songwriting. In fact, sometimes the songs are representative of her feelings and state of mind in real time. Sober, for instance, was written during a bender where she was quite literally inebriated; she tapped into that state to spin a metaphor illustrating love’s intoxication. Still Lose, a collaborative effort with British- Kenyan artist Hamza, also felt just as vulnerable in the songwriting process as it appears to be in the final product. Xenia shares, “we went to the studio and we were just immediately open with each other. I still remember how the moment felt, it felt so…the feeling for me was almost tangible, it just felt right.”
In many ways, Love/Hate Pt.2 chronicles the varying emotions that bubble up after the realisation that a love doesn’t quite fit. In Sober, she regrets her choice to indulge in love, while in Still Lose the disappointment is externalised; “Silly me to think that love was harmless, that’s not how we started, how could you just leave that on your conscience.” Fight For You trades in resignation for an acceptance as she sings; “I promise that I’ve tried/ and all feelings aside, I can’t say I’ll fight for you,” in the song’s hook. And in Bad Side, this acceptance is punctuated by detachment and a sense of humour, as seen by the infusion of the now meme-fied speech by Kenyan member of parliament Millie ‘bad gal’ Odhiambo.
Xenia routinely incorporates motifs through her discography whether through the same idea unpacked in multiple songs, or through similar song titles. Consider: Lowkey in Pt.1 and Hush in Pt.2. “It keeps my music unified I think,” she confirms. Fans will notice other through lines like the inclusion of long time collaborator Ukweli in Chxmistry- a song whose percussion heavy production paired with synths makes it the hinge that connects the first part of the project to the second.
In the first part of the album, Xenia dabbles in other genres with infusions of afrobeats, amapiano and reggae. “It was a deliberate choice,” she tells me, her head cocked to the side as she is thinking back. “I consider myself a writer first and I wanted this album to include all the sounds I have written to in the past so that it can feel like a true reflection of me,” she explains. Her features in tracks like Mr Eazi’s Cherry, Juls’ Say You Love Me and her many contributions in South African DJ and Producer Yumbs’ East Meets South project are all a testament to this diversity in her catalogue.
The second half of the album, which feels just a little more polished, offers more traditional R&B elements. But here too you will find experimentation. The East African star flexes her vocal technique, playing around with a variation of textures and delivery. Still Lose benefits from a stripped back, gravelly performance, while it’s the maximal vocal layering that makes Fight For You.
The final track list came together slowly at first, and then all at once. She spent a long time narrowing down an extensive longlist until Grammy Award Winning Producer J.LBS suggested she opens the album with Sober, “and my whole world opened up after that, I immediately knew the sequence after that,” she says.
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Shortly after the release of her second studio album, Xenia is gearing up for a listening party in Los Angeles where she now lives. “Sometimes I feel like, would this have made more sense if I was home in Nairobi, you know, with people that naturally understand my essence?” she says. Before moving to L.A., Xenia lived in Atlanta where she got her start in songwriting, Boston where she graduated at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and Mombasa for secondary school. She is no stranger to being away from home.
But the distance has not always been easy and oftentimes she has had to find solace in the virtual connection she has built with her Kenyan fans. A hallmark of Xenia’s Instagram page is the long form caption that has quickly become her signature. In her captions, you will find the singer-songwriter, guard down, full of gratitude and awe for the blessings in her life. This year in particular, you would also have found her reflecting on the irony of attending her first Grammy Awards, celebrating women winning awards amidst femicide marches in her home country. A few months later you would see her online presence shift her attention to the #RutoMustGo protests in multiple Kenyan cities. “There was no way it would feel right to put out music at the height of the protests,” she says. “I believe music is healing, and that music is love, but at the time I really just wanted to do what was necessary.” And what was necessary was amplifying the events on the ground, being a part of the chorus of young people that were demanding the halt of tax hikes and the resignation of President Ruto.
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One of the first times I saw Xenia perform was for a high school talent show in Mombasa, Kenya where she performed a delightful rendition of Justin Bieber’s Baby. She glided across the stage a la Michael Jackson, with a leather jacket and black skinny jeans that were tucked into a pair of white socks to match. On stage, Xenia is uninhibited. She knows it too: “when I’m performing and I’m truly present, that feels like the closest connection to God I have.” The most recent performance of hers I saw was in October 2023, the Kenyan native got to perform her debut album in front of an audience of family, friends, and long standing fans at The Alchemist, Nairobi. The stage was adorned with greenery not unlike the album’s cover image, with a stunning live band accompaniment. Her two siblings joined her on stage for a heartfelt performance of G.I.’s intro, and she brought the music video choreography for Precious to life with her backup dancers. For Xenia, this show was an internal turning point; “I don't know, that one just was different. That was the first time I felt like, oh my god, this is me in my full form when I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do.”
Shortly after her hometown performance the singer-songwriter went on a European tour as an opener for fellow Kenyan act Bien (formerly Sauti Sol’s lead singer). There she got a chance to meet European fans, introduce new listeners to her music, and learn how to consistently tap into that space she uncovered during her performance in Nairobi. “Each night felt like practice,” she starts before adding, “to tap into that energy where I’m all in. I can tell when I’m not all the way there and now I know exactly how to get there.”
For Xenia, performance is the final act in her artistry. The first is writing. “Initially I thought my purpose was to be a songwriter, and even now if you ask me, I think I’m a writer first before anything else.” Atop her own catalogue, she has written for the likes of Teyana Taylor, Brandy and Sauti Sol. Also, for former duo VanJess, for whom she wrote Surrender, which features in the deluxe version of their album Homegrown. “They kept it exactly the way I wrote it, I was like woah, crazy that I was able to give them exactly what they wanted,” she recalls. When I ask her if it gets difficult to choose which songs to keep for herself as opposed to pitching, she explains that although she tries to be clear about who she is writing for beforehand, it can still be difficult. “because you’re like, this could slap down the line, or this could be used for, like, a movie.”
There is an expansiveness of someone who is just getting started when you hear Xenia speak about the places her music can go. Ambition comes naturally to her, but it has also been nurtured by years of intentionality. She is a meticulous learner and an eager student of the craft and the business, which roots her ambition in what she knows she can achieve. “I mean I also rely a lot on faith,” she clarifies. She tells me that she has learned to believe that everything will work out. On a phone call earlier this year, she tells me about her magic board; a white board she and her manager Fay Hersi write all their most ambitious goals on. The rule is simple: once it’s on the board, consider it accomplished. “It’s the writing I’m telling you, it’s magical!” she exclaims. She tells me about some of the things that have come true, including the successful rollout of Love/Hate Pt2., then she asks me about my own ambitions before declaring sagely, “I’ll write that on the magic board for you.”