Released in early September, ‘Choir Boy’ is Lakyn’s first release since 2018’s & Pains EP. Recorded and produced by Konstantin Kersting – who’s worked with Mallrat, Emerson Snowe and The Jungle Giants – it’s a song born of self-confidence, which draws on songwriter Lakyn Heperi’s love of hip hop.
Heperi’s hip hop fandom has never been a secret: 2014’s Not Original Material EP contained covers of Drake, Frank Ocean and Beyoncé, but they were all restyled as solo acoustic numbers. Contemporary hip hop had an undeniable influence on ‘Choir Boy’, however. It’s apparent in Heperi’s vocal phrasing throughout; particularly in the bridge, which name-checks Kendrick Lamar.
“I’m from New Zealand originally and I did grow up listening to a lot of hip hop and R&B before I even picked up a guitar,” says Heperi. “When I picked up guitar, that wasn’t really considered connected to rap.”
Lakyn’s first bit of public exposure came via reality talent show The Voice in 2012. He was one of the final eight contestants in the show’s first season, performing songs by MGMT, The Cure and Angus & Julia Stone. He’s since been wary of getting pigeonholed as a certain type of performer.
“I didn’t want to box myself in at all because I don’t love any one genre,” Heperi says. “I love the power of communicating through music and communicating different emotions, and we all feel different emotions at different times. That was why I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself, because I feel a lot of emotions and so do others and I’ve been inspired by the possibility of explaining all angles of myself to others.”
Heperi describes ‘Choir Boy’ as a song about redrafting his expectations. “It’s important to remind yourself that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be,” he says. By writing ‘Choir Boy’, he intended to actualise this advice.
“I should be writing everything that means a lot to me and the things that mean a lot to me are the things that positively helped my life,” says Heperi.
Watch: Lakyn – ‘Choir Boy’
“It’s just like writing down something and acknowledging something that worked for me and trying to find a way where it can come across, but without preaching. [It’s about] reminding myself how it helped me and then putting that in a song as an example for others.”
The entire song stems from a commitment to stay true to himself, which is what encouraged Heperi to more blatantly embrace hip hop production than he had in the past.
“I was looking around the world and I was like, ‘All right who’s really speaking what they believe in? No matter how true it is to others, who’s really speaking their own truth?’ That’s when I started getting inspired by hip hop and rap,” he says.
“Before I released & Pains I was already influenced by [hip hop and rap], but I didn’t make it known, really. It was something where I just felt a bit of freedom and felt able to speak my own truth. But in a light way, not in a forceful way – just, these are my perceptions, these are my views on life.”
Stream & Pains below:
Along with Heperi’s trap-inflected cadence, hip hop lingo gets a run, too. Each chorus is preceded by the line, “Don’t be so alarmed when you wake, just stay woke.” The chorus then revolves around the line, “I should be giving the blessing, I’m way up,” followed by the main hook, “like a choir boy, I could cry boy.”
Heperi is giving the blessing to himself as a form of artistic self-affirmation.
“Without ego attached at all, it’s finally being proud enough to say that I think I’m in a positive place to be standing in front of people as someone on stage, as someone that’s being looked at,” he says. “I figured if I was going to put myself in that light then I needed to be confident and back myself being up there, because if I’m not backing myself then how will anyone else?
“I pushed through years of not believing in myself just because other people said nice things about my voice or this or that when I never believed it. I just kept doing it until finally believing it. It’s really awesome because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to that.”
