Ravyn Lenae first went to Lollapalooza when she was 16 years old. “I got so blacked out,” the Chicago native tells Rolling Stone. “I was young. I didn’t know how to handle my liquor. I did edibles with the liquor, I wasn’t thinking at all. They had to carry me out of Lollapalooza. So it’s good to be back and on my two feet!”
The singer returned to her hometown fest this year as a performer, where she delivered a fiery set of songs from 2024’s Bird’s Eye (including her hit, “Love Me Not.”) “It was everything I dreamt of,” she said. “I remember coming here as a kid, thinking of when it was gonna be my turn. So hopefully, it’s not the last.”
While there, she sat down with Rolling Stone for a round of “Song Shuffle.” First up: Kendrick Lamar’s “Lust,” off 2017’s Damn. “I love this album so much,” she told RS, taking a moment to shout out Kaytranada, who sings on the track. Lenae noted that she was still living in Chicago when she first heard the record. “I put it on my TV and I literally laid down on the couch with my eyes closed and listened to the whole thing,” she said. “That’s usually how I listen to Kendrick’s albums. In my living room, with my eyes closed.”
After landing on Anycia’s “Bad Weather” and Arima Ederra’s “Portals,” she stopped on Magdalena Bay’s “Angel on a Satellite,” off the avant-pop duo’s 2024 LP Imaginal Disk. She first saw them live in Iceland, and first heard the album while on a solo walk in Los Angeles. “I just knew that was the scenery for it,” she said of the San Fernando Valley trail. “I remember walking through being like, ‘I feel like I’m on shrooms, but I’m not.’”
Lenae, who will open for Reneé Rapp and Sabrina Carpenter this fall, also spoke about returning to her alma mater, Chicago High School for the Arts. “I thought this would be the perfect time,” she said. “Walking through the halls, looking through the classrooms, remembering where I was, and it doesn’t feel that long ago. But you blink, and so many things have changed. But also, so many things are still the same, and that felt comforting for me, too.”