Born in Toulouse. Raised between Dublin, Dakar, Oakland, and New York. Studied at Tisch. Settled in London. anaiis has spent her entire life in transit, and her music sounds like it -- not restless, but rooted in the act of moving itself. Devotion & the Black Divine, her third studio album released last September on 5dB Records, is the first time she sounds like she has arrived somewhere. Not at a destination, but at a clarity about who she is and what her music is for.
The Architecture of Healing
The album opens with "Something Is Broken" -- a title that is also a diagnosis. anaiis lays past pain flat on the table with the quiet authority of someone who has done the therapy, done the journaling, and arrived at the conclusion that some things cannot be fixed, only acknowledged. "There'd be no remedy, no prayer, no better, no saving for me," she sings, and it reads as surrender only until you realize it is actually the precondition for everything that follows.
"Deus Deus" arrives next like a prayer whispered in a cathedral that does not exist yet. The word repeats -- deus, deus, deus -- in layered echoes over a soulful reggae drop that should not work but does, because anaiis treats genre the way she treats geography: as something you pass through, not something you belong to. The video, shot in lush tropical forest with director Tayo Rapoport, captures this perfectly -- anaiis standing amid impossible green, a figure neither lost nor found but simply present.
Motherhood as Creative Catalyst
"I've given myself permission to be more experimental on this album," she told Crack Magazine, and you can hear that permission on every track. Recorded live-to-tape at 5dB Studios in London, the album carries a warmth that studio polish would have killed. New motherhood runs through the record's DNA -- not as a theme but as a lens. "Here Comes the Sun" captures the isolating shadows that accompany profound change, the midnight loneliness of early parenthood set against slowly building orchestral swells. "My World (Beyond)" transforms that isolation into devotion: "My world revolves beyond me, I found the courage to love."
Her collaboration with Grupo Cosmo in Brazil -- a mini-album improvised in a week with her newborn son in tow -- clearly unlocked something. The looseness of that project bleeds into Devotion & the Black Divine, giving it a spontaneity that her more carefully constructed earlier work sometimes lacked.
What Genre Cannot Contain
"Moonlight" is the album's centerpiece -- a slow-burning empowerment anthem that moves from dream-pop shimmer into trip-hop territory before settling on something that sounds like 1970s soul recorded in 2025. "Black, and you know how to walk in your power / Proud, 'cause you know you've put in all the hours," she declares in a cadence that is less anthem and more affirmation. The Observer compared her to Moses Sumney, and the comparison holds: both artists make music too rich for any single genre label, both draw from Ella Fitzgerald, and both understand that lo-fi textures can make soul music feel more intimate rather than less polished.
"Call Me (A/B)" unfolds in two contrasting movements -- quiet solace erupting into sensual intensity, with anaiis pleading to be taken "higher than psilocybin." It is the album's most ambitious structural choice and its most rewarding.
The Verdict
anaiis has been named to IMPALA's 100 Artists to Watch for 2026, and she performs at SXSW London in June. These are the markers of an artist on the verge of something larger. But Devotion & the Black Divine does not sound like an artist reaching for a bigger audience. It sounds like someone reaching inward and finding more there than expected. That is rarer, and it lasts longer.
