The name stands for God Energy, Naturally Amazing -- loosely inspired by Gina from Martin, because of course it is. When Liv.e and Karriem Riggins decided to make music together as GENA, they did not plan it the way albums get planned in 2026. There was no writing camp in a rented house. No Zoom calls with A&R. They built The Pleasure Is Yours through virtual sessions, passing ideas back and forth, letting Karriem's masterful percussive frameworks become spaces for Liv.e to fill with her smoky, unpolished vocals. The result, released in February on Lex Records, is sixteen tracks of neo-soul that sounds like two people having a conversation only they fully understand -- and not caring whether you catch every word.
Two Lineages Colliding
Karriem Riggins is a drummer's drummer. He has played with J Dilla, Common, Diana Krall, and Ray Brown. His work with Madlib on the Madvillain sessions is the stuff of hip-hop production mythology. He understands rhythm not as accompaniment but as architecture -- the thing that holds everything else up.
Liv.e, Dallas-born and now LA-based, is a different kind of force. Her solo work -- Couldn't Wait to Tell You... in 2020, Girl in the Half Pearl in 2022 -- established her as one of the most unpredictable voices in experimental R&B. She sings like she is remembering a melody rather than performing one, her phrasing always slightly off-center, always landing somewhere more interesting than where you expected.
Put them together and you get GENA: a project that sounds like classic soul refracted through a prism built by two people who learned different lessons from the same tradition.
The Album as Conversation
"Lead It Up" is the album's most immediate entry point -- Liv.e's voice floating over Riggins' warm, percussive groove, the whole thing feeling like a sunset drive with the windows down. "HOWWEFLOW" pushes deeper into abstraction, the rhythm section becoming more insistent while Liv.e's vocals dissolve into texture. "Circlesz" lives somewhere between jazz and hip-hop, neither fully committing to either, and stronger for it.
But the real revelation is how the album moves as a whole. Sixteen tracks in forty-three minutes means nothing overstays. Ideas arrive, develop, and leave before they have time to become predictable. The "Douwannabwitastar!?" video, directed by Mackai Sharp, captures this energy perfectly -- playful, kinetic, slightly chaotic in the best way.
Riggins gave Liv.e room to be herself, serving as what Lex Records described as "a conduit for her to find rhythms organically and imaginatively fill the spaces that Karriem built for her experimentation." That description sounds like label copy, but listening to the album, it rings true. There is a generosity in the production -- Riggins never crowds Liv.e, and she never wastes the space he gives her.
Why Now Matters
GENA plays Aisle 5 in Atlanta tomorrow, April 12, with Stacy Epps joining the bill. If you are anywhere near Georgia, this is not optional. The duo's ability to translate these virtual sessions into live energy is something worth witnessing before the venues get bigger -- and they will.
The Pleasure Is Yours is not a supergroup album in the traditional sense. It is not two famous people combining their audiences. It is two musicians who share a language deciding to speak it together for the first time. In a year already stacked with collaborations, this one earns its existence on every track.
