“Nobody makes it out of love alive.” That’s been Jessie Reyez’s refrain throughout a spate of recent interviews about her debut album, BEFORE LOVE CAME TO KILL US.
It’s the idea that love either fizzles out before its time or, if it lasts forever, still has an end date because someone has to die first.
It’s a grim sentiment on its face, and one that Reyez has embedded in her project’s DNA. Throughout the album, she often describes the feeling of infatuation in morbid terms, mixing in visceral imagery of blood, guts, and violence on songs like album-opener “DO YOU LOVE HER”: “I don’t know how to love with restraint,” says the 28-year-old artist in a February interview at Genius’ Brooklyn headquarters. “Love has always been headfirst.