REVIEW: Dawn Richard Builds a Home for Herself on ‘Creole Culture’
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY NEO VASQUEZ ☆
Photo by Jeremy Tauriac
DAWN RICHARD CLOSES HER KING CREOLE TRILOGY BY TURNING THE CAMERA ON HERSELF—Out Oct. 9 on Merge Records, Creole Culture follows 2019’s New Breed and 2021’s Second Line, completing a trilogy that has rebuilt New Orleans in her image, one album at a time. Where the first two records came through her father’s and her mother’s eyes, this one tells her side of the story.
The album arrives after two avant-garde R&B projects with composer Spencer Zahn, including 2024’s Quiet in a World Full of Noise, which worked through grief and trauma. Creole Culture carries that softer touch back into the brass-soaked world of King Creole. Richard’s heritage as a Black and Native American woman from New Orleans sits at the center, and she mixes R&B, soul, hip-hop, pop and jazz into one sound.
Much of the record’s character comes from who built it. Richard co-produced most of the album with Katalyst Collective, a jazz ensemble based in Los Angeles, and a few tracks come from Machinedrum, her longtime collaborator. Live instruments show up on nearly every song, so even the programmed beats have players around them. Most tracks end with a short interlude that points toward the next one, which makes the album play like one long set instead of 11 separate songs.
Luna spent time with all 11 tracks, and the opener sets the tone. “a creole culture intro,” featuring Big Freedia, draws on both jazz and bounce, two sounds that sit at the heart of the city’s identity. From there, “enough” finds Richard in love over a warm reggae groove, with a faint sample of Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam” floating in the background.
“chuuuuurch” is the track with the most going on. It opens on the sound of people talking in Creole, builds through a drum pattern that turns into an amapiano rhythm, and lands in a full gospel arrangement with a choir. Ajelieka “Jelly” Joseph’s voice carries it. But the most striking moment for me was “groove city,” a reworking of the soul-funk anthem by her father Frank Richard and Chocolate Milk. The original turns 50 this year, and Richard layers jungle breaks over it while keeping sax lines and vocal loops from the original recording. She raps and sings through the drums, tipping her hat to her family line. It’s the clearest picture of what the album does with the past, keeping the heart while updating the body.
Richard’s voice changes shape across the back half. She leans into a rap swagger on “only fans,” moves to a clipped, Afrobeats-style delivery on “motives,” and “fiesta” leans into Afro-Caribbean futurism along the way. Creole Culture sounds like an artist exhaling. Richard has spent her career building toward a future, and here she seems comfortable standing in it.
