GENA
The Pleasure Is Yours
Lex
BY BENNETT KIRSCHNER
Published in print in We Jazz Magazine, issue 18 (Spring 2026)
Since releasing her debut LP, Couldn’t Wait to Tell You, in 2020, Liv.e has carved out an elusive niche somewhere between neo-soul, hip-hop, and jazz. As a producer, singer, and songwriter, her albums aren’t unified by instrumentation or arrangement, production style, or song structure. Without vocals, one could easily assume that two songs from the same album cohabitate a loosely compiled anthology. But as she leaps from gritty 2-bar samples to organ-forward speakeasy soundtracks, her humor, her literary eccentricity, and melodic grace stamp each song with a signature style.
The Pleasure is Yours is the first LP by GENA, Liv.e’s project with drummer-producer-DJ Karriem Riggins, whose collaborations with Erykah Badu, Madlib, and Common in the 90’s and 2000’s helped create the space between genres where Liv.e’s music dwells. His production and drumming have been in constant conversation with the music of friend and fellow Detroit-native J Dilla, whose legacy Riggins has helped carry on since Dilla’s passing in 2006.
The lowest-hanging fruit here – perhaps the connective tissue that brought these two artists together in the first place – is Erykah Badu, for whom Riggins co-produced songs like “Soldier” and “Fall in Love (Your Funeral),” and whose jazz-inflected, playful vocals offer a clear precursor to Liv.e’s freewheeling style. We see shades of Badu’s influence throughout the album: from Liv.e’s editorial equivocations in “readymade” (“Am I…am I in the wrong key?”), which hearken back to Badu’s audible laughter on Baduizm’s “Afro – Freestyle Skit,” to the similarities between Riggins’s drums on both “Lead It Up,” and New Amerykah Pt. II’s “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY).” There’s a clear creative lineage here that goes well beyond Badu’s and Liv.e’s respective upbringings in Dallas.
The name GENA, which stands for “God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” speaks to the divine intuition behind Riggins’s and Liv.e’s pairing. I’m familiar with their respective repertoires, but it’s often impossible for me to tell where one’s work begins and the other’s ends in this dramatic journey of an album. That is, of course, before taking the vocals into account, which go through numerous transformations: on “You’ve Outdone Yourself Today,” you have to lean in to fully appreciate what Liv.e is saying, as her tender restraint evokes Bill Evans’s keys; and then, two songs later, on “readymade,” she’s on stage in a glittering cocktail dress, making her standards known: “I like it when it’s tailored / I like it when it fit me. It took me so long just to get this shit right / Oh so you say this ain’t nothing?”
Liv.e’s inimitable vocal style does a lot of the work to tie these songs together, but they’re also defined by what they’re choosing not to be – conventional pop songs. Despite containing the core ingredients that make a good pop song, like a powerful hook, seamless transitions, and a relatable story, GENA defiantly opts for open-ended journal entries in lieu of radio-ready, sanitary packages. As we jump between vignettes, Liv.e always opts to sing directly to the song’s subject, refraining from the third-person. This is one of the most welcoming aspects of Liv.e’s lyricism: though she’s unafraid to dive into the deeply personal, we’re never made to feel like voyeurs or accomplices. Instead, we are welcome witnesses to every new revelation and change she could possibly touch on over the course of a 43-minute LP. The production style, meanwhile, emulates these transformations with ever-changing stylization: ethereal at times (“Doobie Doo Wew”), and abrasive at others (“This Is So Crazy”).
As in all of her solo work, Liv.e follows each idea freely till it reaches its logical conclusion. The listener is equally rewarded by different depths of listening, whether dipping their toes into the album and idly wading through a couple of songs, or diving into the deep end by putting a single song like “readymade” on repeat. Since we’re guests in Liv.e’s consciousness, we’re invited to freely wander and enjoy the shorthand daydreams that light up and pass us by. Like a seasoned poet or playwright, she remains refreshingly unprecious about her own ideas, and uses lyrical repetition only when it serves to deepen the original idea, or when subtle wordplay peels back subtextual layers.
The vulnerability of Liv.e’s music and the introspective glimpses she has already shared in past albums add another narrative layer to the listening experience: those of us who have enjoyed previous entries are also charting her personal and spiritual evolution. It almost feels like catching up with an old friend. But when we ask ourselves, “What’s she up to now? Who is she today?” in anticipation, we’re not expecting a clear, linear narrative to satiate our curiosity, because with anything Liv.e makes, the charm is in the chaos. Instead, she builds intrigue through aesthetic breadcrumbs that offer hints at what’s on her mind and who she’s becoming in the singular journey that is her young life. Each album is a chapter, every track a paragraph, and the story, just like a life, will never be truly complete.
In Couldn’t Wait to Tell You (2020) and Girl in the Half Pearl (2023), Liv.e gazed at questions of self-doubt, identity, and sexuality through lenses that were equal parts playful and serious. And while she remains grounded in the same self-awareness throughout The Pleasure Is Yours, those questions appear to have given way to a new self-confidence captured in the title: Riggins and Liv.e don’t need us, but they’re more than happy to share what they’ve got. Standing in the spotlight and supported by a clear sense of self, Liv.e’s personal interrogation appears to have ended (for now). Instead, her lyrics exude a joyful gratitude: for herself (“theybetterbegladihavetherapy”), her loves (“Dream a Twinkle”), and her ancestors (“omo iya ati baba”). And as the album title suggests, she’s freely passing along those pleasures to us.
This joyfulness is captured in the album’s first single, “Circlesz,” which finds Liv.e in a lover’s orbit. She lists the simple charms that keep her heart firmly in their gravitational pull: “I love the way you always show how you mean it / I like the way you love yourself, so conceited / I love the way you show me love when I need it / I like the way you – I really like you.” The warmth of the organ and Riggins’s crunchy drums evoke an electric young love that’s as comforting as it is alive.
His touch unmistakably pervades through the album, but Riggins’ own musical versatility and the seamlessness of this collaboration at times make it harder to pinpoint what, exactly, he’s doing beyond percussion. A storied producer in his own right, he’s likely the main influence behind “Douwannabwithastar,” which sounds like it could be a Bilal song. He could also be responsible for songs like “This Is So Crazy,” which feels like an aesthetic outlier, even for an artist as eclectic as Liv.e: the programmed drums and shredding guitar on live somewhere between the Prince and TV on the Radio. Each momentary departure challenges our understanding of how every track was made and which hats Riggins could be wearing at any given point.
On other songs, Riggins’s style clearly shapes the entire affair. His Dilla-swung drums gently propel us through “Unspokern” as a swirling panoply of guitar, keys, and bass leaves us hovering somewhere between the sounds of obscure, freshly exhumed samples and parts improvised live in-studio. Liv.e’s words glibly toy with this sense of entropy: “So close can’t tell as far as mine / Is it yours, is it mine? / Is it yours or mine?”
Other icons from the neo-soul, R&B, hip-hop, and jazz pantheons have their personal imprints across the album. In “douwannabwithastar,” Roy Hargrove would be right at home amongst the chorus of trumpets that usher in the chorus as Liv.e asks the listener, “Can you fly with me?”
Simple sensorial details immerse us in Liv.e’s memory, creating a sense of physical and emotional immediacy, and the deep gratitude that ties the whole album together:
“I was waiting up in the lobby. It was 35 degrees outside.
You was the only one to talk to. You know I had to check you out.
My heart started doing its calling. I knew you’d come to live in my mind.
But how do we make this thing physical? Like, ‘come and flex me out.’
You took me by the hand, helped me understand all the things I’m feeling inside.
You told me to believe in these miracles, like, let me show you how.
And we made it past the morning, the sun is beaming down at our lives.
Open my eyes, thank God I found you – you feel like a deep breath in and out. And you showed me how to love. And look at us now:
That’s my lover. And you are an angel, from above. Straight from the clouds.”