If you’re going to blow up genre, you might as well do it in holographic vinyl.
Dawn Richard’s Second Line: An Electro Revival isn’t just an album—it’s an immersive technicolor thesis on identity, futurism, and cultural reclamation. It’s also part two of a trilogy, and the only record this year where a woman sings over Moonlight Sonata and still manages to make Nine Inch Nails in New Orleans sound like a footnote.
Richard knows it’s ambitious. That’s the point.
“We worked really hard on the packaging,” she says. “From the mohawk vinyl to the mirrored hologram foil—if anybody followed my career, the delivery is a process.”
That delivery comes with lore. Second Line isn’t just an album, it’s a concept piece narrated by her mother, picking up where her father left off on 2019’s New Breed. The protagonist this time is a character called King Creole, who Richard describes as “the assassin of genres.”
Half android, half human. Half mainstream formula, half DIY mess. A reflection of Richard herself, who started in Making the Band, pop-manufactured into Danity Kane, and then promptly blew it all up to carve her own electro-feminist Afrofuturist path.
“I was born in the music industry through a machine,” she says. “The algorithm of pop. But then I went indie, I went human. This album splits right in the middle—first half is the machine, the other half is vulnerability, mistakes, humanity.”
And she’s thought about the acting parallels.
“I always start out with it being my journey,” she says. “But then I realize—I’m not alone. My story becomes others’ stories. Misfits, people ostracized for their color, gender, identity. King Creole isn't just me. It’s anyone who's been the ‘other.’”
That’s not a metaphor—it’s a manifesto. Second Line is a defiant reclamation of electronic music’s black roots. Richard doesn’t shy away from naming names and naming cities: Detroit. Jersey. New Orleans.
“Dance music comes from Black culture,” she says, bluntly. “But now? You go to these festivals—it's white, it’s male. That’s not a problem. The problem is pretending it started there.”
She’s not interested in fitting into the box labeled “experimental R&B,” either. That’s what they called her when she made electro-infused records as a solo artist. Not because that’s what it sounded like, but because she’s a Black woman making electronic music. The system didn't know what to do with that.
“I didn’t care what I looked like,” she says. “But society cared. They wouldn’t let me out of that genre box.”
So instead of waiting for permission, she built a world.
A Blade Runner-New Orleans fusion, where the streetcars fly and the Mardi Gras Indians wear chrome feathers. A score that nods to Hans Zimmer and Johann Johannsson. A narrative that ends with a 9-minute epic called “Selfish,” where Richard explores the guilt of choosing herself—twice.
“The beginning feels grand,” she says, “like, ‘I’m finally gonna have a moment to myself.’ Then the ending turns dark. That’s what self-discovery is like. It’s not linear.”
And yes, there’s a part three coming. But don’t expect a drop date.
“I’m not going to give myself a time period,” she says. “I want to breathe with this process.”
In the meantime, she’s acting in Isaac (as a police agent, no less), and working as creative director for Adult Swim. Oh, and she’s quietly writing Second Line into an animated series—because apparently Grammy-worthy packaging wasn’t ambitious enough.
“I’d love to take King Creole to the screen,” she says. “New Orleans has never really been seen in animation outside Princess and the Frog. There’s so much more potential.”
It’s a lot. But so is she. And she’s not asking for anyone’s approval.
“I’m not searching for vindication,” she says. “I’m not asking the classical world to respect me. That record”—she means Moonlight Sonata—“moves me. And I put a cry over it. That’s real. That’s chaotic. That’s mine.”
Moonlight Sonata was the first emo song. Dawn Richard just made it cry harder.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below!
