GENA

GENA aka Liv.e and Karriem Riggins, announce their debut album The Pleasure Is Yours, forthcoming February 27th via Lex Records.

Dynamic Dallas-born, LA-based artist Liv.e and renowned drummer Karriem Riggins join forces as the spirited new collaborative duo GENA. Short for “God Energy, Naturally Amazing” and loosely inspired by Gina from Martin, the GENA collaborative project channels the instinctive musical prowess of both musicians while colliding their jazz-inspired styles. The result is a playful, soul-laden improvisational body of work. The Pleasure Is Yours captures Liv.e’s raw vision to reconstruct R&B her way and Karriem’s masterful percussive universe that spans jazz improvisation and beat-making alchemy. The two first met through a mutual musical acquaintance and quickly recognized each other as kindred musical spirits, playing shows together under the mysterious GENA moniker beginning earlier this year.

The Pleasure Is Yours is a byproduct of kinetic collaboration, with the album serving as the document of a conversation between two kindred musical spirits finding each other in real time. Together as GENA, the duo crafted an imaginative, amorphous body of work that overflows with silky melodies and a warm nostalgia for soul, hip-hop and R&B, while leaving space for futuristic ideas and the alchemy of those genres being experimented with and innovated upon. The album is simultaneously analog and ethereal, mirroring how it was made over a series of virtual sessions with contributions from guest musicians like Isaiah Sharkey, James Francies and Telemakus.