Ravyn Lenae spent 2025 running the cycle — “Love Me Not” to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, Kimmel, the TODAY Show, Coachella, Lollapalooza. Blue Island is what she built through all of it, and she has been plain about what it is: “a point of arrival, and feeling set in my ways and in who I am, and feeling free of any of those preconceived notions about Blackness or what I had to be in the past.” The record was executive-produced by DJ Dahi, the architect behind “Money Trees” and “Worst Behavior,” and its reference shelf runs from Janet Jackson and Tracy Chapman to Blondie and The Cranberries. It is not the album the breakthrough moment was asking for. That is the point.
About the Show
The Blue Island Live Tour brings Lenae to Emo’s Austin on Wednesday, October 14, with Nourished by Time opening. Blue Island is her third studio album, out August 7 via Atlantic Records, following 2024’s Bird’s Eye. She described Dahi as an ideal creative partner, citing the pair’s “similar distaste for genre tropes and boundaries,” and the record reflects it. Four singles came out ahead of the release: “Bobby” and “Reputation” (featuring Dominic Fike) in April, “Handle” in May, and “Saturday Night” in June. “Saturday Night” tracks a complicated situationship and, per press coverage, sounds like “a lost track from the early to mid-’90s,” built on drum machines and programmed synths, with production from Alissia and Ely Rise alongside Dahi. The album is described as “an immersive world shaped by poise, playfulness, and quiet confidence.” Lenae’s own summation: she set out to challenge what R&B and pop are “supposed to sound like” and, in her words, “really say ‘fuck all of that’ and do my own thing.”
Before the North American dates, Lenae ran a summer in Europe, with stops at Primavera Sound, All Points East, Lowlands, and Rock en Seine, then sold out two nights at Blue Note Jazz Club in her hometown of Chicago. Billboard described her choreography as “landing somewhere between Fosse and David Winters,” with stage presence likened to “the high-wattage Motown energy of prime Diana Ross.”
Venue & Logistics
Emo’s Austin, on East Riverside Drive, hosts the show. Doors open at 6 p.m.; the show begins at 7 p.m. The Austin date is the second of two Texas stops on the tour, with Dallas playing the night before.
Tickets
Tickets are on sale now. No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Buy tickets