Imani Beau is insisting on something tactile: live musicians in a room together, strings swelling naturally and background vocals breathing with harmony, texture and imperfection.
“The vibration from music,” she said in an exclusive interview with World Music Views, “I don’t want to lose that real authentic feel.”
Beau was speaking about “Home,” her live studio performance released this spring, a lush reinterpretation of a song she originally issued last year. Filmed at The Bridge Studio in Brooklyn, the performance features upright bass, violin, acoustic guitar and layered background vocals — all recorded with live musicians assembled together in one room.
“I wanted to give ‘Home’ this well-deserved moment,” she said.
The title itself carries emotional weight for the singer, songwriter, producer and creative director, who describes “home” less as a place than a feeling.
“Home for me is where your heart is,” Beau said. “Where your heart feels safe, where you feel comfortable, where your family is. All of the things that mean something is where home is to me.”
Beau’s was raised around reggae, ska, jazz, gospel and R&B, she described her upbringing as “this well-oiled, well-rounded machine of music.”
“I’ve always just been creative,” she said. “I attribute that to so many different things, like being a kid and going outside and playing with the sticks in the grass and just having the space to create and imagine.”
Even her stage name carries a story of artistic evolution. Though her given name is Imani, she explained that “Beau,” pronounced “Bo” came later.
“It was given to me by my vocal trainer some years ago, when I first started singing seriously,” she said.
Long before stepping fully into the spotlight, Beau spent years developing her craft as a background vocalist and studying the music business from behind the scenes.
“That was probably almost 10 years ago,” she said.
Her own releases began arriving during the pandemic.
“I started putting my own music out during 2020,” Beau said. “I was just testing the waters, putting a song out here, a little four-song pack out there.”
The native New Yorker is also heavily involved in shaping every creative layer around them.
“I’m a singer and a songwriter and a producer and creative director,” she said with a laugh. “Honestly, I’m running the show over here, honey.”
In the making of “Home,” she says,
“I think it’s so important to use real live instrumentation and employ real musicians during this time, especially where AI is having this emergence.”
Though she stopped short of condemning the technology entirely, she made clear that something irreplaceable happens when musicians physically share space together.
“I don’t think AI is all bad,” she said. “But I don’t want to lose that real authentic feel. I love getting people in a room together and really playing the music.”
Her upcoming EP, Deep Cut, will be a collection of singles presented as a deeper commitment to her artistic identity.
“A deep cut is on an album when everybody doesn’t necessarily think about that song when they think about that artist,” she explained. “But that song probably means so much to that artist.”
The phrase, for her, has become a metaphor for authenticity itself.
“When I go into a studio to make music, I’m not thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be the song that I love more than any other song that I’ve made,’” she said. “I think the deep cut is where the true essence of the artist is.”
Her ambition for the project is unusually direct.
“My intention is that my whole project has my essence all over it,” Beau said. “I want all of them to be deep cuts.”
