'This is liberation': Toronto R&B singer R. Flex wants to create a queertopia

Black Light is a column by Governor General Award-winning writer Amanda Parris that spotlights, champions and challenges art and popular culture that is created by Black people and/or centres Black people.

The first time I saw the music video for R. Flex's song "Too Late," I was captivated. It had many of the familiar hallmarks of an R&B video: seductive looks into the camera, choreographed dance moves, elaborate eye makeup... but it also had something I'd never seen in the genre before: three Black mxn touching each other. Sensually. Intimately. It was at once so simple and yet so transformative. 

R. Flex is a Toronto-based singer who has dubbed themselves the future of R&B. Their music also borrows from pop, dance and house, but it is R&B — the genre that has historically made very little room for openly queer culture — where Flex has staked a claim. Alongside openly queer artists such as TRP.P, Witch Prophet, Desiire and Adria Kain, R. Flex is helping to usher a new and exciting era into Canadian R&B.

We spoke online soon after the release of their EP Flex with Benefits about their relationship with R&B, the tragic legacy of a historically conservative genre and the queertopia their music inspires. 

Amanda Parris: Tell me about your first introduction to R&B music.

R. Flex: My introduction was through gospel. So my parents would play Bebe and CeCe Winans, this cassette that they had in the car called "Addictive Love." They were trying to sing about romance and Christ all at the same time, so it was a little mix up (laughs). That was like my introduction to big voices that were really smooth and powerful. I would go to my aunt's house and [she] had reggae and contemporary R&B — so Mary J. [Blige], Brandy, SWV. One of my earliest memories is hearing Mary J. Blige's "Be Happy." And that song, even when I was four, it just sat so deep.

Growing up in a Christian home, I wasn't really allowed to have secular music. But once I hit 11, 12 and was getting into Lauryn Hill and Destiny's Child and TLC, it was just everywhere. And then I began to search because the Internet was also there. So Limewire, Napster...

Were you doing secret searches at home with your headphones on?

RF: Absolutely. That was totally me and also getting friends to make me little CD mixtapes so I could throw it in my Walkman and play it on my way to school or anywhere I was going. 

What do you think it is about R&B in particular — as opposed to, say, the reggae music you were hearing by your aunt's or anything else that was on the radio — that touched you, that struck the chord? 

RF: It was the emotional quality and the technicality, I think, that got to me. When I go back and think about the Mary J. Blige song "Be Happy," it's a simple song but the way she's singing it, it just hits a different place. Growing up in the church, I was like, "I want to be able to sing on that stage and bring a group of people together and allow them to process whatever emotions." And I just saw that parallel in R&B. It felt like a way to get in touch with harder emotions. 

The R&B of our youth was powerful, but it was also incredibly conservative. Some of our legends like Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston didn't feel like they could be their full selves. But I also know that R&B comes from the blues, where we have people like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith being these incredibly complex, powerful women who sing about desire and sexuality and push the norms of gender binaries. Can you talk about yourself in relationship to the long history of R&B and the push and pull between being your full self in the space?

RF: I think often about Luther and Whitney. With Whitney, it definitely felt like because of that inability to express oneself fully, it did lead to her demise. I think a lot about Little Richard. I consider Little Richard the true King of rock'n'roll. I know we're talking about R&B, but Little Richard also helped harness what R&B is today. When I think about the song "Tutti Frutti," initially the song was "Tutti Frutti, good booty." Not "Good, Rudy." And so knowing that there was that censorship and that pressure to be more conservative despite being electrifying and explosive and otherworldly, it's heartbreaking in so many ways.

I think of the way Little Richard went as well. It just seemed like he was a shell of his former self — went back into the church, denounced all the things he did. I think about Prince, too, where he became a Jehovah's Witness; [he] won't perform that sexuality anymore. I think about Janet [Jackson]. I really think Janet was on this sexual liberation trajectory that was so powerful, especially for Black women, especially for femmes, especially for queers. And that nipplegate moment just completely took that away.

I feel like I'm taking on those legacies. That's why I'm doing it because this is liberation. I carry that with me and I carry that into my music. That's why I make a song like "DNA" and I tell my audiences that it stands for dick and ass. That's why I'll make a song like "Babylonia" and, you know, the hook is, "This is how we frisk and stop," to remove that power from police brutality to be like, "No, when I'm with my partner, this is how we go down." I subvert that and I just want to continue doing those types of things because as an artist, that's my power. That's what I can offer.

In the description for your EP Flex with Benefits you describe wanting to create a "queertopia." Can you talk a little bit about this idea of a queertopia and how it informs your music?

RF: When I perform my music or when I create it, I really try to think about who is going to be there. And so for that moment, I'm hoping for anyone that has any type of queer desire, or is looking for a type of liberation — a space to be free — that my shows can be that place and that my songs can be that place.

When I think about the song "Too Late," in the video with Desiire and Tafari, you know, that was such a powerful queer moment to me to be like, we're touching each other. We're friendly. We're squeezing oranges (laughs). It's a place where I imagine we can explore our joys, but also the things that concern us. And also just like offering innocence. A way to be, to have these desires and not demonize them because I feel like in my personal life that's happened so often that I'm just over it.

Can you talk a little bit about how important the visual storytelling to your music is? That video of you, Desiire and Tafari,  it's so intentional. Every single scene feels like you really thought about it. And then "La La Land" is this incredible contrast between all the softness and the S&M. Can you talk a little bit about the construction of the visual part of your artistry and how important that is to everything?

RF: So those are my first two videos. For me, it was important to in some ways reference other artists who I like but also make it my own. Thinking back to the scene in "La La Land" where there's this braided maze and doing a sort of a call-back to FKA Twigs's "Pendulum" and Kelela's "Blue Light" video — it's important for me to have those strong visual statements. To have even the afro clouds. I've never seen afro clouds in a video. It was just important for me and also for my crew to be like, "This is a dreamscape for us. This is a place where we can go and it's safe and inviting."

Thinking about the "Too Late" video and the intentions behind it,  I thought about N'Sync's video "Tearing Up My Heart." I'm not saying guys don't hang out like that, but there's definitely a tension there that I want to just push a little further. Then it can offer something else to the text, another possibility.

I feel like my music and my videos and my visuals are challenging pop artists who want to be R&B to go further. You want this? Further. Like push it more, you know? I realized that if I want to see something, I need to create it myself. I have the ability to take all the references I like and put that intention behind that to reveal a new text — to hopefully liberate the video format and the visual format for somebody else that comes along and sees Flex With Benefits and is like, "Whoa, oh, this is where Flex got to? I want to take it further."

You've described yourself as the future of R&B. Can you paint the picture of that future for me? 

RF: I see the future as Black folks being playful. I see more queer faces, more trans people. I see the call-back to some acrobatics, some technique, those moments of flair. It would be great to have a boy band, girl band, they band, whatever it is, really taking what was the girl group or boy group format and really twisting it and subverting it. And I just see more of that in the future.

I really think a lot about myself in Toronto and other artists who I love. I imagine us being that future. I imagine us pushing those limits. I imagine us in all our gender representation and expression and identity and sexuality just really giving what I feel is the new Toronto. 

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.