Who's Got a Problem with GENA?: Liv.e and Karriem Riggins for The Culture Crypt Issue V
GENA is what happens when raw talent, authenticity and Black music flow seamlessly as one. As a duo, Karriem Riggins and Liv.e have just delivered their debut LP—a 16-track masterpiece forged from the shards of both artists' inner worlds. To mark their creative union, our cover stars join us to talk creativity, instinct, freedom and finding each other at just the right time. The pleasure is ours.
The Culture Crypt Issue V: GENA. Photo by Shenell Kennedy.
When we meet over Zoom, three weeks have passed since GENA's exquisite cover shoot for The Culture Crypt. Karriem Riggins is at his house in Georgia, in what looks like a sitting room, calmly waiting for his current creative companion Liv.e (pronounced "Liv") to get on the call. When her face pops onto the screen, Liv.e is seated in front of an earthy green wall, afroless and blonde.
It's just days before the release of their stunning debut album, The Pleasure Is Yours, but the duo don't look tired from the press run yet. Christening themselves GENA, the pair's contemporary and experimental take on African-American music has garnered a table-shaking reception. This is the meeting of two insurgents who have made creating sound so easy.
From the little they reveal during our conversation, it's evident that Karriem Riggins and Liv.e are deeply in tune with one another. Riggins primarily answers questions first with some interjections from Liv.e before she responds fully. One fills the gaps the other has left. They've found their flow in more ways than one.
When asked more about their collaborative process, specifically about any compromises, it's a defiant no. "Everything just flowed naturally. I think working on this [album] with Liv.e has been a blessing because we see eye to eye," Riggins shares. Liv.e reinforces that feeling—"A couple of songs into the project, I was like, 'Oh, I could keep doing this.'"
Photographer: Shenell Kennedy / Creative Director + Producer: Niall Smith / Gaffer: Jeason Hanson / Set Designer: Mobolaji Babalola / Set Assistant: Patrycja Kokocha / Stylist: Khurram Salim Rana / Styling Assistant: Temi Oyewusi At 151 Avenue C in the East Village, you'll find a discreet-looking club. Its black storefront shows signs of wear, likely due to weather and patrons stepping out for a smoke break, bringing along dirty hands, vomit and the occasional piss. Inside, you'll find the immersive sounds of the city's well-known jazz and music venue, Nublu. It's where, in April of last year, the world was introduced to GENA. "Doing Nublu [took] kind of no preparation really. We have our songs. We know our music… Nublu is one of those stages where you jump out there and you just work on what you work on," Riggins recollects.
GENA—standing for "God Energy, Naturally Amazing"—is the ambiguous but ethereal meaning that the two have given their moniker. Another source of inspiration for the group name was the African-American television sitcom, Martin. "Initially it was just like 'Yeah, I feel like this makes me want to say Gina like Martin,'" Liv.e shares. The zeal in the show, Martin yells Gina's name over and over again, anecdotal for the duo's musical partnership.
"Black music" is also thrown out when both are asked to describe the genre of The Pleasure Is Yours, which blends hip-hop, R&B, jazz and soul—a gumbo soup-like creation that is indeed blackity Black.
“Everything just flowed naturally. I think working on this [album] with Liv.e has been a blessing because we see eye to eye.”
So who's got a problem with GENA? No one, you'd think, especially after listening to the body of work they've created. But according to Riggins, in the making of the album, it didn't always feel that way. He tells us, "We were going through some hiccups, trying to get the record out, figuring out when we wanted to put it out… And I was just like, 'Who got a problem with us?' You know what I'm saying?" This turbulence and the pair's response to it, scores the album's opening track. Riggins' drums vie for attention against Liv.e's vocal dexterity.
During the conception of "Who's Got a Problem with GENA", Riggins toyed with whether to sing on songs, played around with motifs, and then worked out the instrumental for the opener. He sent it to Liv.e next, and she returned with her verse. This flow is how The Pleasure Is Yours was created, in its entirety. "I was also like, what's this sample? And then I found out that there were none," Liv.e muses.
VIDEO DIRECTOR + Cinematographer Philip Patton / Interviewers: Owen Edogiawerie + Natalie Onofua / VFX: Beskiid / sound engineer: sammy esseghirExcept for the songs "TGD", "Readymade" and "Dream a Twinkle", the album's instrumentals come from live instruments. Riggins played the bass, piano, Rhodes and Wurlitzer—looping in guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, pianists James Francies and Teleamkus, as well as Trunino Lowe on the trumpet. Equally, Riggins sang some background vocals that you can hear littered throughout the 16-track album.
Karriem has some special reflections when it comes to the recording of "This Is So Crazy" though. "I actually made a large portion of that track in Studio 3 of Sunset Sound, which was the room Prince made all his music in… I had the LinDrum and a lot of keyboards in there, and I just recorded a bunch of sounds. I've had that folder for a couple years and finally just opened it up and just started toying around with it. And that was the inspiration behind that."
Speaking on his references—since nothing can be created in total isolation—Riggins relied on more textures and frequency for the tape effect. "I like tape, so I did a lot of saturation—I'd record it, and then record the 2-inch, and then from 2-inch to half-inch, and then from half-inch to cassette, and then back to Pro Tools," Riggins says. If you're not a music theorist or nerd, an unspecified amount of Riggins' descriptions can go over your head, but it's the most talkative you'll find him…that and relishing about his groupmate Liv.e.
Editor: Davina Nylander / Makeup Artist + Grooming: Sam Lascelle / Retoucher + Graphic Designer: Hannah Obikudu / Executive Producer: Philip Patton / Creative Producer: Janan Jama / Hairstylist: Francesca Williams / Creative Studio: Studio Modem The son of a Detroit keyboardist, Riggins has always been around music, from Ludwig van Beethoven's classical, to jazz and James Brown funk. His father played with jazz guitarist Grant Green, so he was around for a lot of the rehearsals. Introduced to drums at age three, it instinctively became Karriem's preferred instrument.
Riggins was born right around the birth of hip-hop in the 1970s, and his taste is the culmination of African-American soundscapes. In 1995, he moved from Motown to New York City, making loops on his first drum machine, the Akai MPC3000. It's during this time period, the mid-late '90s, that he met longtime hip-hop collaborators J Dilla and Common.
Riggins played the drums on "2U4U" on Fantastic, Vol. 2, the second album from J Dilla's hip-hop group Slum Village. Along with producing for Common—specifically the entirety of Common's 2016 album Black America Again in 2018—the two joined forces with pianist Robert Glasper to form the musical group, August Greene. After some push from friend and colleague producer Madlib, Riggins released his first instrumental album, Alone Together, in 2012.
“I don’t think I have a process. I just feel how the song feels.”
Liv.e's got musical heritage too: her father is a Dallas keyboardist. As the daughter of religious Black Southerners with extended family in Los Angeles, her earliest influences were rooted in gospel—particularly The Clark Sisters—before expanding into secular territory via Southern hip-hop, most notably OutKast. That blend of spiritual intensity and genre-fluid experimentation continues to shape her sound today: a deliberate, instinctive collage of Black musical traditions, much like The Pleasure Is Yours.
Initially avoiding the musical route, Liv.e took things more seriously while attending college at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. She eventually dropped out, did some DJing and then dropped her first EP, Frank, in 2017. It was another EP, Hoopdreams, one year later, that pushed her career further.
In 2020, Neo-soul legend Erykah Badu hosted an online album listening party for Liv.e's debut album, Couldn't Wait To Tell You, and the year before, Liv.e was an opener for Earl Sweatshirt's "FIRE IT UP!" tour. The singer, rapper, and producer was on the road with him again last year for his "3L World Tour."
"I don't think I have a process. I just feel how the song feels and I'm like, all right, this is what's coming to my brain," Liv.e tells me. For The Pleasure Is Yours, she's the vocal keynote, writing everything outside of Riggins' contributions. "Liv.e and I spoke about how her vocals never really sat that out front before," Riggins adds. Lyrically, in the project, Liv.e sings a lot about love, its lows, but also its euphoric nature. This distinction can be found on tracks "Circlesz" and "Left The Club Like 'Really Nigga!?'"
Riggins met Liv.e while working on another project she was slated as a feature for. When he received her vocals after sending instrumentals, he was blown away by her voice. Extra points when he found out she also produced some of the songs she sang on. Liv.e recounts knowing of Riggins first before meeting him—she says it was hard not to know of Karriem Riggins in their scene. A year and a half ago, the duo started exploring the concept of GENA and it's been a rather smooth journey since then.
Despite being so in tune, the pair actually recorded most of The Pleasure Is Yours apart. Liv.e explains, "We were separate like the whole process. So I recorded pretty much every song in my bedroom." Tasks were not exactly divvied up, but handled through a natural stream of movement; this is how they flow.
Take the tracklist for the album—that was all Liv.e. "She did the sequence. Man, she's really, really dope at sequencing. The order of the songs, that tells the story. I think she picked the right songs to tell our story," Riggins says proudly. For the cover art, illustrated by Patricia Dora, both artists poured equally. "I feel like we're pretty balanced in the way that we show up in this project," Liv.e says.
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And when reflecting on the dreams they have for their debut project, the pair are surprisingly indifferent. A blase tonality, a self-assured confidence. Thinking earnestly and pausing to collect her thoughts, Liv.e muses, "I never go into a project with goals because I feel like it creates a netting over what could happen."
For GENA, The Pleasure Is Yours is a record that can be lauded now or 10 years from now; it doesn't matter. The bigger picture, and arguably the group's primary intention, is how the tape will redirect sounds and peers in the overlapping music space of hip-hop, R&B and jazz. Both artists even pondered how their tracks might be sampled by generations to come.
On the future of the group and potential collaborators, Riggins says, "At the moment, I feel like we are defining our sound, and it's very important for us and for people to learn about what we do as a whole." It's fair to say that this feat was accomplished. The Pleasure Is Yours exceeded expectations in just one go.
Stream The Pleasure Is Yours below: