Taja Cheek, known professionally as L'Rain, is an American experimentalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator known primarily as the lead vocalist and songwriter of her eponymous band.^[1][2] L'Rain has been recognized for experimental music that draws on a vast number of traditions and genres^[3][4] in a practice and aesthetic Cheek calls "approaching songness".^[1]

Her self-titled debut, L'Rain, was included in best-of-year lists by publications including Pitchfork^[4] and Bandcamp Daily;^[5] her second album, Fatigue (2021), was named the best album of the year by The Wire.^[6] She has collaborated with artists including Vagabon, Helado Negro,^[1] and Naama Tsabar,^[7] and performed with Kevin Beasley at the Whitney Museum of American Art.^[8]

Cheek was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn,^[9] where she lived with her mother, father, and grandparents.^[1] Her father, Wyatt Cheek, worked in music marketing and promotion for entities including Select Records and Kiss FM;^[1] her grandmother ran a liquor store;^[2] and in the 1950s her grandfather owned a neighborhood jazz club.^[10] Cheek's mother, Lorraine C. Porter, taught physical education, health, math, and science in Brooklyn schools.^[11] The stage name L'Rain is an homage to Porter, who died before the release of the self-titled debut.^[12]

Cheek studied ballet and modern dance at The Ailey School^[10] and learned piano, cello, and Baroque recorder before picking up bass in high school,^[1] then forming and joining groups that included an Iron Maiden cover band.^[10] She attended Yale to study music but dropped the major, citing factors including a lack of diversity among the program's course offerings.^[13] She transferred to the American Studies program, where her major included a concentration in visual, audio, literary, and performance cultures;^[14] in 2011, she completed her Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction.^[15] While at Yale she worked as music director of radio station WYBC and booked shows.^[1]

After graduation, Cheek returned to New York, where she resumed playing in Brooklyn bands including Throw Vision,^[16] who released their debut in 2013 and an EP in 2015.^[17]

In 2017, Cheek released the self-titled L'Rain on New York City-based^[18] label Astro Nautico.^[12] She composed and performs vocals, keyboards, synthesizers, guitar, bass, samples, and percussion on the album.^[19] L'Rain also features Alex Goldberg, Jeremy Powell, Kyp Malone (of TV on the Radio), and Andrew Lappin, who co-produced the album with Cheek.^[20] Pitchfork included L'Rain among their 20 Best Experimental Albums of 2017,^[4] and Bandcamp Daily listed the release as #10 in their Best Albums of 2017.^[5]

In 2018, L'Rain (represented by Cheek and Ben Chapoteau-Katz) collaborated with producer Morgan Wiley and vocalist Patrick Gordon to remake the 1980s Chicago house track "Your Love" for a benefit compilation which paired electronic artists with formerly-incarcerated singers.^[21] The release, Bring Down The Walls, raised money for Critical Resistance, an organization dedicated to ending the prison–industrial complex.^[22]

L'Rain's second album, Fatigue, was released on Mexican Summer in 2021.^[23] Fatigue was named album of the year by The Wire,^[24] included among the year's best by Pitchfork,^[25][26] and met with wide acclaim from outlets including NPR.^[9] Cheek provides vocals and plays guitar, bass, synth, keyboards, piano, percussion, tape effects, and airhorn on the album, which features an expanded roster of twenty performers;^[10] these include executive producer Andrew Lappin, on guitar and programming, and co-producer Ben Chapoteau-Katz, who contributes synths, saxophone, vocals, percussion, and airhorn.^[27]

In August 2023, L'Rain announced a third album, I Killed Your Dog, released in October 2023;^[28] the album was co-produced by Cheek with Lappin and Chapoteau-Katz, who perform alongside L'Rain bandmates Zachary Levine-Caleb, Justin Felton, and Timothy Angulo.^[29]

L'Rain has toured with bands including Black Midi (2021),^[30] Animal Collective (2022),^[31] Sharon Van Etten (2022),^[32] Big Thief (2023),^[33] and LCD Soundsystem (2023).

L'Rain often layers and loops her vocals, and her work frequently features samples from her collection of hundreds of field recordings, some pitch-shifted or otherwise manipulated beyond recognition.^[1] She has spoken in interviews about her work's tendency to evade^[1] or reject^[2] categorization, saying that she is "more interested in a Barthes, Death of the Author, approach to genre",^[55] values illegibility,^[2] and seeks to complicate assumptions about the relationship between identity and aesthetics: "I’m hyper-aware of how marketing and packaging happens for Black people and women and Black women [...] I like feeling a sense of agency in how those stories are told".^[10]

AllMusic described L'Rain as making "dreamy, genre-blurring music [...], reflecting on grief, change, joy, and resistance through a collage-like mixture of soul, psychedelia, gospel, musique concrète, and numerous other genres."^[56] Pitchfork described her 2021 album Fatigue as "painterly and methodical, daubing vocal loops over clattering percussion, sweeping strings, and resonant synths to create a shapeshifting strain of experimental pop."^[26] Reviewers have variously identified her style and influences as including free jazz, ambient, noise music, and disco;^[12] dance;^[26] "psychedelic orchestral pop" and "distorted shoegaze";^[3] krautrock, outsider music, and hip hop;^[20] R&B and avant-garde rock;^[2] gospel, funk, and post-punk;^[23] and soul, drone, avant-pop, and musique concrète.^[10]

While Cheek is the sole fixed figure in L'Rain recordings and performances, she says the project follows a "more nuanced and collective [model]" than that of the "lone genius or creator": "I'm trying to find a way to nurture my own voice and singular vision, especially as a Black woman musician, while also acknowledging that I work collaboratively with a team that is essential to the project."^[57] Andrew Lappin and Ben Chapoteau-Katz are credited as Cheek's closest collaborators and co-producers of L'Rain's second and third albums; as of 2023, the band's members are Cheek, Lappin, and Chapoteau-Katz with Zachary Levine-Caleb, Justin Felton, and Timothy Angulo.^[29]