Crate Digging is a recurring feature that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, Tori Kelly talks through some of her biggest vocal inspirations.
Tori Kelly is celebrating the release of her new album, tori, in one of the most appropriate ways imaginable — by chatting through 10 of the albums from iconic female vocalists that shaped her own musical identity. Kelly’s voice is the sort that stops you in your tracks if you’ve never heard it before, and it’s entirely unsurprising to hear some of the artists whose runs she practiced as a young, aspiring vocalist, from Mariah Carey to Beyoncé and beyond.
There’s also a current of R&B through many of the albums she chose, and that influence can be heard throughout her discography, and especially on the new single from tori, “thing u do.”
This project, developed in the wake of a departure from her longtime home at Capitol, offered Kelly more creative freedom than before. “I didn’t have a label or anything, and I just made all of this music with John Bellion, and what was cool was it allowed us to be really free of opinions,” she shares. “It was really cool to be able to go into the studio, create this body of work that was complete, and then take it around to different labels and say, ‘Hey, this is, this is me. Take it or leave it.’”
Take a listen to “thing u do” and read on for all 10 of Tori Kelly’s must-listen albums.