On the latest chapter of her forthcoming debut album, the Bronx-born, Atlanta-based artist turns grief into boundaries, atmospheric R&B into emotional architecture, and self-preservation into a radical form of forward motion.
Grief has a way of making self-erasure look like devotion.
You lose someone—or fear losing them—and suddenly the instinct is to hold tighter.
Explain more.
Forgive faster.
Fix what may never have been yours to repair.
For Reiyo The Giant, that impulse eventually became exhausting.
“I would be hurt by a lover and immediately jump to problem resolution, as if I was the problem to resolve.”
Her new single, “Can’t Call Me,” begins at the moment that pattern finally breaks.
Produced by Anwar Sawyer, the track marks a pivotal transition within Reiyo’s forthcoming debut album, due in November 2026 via Safari Riot. Where earlier chapters of the record move through rupture, escapism, performance, anxiety, and the pressure to remain recognizable even while changing, “Can’t Call Me” introduces something deceptively simple:
A boundary.
“I began to realize that of all the things I could lose to grief, I didn’t want to lose myself too,” Reiyo explains.
That realization is not framed as triumph.
The confidence inside “Can’t Call Me” is tentative.
Practiced.
Chosen.
“It’s a try at confidence,” she says. “A choice to be confident considering the circumstances.”
That distinction makes the song more compelling.
There is no fantasy of suddenly becoming untouchable.
No immaculate transformation.
No suggestion that learning to choose yourself means you stop being afraid of abandonment.
Instead, the song captures what confidence often looks like in real life:
Saying the sentence even while part of you is still afraid to say it.
When Self-Sacrifice Stops Feeling Romantic
The emotional shift behind “Can’t Call Me” began before Reiyo wrote it.
She had to live the boundary before she could sing about it.
“I always have to live a little before I can really sit with the feelings,” she says.
For Reiyo, songwriting does not usually arrive as premonition.
Experience comes first.
Then examination.
“I needed to realize that the world actually won’t collapse when I set a boundary and allow myself to leave people and situations that may be harming me emotionally.”
That realization confronted a longstanding people-pleasing instinct.
Reiyo describes exhausting herself through what she calls a kind of “post-cautionary measure”—anticipating another person’s withdrawal and responding by working harder to preserve the relationship.
The dynamic becomes painfully familiar:
Someone hurts you.
You begin fixing yourself.
Someone withdraws.
You become more accommodating.
Someone gives less.
You offer more.
“I was tired of wearing myself thin.”
“Can’t Call Me” therefore operates almost like a mantra.
Not anger for anger’s sake.
Not revenge.
An assertion that honesty about another person may finally require honesty about yourself.
Confidence You Can Feel in the Chest
The emotional shift is mirrored in the production.
Sawyer’s instrumental gave Reiyo space.
Literally.
“When Anwar sent over the instrumental, his usage of space was what I recognized first.”
The chords felt ambient and heavy.
Other elements were sharper.
Brighter.
Punchier.
Thoracic, in Reiyo’s word.
“It was meant to be felt in the chest.”
She responded not only melodically but phonetically.
The hard consonants inside “Can’t Call Me” could occupy the sharper edges of the production.
The rounder vocal shape of “No More” could fill the opening silence differently.
This attention to language as sound is central to how Reiyo thinks about vocals.
Words carry meaning.
But mouths also make shapes.
Consonants cut.
Vowels soften.
A voice can function emotionally before a lyric is consciously understood.
Still, technical fit was not enough.
“If it was meant to be felt in the chest, it would also be a matter of the heart.”
The performance needed sincerity.
The production moves forward.
The lyric ends something.
But underneath both is vulnerability.
“The sense of confidence in this song is extremely vulnerable.”
That is perhaps the song’s central paradox.
Its strength comes from admitting how difficult strength feels.
Practicing What You Will Say at the Door
Reiyo hears “Can’t Call Me” almost cinematically.
Its repetition resembles rehearsal.
You know you need to leave someone.
You know what you should say.
So you practice.
Again.
And again.
And again.
“Can’t call me no more…”
Until the door opens.
Suddenly the imagined confrontation becomes real.
“You spot them.”
And the person you practiced becoming has to show up.
Reiyo describes the song’s structure as mirroring “growth through practice and actively choosing who you want to be and what you will and won’t tolerate as this new version of yourself.”
That understanding makes repetition feel less musical than psychological.
Boundaries rarely become instinctive immediately.
Sometimes you rehearse them before you believe them.
Sometimes the words arrive before the confidence.
Sometimes saying something repeatedly is how an identity becomes possible.
Grief Has More Than One Face
The larger album treats grief expansively.
Not simply as sadness.
The singles leading toward “Can’t Call Me” suggest grief mutating into different behaviors and emotional states.
“Nu World” captures rupture.
“How To Get Nowhere Fast” moves toward escape.
“The Show Must Go On” examines the expectation to continue functioning while suffering.
“Get It Together” confronts the pressure to remain recognizable to other people despite internal transformation.
Then comes “Can’t Call Me.”
A brief moment of perspective.
Reiyo imagines the album as a downward spiral.
“Nu World” is the catalytic event.
“An implosion of some sort.”
The songs afterward keep trying to preserve momentum until burnout finally wins.
Then:
“Can’t Call Me is a brief moment of post-burnout clarity.”
Woah.
Actually.
Let me take a step back.
That sequence turns grief into narrative motion.
It is not one emotion sustained across an album.
It is an event generating consequences.
Those consequences change shape.
They become behavior.
Fear.
Avoidance.
Exhaustion.
Memory.
Transformation.
Eventually, perhaps, choice.
The Versions of You Other People Keep
Transformation creates its own complications.
You may change internally long before the people around you update their understanding of you.
Reiyo knows that tension intimately.
“I am someone who is constantly changing.”
She describes earlier versions of herself as being shaped profoundly by fear.
“I was scared and I moved through the world like someone who was scared.”
That version was real.
She also no longer fully identifies with her.
“As I’ve reclaimed a nice bit of my courage, I can really notice when people are still viewing me as overly cautious or overly fearful.”
The experience can be jarring.
Especially when it comes from people close enough to believe they know you.
Suddenly, growth requires evidence.
You feel compelled to demonstrate that you are braver now.
That you will take the risk.
That the frightened version they remember is no longer the only version available.
Yet Reiyo does not disown that earlier self.
“I know she needed to exist.”
That generosity toward past selves becomes crucial to the album’s larger philosophy.
Forward motion does not require contempt for who you used to be.
The Ten-Foot Lesbian Genie From the Bronx
That emotional vulnerability exists beside Reiyo’s deliberately expansive mythology.
She describes herself as a “ten-foot lesbian genie from the Bronx.”
It is funny.
Memorable.
Fantastical.
And unusually accurate to how she thinks about her art.
“Fantasy allows me to fully express the vividness of my inner world.”
Rather than using fantasy to escape autobiography, Reiyo uses it to make autobiography more precise.
She naturally poeticizes emotion.
Fantasy creates an environment where that poetic scale becomes literal.
“I love being able to create a world where it makes complete sense and only adds to people’s ability to imagine along with me.”
That tension between larger-than-life persona and exposed songwriting is not a contradiction.
The fantasy gives the vulnerability somewhere big enough to live.
Some internal experiences feel absurd when stated plainly.
Metaphor can make them more accurate.
A giant can still grieve.
A genie can still fear abandonment.
A world can be surreal while the emotion inside it remains painfully recognizable.
Writing From a Particular Point of View
Reiyo’s influences reinforce that commitment to perspective.
Her references extend from music into literature, film, and television.
Zora Neale Hurston. Richard Bruce Nugent. Guillermo del Toro. Michaela Coel. Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
What connects them, for Reiyo, is not necessarily style.
It is attention.
“Their willingness to express human behavior and emotion in a way that’s authentic to them.”
She is drawn to artists whose work feels inseparable from the person observing the world.
“You can tell they write how they think.”
Their stories carry evidence of both external observation and internal scrutiny.
That idea has become a model for her songwriting.
“A willingness to honor my own unique perspective, shaped by my own unique experiences.”
This becomes especially important in songs dealing with themes as common as heartbreak and grief.
Originality does not necessarily come from discovering an emotion nobody has experienced.
It can come from noticing what only you would notice about it.
Building the Reiyo The Giant Sound
Reiyo began with a more self-contained approach.
Her 2021 EP Romeo was self-produced.
Since then, collaborations with other producers have expanded her understanding of how atmosphere can be built.
Her instinct has always gravitated toward trance-like loops, synth pads, and rhythmic foundations.
But collaboration taught her that immersion does not require obvious density.
“You can create that dreamy feeling with a lot more subtle, moving pieces floating in the background.”
Complexity can exist almost invisibly.
“There can be a lot going on on a technical level without it feeling too busy.”
She also became increasingly conscious of tension.
And release.
The moment when a song needs to expand.
Explode.
Still, certain elements now feel unmistakably Reiyo.
An atmospheric underbelly.
Dreamlike synths or chords.
Drums that propel the listener forward.
She describes those drums visually as an usher guiding listeners through the world.
Her lead vocal becomes “a moving body of light,” simultaneously guiding and revealing.
Then there are the background vocals.
The oohs.
The ahhs.
Call-and-response.
Reiyo treats her voice almost orchestrally.
“Like some kind of string or woodwind instrument.”
That makes the vocal more than narrator.
It becomes part of the physical environment.
You Don’t Have to Become Who You Were
The deepest idea running through Reiyo’s forthcoming debut may be that healing does not require restoration.
There is often an assumption buried inside the language of recovery:
Get back to yourself.
Become yourself again.
Return to normal.
But grief changes people.
The more honest question may be whether “back” is even available.
Reiyo offers a different interpretation.
“Returning to yourself after a moment of grief is forward motion.”
Looking backward does not necessarily mean moving backward.
It can be analysis.
Recognition.
Respect.
“You have to face yourself first.”
That does not mean you are trapped.
And taking longer than expected does not mean you have failed.
“Just because you feel like you’re not getting over it quickly enough doesn’t mean you’re still there.”
Then Reiyo offers an image that contains the album’s entire emotional philosophy.
Imagine visiting your childhood home while traveling toward a new one.
You recognize the place.
You notice the damage.
Leaks.
Holes.
Worn floors.
But you are not there to renovate it.
You understand what time has done.
“You know you’re not there to stay.”
This time, you are a visitor.
“You’re allowed to be nostalgic and to miss this home you once knew so well while preparing for something new.”
Healing, then, becomes less a battle between past and future than a change in orientation.
You can look backward while still moving.
You can walk through an old room without moving back into it.
Eventually, the landscape becomes unfamiliar.
That is when Reiyo says you know what to do.
Turn around.
Face the novelty.
In Conversation With Reiyo The Giant
MUNDANE: “Can’t Call Me” is described as a pivotal shift within the album—the point where grief begins giving way to self-preservation and confidence. What changed emotionally for you when you reached this song, and how did you make that transformation audible?
REIYO THE GIANT: I began to realize that of all the things I could lose to grief, I didn’t want to lose myself too.
I think it’s easy to lose yourself in people, even if they’re not good for you. I’d even say especially if they’re not good for you.
Out of fear of loss or abandonment, some of us actually cling tighter, and I realized that’s exactly what I was making a habit of.
I would be hurt by a lover and immediately jump to problem resolution, as if I was the problem to resolve.
I was tired of wearing myself thin as some kind of post-cautionary measure. I hated that.
So “Can’t Call Me” became a mantra, in a sense—an affirmation that I could be honest about myself and about the people I was allowing into my life.
MUNDANE: You’ve said, “I could’ve let the grief rip my heart out of my chest, but I chose to keep it.” There’s something powerful about framing survival as an active choice. Did writing “Can’t Call Me” help you recognize that choice, or did you have to make it before you could write the song?
REIYO THE GIANT: I had to make the choice first.
I always have to live a little before I can really sit with the feelings. I need to go through the experience first.
I needed to see that there’s so much more to me and my world than letting my people-pleasing tendencies leak into everything.
I needed to realize that the world actually won’t collapse when I set a boundary and allow myself to leave people and situations that may be harming me emotionally.
MUNDANE: Sonically, the track moves between alternative R&B, soul, and atmospheric electronica. Working with Anwar Sawyer, how did you use space, texture, rhythm, and your vocal performance to communicate this newfound confidence without losing the vulnerability underneath it?
REIYO THE GIANT: When Anwar sent over the instrumental, his usage of space was what I recognized first.
The chords were ambient and heavy. Everything else was either sharp and bright or punchy and thoracic.
It was meant to be felt in the chest.
I knew that whatever I had to say would also fit within those parameters.
I knew the use of the letter “C” in “Can’t Call Me” would fit around the sharp edges he left for me, and that the roundness in the way I say “No More” would pad the silent space in the beginning of the song.
Next, I needed to make sure that if it was meant to be felt in the chest, it would also be a matter of the heart.
There needed to be sincerity, and people would have to be able to feel that honesty as it slips its way into a track that has so much forward movement.
I think at its core, the sense of confidence in this song is extremely vulnerable.
It’s a try at confidence.
A choice to be confident considering the circumstances.
The use of space, texture, and rhythm in this song is directly connected to what I believe the song wanted from me.
It wanted self-honesty, bravery, and the chance to initiate an ending for once.
MUNDANE: The album seems to approach grief less as one identifiable emotion and more as something that mutates into fear, people-pleasing, escapism, memory, and changing relationships. Did thinking about grief this expansively change the way you structured the record?
REIYO THE GIANT: I’d say it did.
It has definitely shaped the way I write, period.
But for this track, I thought a lot about the people I’ve loved or even just admired in the past who forgot to reciprocate.
I think the structure of this song feels like practicing what you need to say at the door—the repeated “Can’t call me no more…” followed by the exact moment they open it and you spot them.
It’s structured after the process of growth through practice and actively choosing who you want to be and what you will and won’t tolerate as this new version of yourself.
MUNDANE: “Nu World,” “How To Get Nowhere Fast,” “The Show Must Go On,” “Get It Together,” and now “Can’t Call Me” suggest an emotional progression across the album. How intentional is that sequencing, and did you think of the record almost cinematically, with each song functioning as a different scene or chapter?
REIYO THE GIANT: Yes!
From beginning to end, there is a downward spiraling motion to the album.
I imagine that “Nu World” marks a large catalytic event.
An implosion of some sort.
Everything after that is trying to keep up momentum until eventually the burnout catches up to you.
“Can’t Call Me” is a brief moment of post-burnout clarity.
It’s like, Woah. Actually. Let me take a step back.
MUNDANE: “The Show Must Go On” deals with continuing to perform while suffering, while “Get It Together” addresses the pressure to remain recognizable to people even as you’re changing internally. As an artist, have you ever felt that audiences—or even people close to you—become attached to a version of you that you’ve already outgrown?
REIYO THE GIANT: I have.
I am someone who is constantly changing.
Not always on purpose; however, I do sit and meet with myself at the end of every night.
Within these changes, I’ve had moments in the past where my personality and who I believed myself to be were shaped entirely by the things I feared.
I was scared and I moved through the world like someone who was scared.
As I’ve reclaimed a nice bit of my courage, I can really notice when people are still viewing me as overly cautious or overly fearful.
I don’t fully resonate with that side of myself, but I know she needed to exist.
It is jarring when I’m met there by people close to me and almost feel like I have to prove my bravery or willingness to face my fears.
MUNDANE: You describe yourself as a “ten-foot lesbian genie from the Bronx,” which immediately creates this larger-than-life character, while the songwriting itself can be incredibly vulnerable. What does fantasy allow you to express about yourself that straightforward autobiography sometimes can’t?
REIYO THE GIANT: Fantasy allows me to fully express the vividness of my inner world.
I tend to poeticize my feelings often, and I love being able to create a world where it makes complete sense and only adds to people’s ability to imagine along with me.
MUNDANE: Your influences stretch beyond music to writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Bruce Nugent, filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, and storytellers like Michaela Coel and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. How do those narrative influences actually enter your songwriting? Are you thinking in terms of characters, scenes, dialogue, imagery, or emotional arcs when you write?
REIYO THE GIANT: I’d say it’s more so their willingness to express human behavior and emotion in a way that’s authentic to them.
You can tell they write how they think, and that their works are a reflection of the deep attention to the world around them, as well as their inner worlds.
There’s such an intentional use of personal perspective, and that’s something that I try to bring into my songwriting: a willingness to honor my own unique perspective, shaped by my own unique experiences.
MUNDANE: You began with the self-produced Romeo and have since worked with producers whose approaches have expanded your sonic palette. What have those collaborations taught you about your own instincts as a producer, and what elements now have to be present for something to feel unmistakably like a Reiyo The Giant record?
REIYO THE GIANT: For me, I think it all comes down to the use of space to create an all-encompassing world.
It was normal for me to start with some type of trance-like loop, some synth pads, and a drum or kick loop.
Working with other producers taught me that you can create that dreamy feeling with a lot more subtle, moving pieces floating in the background.
There can be a lot going on on a technical level without it feeling too busy or like people can’t get through it because they keep running into the moving parts.
Working with other producers also helped me understand how important it is to create tension and a moment of explosiveness.
I think no Reiyo The Giant record is complete without an atmospheric underbelly, whether that’s dreamy synths or chords, and drums that push you through the song.
Visually, I imagine the drums as this kind of usher through the world I’m inviting you into, with my vocals as a moving body of light guiding you both and revealing the truth of the world created.
It also wouldn’t be an RTG song without melodic oohs and ahhs, vocalizations in the background, or an almost call-and-response use of background vocals.
On top of the main vocal, I like to treat my voice as if it were some kind of string or woodwind instrument.
MUNDANE: Your debut album ultimately seems concerned not only with surviving grief, but with accepting that you may not return to the person you were before it happened. By the time listeners reach the end of the record in November, what do you hope they understand about the difference between finding your way “back” and finding your way forward?
REIYO THE GIANT: Returning to yourself after a moment of grief is forward motion.
It is a proactive movement, and more often than not, it requires an honest analysis of the things that have impacted you.
Just because you have to face yourself first doesn’t mean you’re stuck in the past.
Just because you feel like you’re not getting over it quickly enough doesn’t mean you’re still there.
If you were to visit your childhood home on the way to a brand new one, you would respect it as a part of your past.
You wouldn’t judge the leaks and the tatteredness because you understand that time and loss can do damage.
You wouldn’t sit in your old bedroom and paint over the holes in the wall.
You wouldn’t stay and fix the tiles on the floor.
You know you’re not there to stay.
You know you’re just a visitor this time.
You’re allowed to be nostalgic and to miss this home you once knew so well while preparing for something new.
It’s human nature to reminisce and reflect, and I’d argue that it’s less of a battle between finding your way back and finding your way forward.
It’s realizing that you can walk backwards through the past on your way to the future.
Eventually, it will all start looking new, and that’s when you know it’s time to turn around and face the novelty of it all.
Walking Backward Toward the Future
The metaphor of the childhood home offers a useful way into Reiyo The Giant’s music.
Grief turns memory into architecture.
Rooms remain.
Damage remains.
Certain things look exactly as they did.
Others have deteriorated without you noticing.
Healing can create the impulse to repair everything.
To restore the place.
To make it livable again.
But Reiyo proposes something gentler.
You can visit without moving back in.
You can acknowledge the damage without making its repair your responsibility.
You can miss who you were without deciding you need to become that person again.
That idea gives “Can’t Call Me” considerably more weight than a straightforward breakup anthem.
The boundary is not simply directed outward.
It is a boundary between Reiyo and a version of herself that believed love required continuous self-negotiation.
The repeated phrase becomes practice.
Then practice becomes decision.
And eventually the decision might become instinct.
The album is still moving through grief.
“Can’t Call Me” does not signal its disappearance.
It signals a shift in who gets to make the choices inside it.
That distinction matters.
Reiyo’s description of herself as a “ten-foot lesbian genie from the Bronx” suggests someone impossibly large.
But the emotional power of these songs comes from allowing that giant to be frightened.
To grieve.
To people-please.
To question herself.
To walk backward through memories.
The fantasy does not hide the human being.
It creates enough space for the human being to become visible.
And somewhere between the heavy ambient chords, the chest-level percussion, the hard consonants of “Can’t Call Me,” and the soft space around “No More,” Reiyo The Giant reaches a deceptively profound realization:
Survival does not always require winning.
Sometimes it begins with deciding that when grief takes inventory of everything it has removed from your life, you will not let yourself be one of the things missing.
