After nearly a decade of performing as part of AlunaGeorge, frontwoman Aluna Francis is ready to take the spotlight for herself. Now known simply as Aluna, she’s prepping a proper debut solo album through Diplo’s Mad Decent record label. As a preview, she’s unveiled her first-ever solo single “Body Pump”.
In a statement about this new chapter in her career, Aluna said she finally felt motivated to “claim dance music” as her own. “Having enjoyed being the main ingredient to many successful dance records, I started wanting to create the whole dish,” she explained. “In the past when performing on the stages of my white male peers, I always felt like a visitor being one of the few Black women I could see, so it never fully occurred to me to claim dance music as my music, as an artist, even though it was at the heart of my connection to music.”
In her process of embracing the genre, she also dove into its important origins, adding,
“Then I looked at the history of dance music and saw how, for example, Chicago House, known as the invention of house music, was pioneered in the Black and Latino LGTBQ+ communities which gave me inspiration to stake my flag in the ground as a Black woman in dance music by taking control of production and songwriting with my own vibe.”
Aluna’s research is apparent on “Body Pump”, a bonafide bop that takes its clubbing style cue from house music. Listen in below.
Her new solo album has neither a title nor an official release date. Whenever it does drop, it will mark Aluna’s first release since AlunaGeorge’s Champagne Eyes EP from 2018, which featured Bryson Tiller and Cautious Clay.
