Lee Lewis on New EP, HOWL, Broken Relationships, and Healing

Fresh off the release of his new EP, HOWL, Lee Lewis is stepping into a defining moment of his career.

The LA-based artist has released his second EP after his debut with “Something Burning” in 2024. HOWL continues Lewis’ artistry of blending raw emotion with a sound that feels both deeply personal yet universally relatable as he enters into the next chapter of his career.

I recently spoke with Lewis about the creative journey that shaped the EP, the stories woven into its tracks, and balancing introspective lyricism with soulful sensibility.

Eulalie Magazine: I want to start from the beginning. I listened to your EP, “Something Burning,” and your single ‘The Long Way.’ I immediately resonated with your music. I’d love to hear what your journey into music was.

Lee Lewis: I grew up in a family that loves music and appreciates music, but none of my family really played anything. They just love being an audience member or being a fan. I grew up on a lot of R&B, soul, and pop.

My mom’s favorite artists are Prince and Maxwell. My dad’s is Sade and that type. My grandparents are from the South, so Billy Eckstine and music from Southern roots. My foundation of music outside of that is classical music. I studied classical music from age 13 or 12 through college and got my degree in opera performance.

In terms of musical background, it’s this weird mix of classical music and being heavy into the classical training, and then the music of the Black community and Black culture and the neighborhood. I grew up in a Black neighborhood in LA called Ladera Heights. The music of my community and the neighborhood, combined with that classical background, which are so different in so many ways, that’s what’s gotten me to where I am today as an artist.

Eulalie Magazine: That’s awesome. A lot of artists come from different backgrounds, but I’m sure your classical music training serves you positively.

Lee Lewis: It’s helped me a lot. It’s also a whole different world. A lot of the classical space, per usual, those traditional art forms that have now become a little elitist, are not really reserved for Black people.

It was always funny, being a fan of R&B and soul, which is about the soul and the heart. And it’s for us, by us, right? To go into a space of classical music, which is not really designed for us to exist, and kind of do both.

Eventually, I just found my way to this circle of some sort of middle ground that I’ve been trying to do. In the future, I’ll do some more. I’ll lean more classical, but it’s always going to be in my voice. It’s the foundation of my singing.

Eulalie Magazine: HOWL is described as a way of talking about your identity and purpose. Was there a turning point when you were crafting this project, having to feel those themes were very urgent to tell the story?

Lee Lewis: It’s about a relationship that I was in. I had to write about it as I was in and out of this situation with this man, over and over again, for two years. It was kind of my therapy as I was going through it. Songs such as “White Flag,” I wrote that just before he and I stopped talking for the second time. I wrote it with Romeo, AKA Youth XL, and he produced it. We were in the studio and he said, “Let’s just write about this dude. I know you want to write about it. How do you want to approach this?” I’ve been thinking about ‘white flag’ over and over again. I’m done. I surrender. I’ve had enough.

I went to see the guy, and we ended things again. It was a lot that came from writing that song and getting that out. The purpose of it was really therapy.

As I got through the project, I thought, “Wow, what I’m writing about with this relationship with this person is actually a pattern that I have in other parts of my life.”

It’s not just about him, and not everything was bad with him either. He personified what was going on in a lot of areas of my life. This project is really about the dynamics that I have with white people, as a whole, professionally. I had gotten laid off from my job, and then I had gotten dropped from my label that was all white-led. I realized, “Oh, this is a pattern that’s in my life, and I need to write about it so I can get on to whatever is next.”

Eulalie Magazine: The first instinct of hearing the album is that it’s almost primal. Very unapologetic. In the music industry, it’s kind of hard to share those stories in a way that is digestible. With your identity as a queer artist — a Black queer artist — do you consciously have to think about that all the time? Does this feel like a culmination of everything you’ve done so far in your career?

Lee Lewis: This one feels like the next progression of my life. Everything I wrote about on “Something Is Burning,” those are all things that happened, and I processed them through making the songs. As I finished it, I entered into this other thing: “Something else is happening. I need to write about this as well.”

It just examines where I have been up until now, for the last two-ish years. This is what I was dealing with. This is what I was going through. The queerness and the Blackness are just absolutely a constant through it. The person I was dating was a white man, and there’s a lot of different layers there that I didn’t even get to fully tackle on this project, but I will at some point on future music. My queer experience is a part of it. With “Something Is Burning,” it was a lot of dealing with closeted men and examining self-worth through that and processing that.

Eulalie Magazine: I saw the visualizer for “White Flag.” It’s very simple in a great way. What was going through your head as you planned to put this out?

Lee Lewis: I’ve been really lucky to, during this process, work on this project with so many of my close friends. Romeo has been a friend of mine for 10 years. Kailyn and Drew Binkley-Bonko, they have been helping me a lot with my visuals. They’re my creative team. It was really fun to just go to them and say, “Y’all have heard these songs like nobody else has heard it.”

I bought this big old white flag. There’s something really cool about walking down a downtown LA street with this massive white flag. When we were doing it, people were looking. I need something that feels big, but also minimal because I don’t have the big, big budgets yet.

What gets the point across better than the actual white flag? It’s in the artwork too. A flag waving in the wind is a beautiful thing to me. A white flag is very interesting and vulnerable. Me walking down the street with that, it was me taking control. I acknowledged that I had to surrender. I had to let go. I’m walking at it from different directions, which are the different angles that I took to get to letting go of this relationship.

Eulalie Magazine: I’m sure the production process for this project was a bit lengthy. Could you tell me a little bit more about that? It sounds like you work with people who are close with you.

Lee Lewis: It’s been a process, and that’s mostly because of me. This time I was really writing about things as they were happening. I would try to write stuff, and sometimes it wouldn’t work. Then, I would go experience something good or bad with this person.

I would think, “Okay, well, there’s the next song. I have to write about this.” It would give me an answer to whatever’s going to come after that. It was quite a lengthy process for such a short EP. Hopefully that’s not how it goes in the future, but I rolled with it. I went through a lot of different things over the last two years: The label stuff. The job stuff, the relationships, you know, the stuff in the world. All of this was happening at the same time. I’m trying to process it as a human being and then also as an artist. It was a beautiful process. There’s something really special about working with somebody that’s known you for a decade and has seen all these different iterations of you as a person and as an artist.

He brought in some of his friends, like Bijou [Choder], who co-wrote about 4 of the 6 tracks with us and has become a good friend of mine. I brought in my friend Mai to do background vocals for “White Flag,” and then me and Romeo’s mutual friend, Liisi LaFontaine, to do background vocals on “Bitter.” It was just a fun, lengthy process, including all these different people from both of our lives. Now I’ve got some friends through him that are in music, which is always special, and then he’s got some of mine, and so on and so forth.

Eulalie Magazine: It’s a homegrown team, which I really like as a listener. It’s coming from the soul and a place of authenticity. It doesn’t feel very commercialized.

Lee Lewis: Coming from being on a label, it was an independent label, but when you get that first deal of your career, you’re thinking it’s all going to work out. They’re paying for stuff. The process that I’ve had with this project was so much better than the last one because it was all in my control and Romeo’s control.

We brought in the people, and everything was homegrown, like you said, we’re doing this DIY situation. It’s special because these are my homies, these are my people, this is my network. By the end of this process, there’s so much more power and strength in your own network versus “I’m gonna go get that label deal.”

The way I see it now, let me build up my own brand with my network and with my people, and then when the opportunity comes with a label, I can say, “This is my squad. We’ve done this. I’d love for you guys to amplify it, but we can do this with or without you.”

Eulalie Magazine: When it comes to identity, it’s almost a trend: You see artists that have a soul and are authentic, and they get crushed by [their] label. Were there any songs that you were writing that you had to put to the side, or maybe release them later?

Lee Lewis: I’ve got some tracks on there, some that I did with Romeo that could be released at another time. The one song I’m really missing from my discography right now. I only got 2 projects, but there’s still some stuff missing. I’d like to try some slightly more up-tempo things or some things that move a little bit differently that you can dance a little bit more to.

I don’t want people listening to my stuff to think, “Damn, is he sad all the time? Is he always going through something?” I’m really happy right now, and I’m not heartbroken. It’s just that I can access [sadness] a lot quicker and I understand it more.

This is something I’m working through in therapy: accessing joy and being able to write about that. As Black people and Black queer people, I found that it’s hard to process joy and really experience joy all the time. I’ll be happy about something, and I’ll find myself feeling a little guilty. Do I deserve this sort of thing? That might be a topic that I should explore in a more uptempo song. So we’ve got some songs that have a little more uptempo vibes that I’d like to revisit.

I’ve got a song with my buddy Sam Westhoff, AKA haffway, called “Wait for Me” that I hope that I can release this year. It’s a sad one, but it is a very good song. I wrote it with him three years ago, and we haven’t revisited it yet, but I think it’s time to break that one out. That one could have potentially been on this project. If we get some more standalones before the next one, that’s fine.

Eulalie Magazine: I’d love to hear an uptempo song. I’m requesting it now. I got to hear it.

Lee Lewis: I want a track like “Make It Happen” by Mariah Carey.

Eulalie Magazine: How would you describe HOWL in 3 words, almost a quick pitch to somebody if they’re interested in listening?

Lee Lewis: HOWL is primal, like you said. It’s vulnerability, and it’s control. Those are my three words.

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Lee Lewis’ new EP HOWL is available now on all major streaming platforms.

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