Khamari is back with his first taste of new music in over a year. The rising R&B singer-songwriter has released a cover of Solange’s hit “Cranes in the Sky” for Spotify Singles.
“‘Cranes in Tthe Sky’ was always was one of my favorite songs. I really connected with the meaning and the analogy,” says Khamari.
He continues, “Solange said in an interview she wrote it when she found a place of ‘peace’ and ‘refuge’ in Miami from things she was dealing with at that time, but cranes were building condos left and right in the neighborhood, which created an eyesore. It reminded me of the things that cloud my mind in life while trying to learn to be more present.”
Khamari’s “Cranes in the Sky” cover is his first musical release since dropping his debut album, A Brief Nirvana, in May 2023.
The 11-track set included the singles “Doctor, My Eyes,” “Right My Wrongs,” “These Four Walls,” “Tell Me,” “Drifting,” and “On My Way.”
“This album is about the struggle of one growing into adulthood,” Khamari told Rated R&B. “For a lot of people, day-to-day can be tough even if you have been an adult for a while. Those are things that are very real for people. That’s something that I wanted to express with this project. Finding a brief nirvana for me was a battle and it was a fight.”
Khamari supported his debut album in February on A Brief Nirvana Tour. The seven-city trek, which visited Houston, Atlanta, Toronto, and more, marked his first headlining tour.
Circling back to “Cranes in the Sky,” the timeless song is from Solange’s critically acclaimed 2016 album, A Seat at the Table.
The Raphael Saadiq and Solange-penned track won Best R&B Performance at the 59th Grammy Awards. It marked Solange’s first and only Grammy win.
In a 2017 interview with her sister Beyoncé for Interview Magazine, Solange shared the backstory behind “Cranes in the Sky,” including its meaning.
“‘Cranes in the Sky’ is actually a song that I wrote eight years ago. It’s the only song on the album that I wrote independently of the record, and it was a really rough time,” Solange told Beyoncé.
“I know you remember that time. I was just coming out of my relationship with Julez’s father. We were junior high school sweethearts, and so much of your identity in junior high is built on who you’re with. You see the world through the lens of how you identify and have been identified at that time. So I really had to take a look at myself, outside of being a mother and a wife, and internalize all of these emotions that I had been feeling through that transition.”
Solange continued, “I used to write and record a lot in Miami during that time, when there was a real estate boom in America, and developers were developing all of this new property… I remember looking up and seeing all of these cranes in the sky. They were so heavy and such an eyesore, and not what I identified with peace and refuge. I remember thinking of it as an analogy for my transition—this idea of building up, up, up that was going on in our country at the time, all of this excessive building, and not really dealing with what was in front of us.”
A Seat at the Table was highlighted on Rated R&B’s 50 Best R&B Albums of the 2010s. “To encapsulate a significant portion of what it means to be Black in America is a difficult task. Not many have been called to it, yet Solange willingly hit the nail with much accuracy on A Seat at the Table,” wrote Danielle Brissette.
Stream Khamari’s “Cranes in the Sky” cover on Spotify below.