Stone Cold Heart

When South African R&B singer-songwriter Elaine released her critically acclaimed debut EP, Elements, in 2019, she had no idea it would change her life. “I think, at the time, I was trying to deny it—there was a lot of imposter syndrome going on,” she tells Apple Music. “I was like, ‘I just made this with some people in between my classes in university.’ There was a huge learning to accept the new me for who I was.” Yet, the five years that followed were filled with extreme highs and lows. The EP’s platinum success eventually led to her inking a deal with an American record label and moving to Los Angeles—only to get stuck there, alone, during lockdown. “It felt like I was living within an answered prayer, but it was kind of like God put me on hold,” Elaine explains. She navigated self-doubt and bouts of depression with the help of studio sessions, working on music that she eventually had to shelve after parting ways with her label. (“There’s no beef,” she clarifies. “I think it’s just the order of events, the timing, and with the type of artist that I am, there was a lot of disconnect in terms of the strategy. I was the first ever African artist that they had in the building, who wasn’t doing the most ‘African’ thing.”) With her first album, 2024’s Stone Cold Heart, Elaine marks both her return to independence and her return home—and chronicles her resulting journey of self-discovery, through R&B and forays into Afrobeats, amapiano and rock. “My world felt like it was crashing down,” she says. “It felt like I was in a completely different universe. That’s when I was like, ‘Well, if I’m in my own universe, it’s going to look, feel and sound exactly how I want it to. It’s going to be a representation of who I am now, after I feel like I’ve overcome so many personal and career challenges.’ So Stone Cold Heart came from a place of pressure and of feeling like I need to be a badass bitch. I need to be tough. I’m such a mushy, vulnerable, emotional person but a lot of