Experimental Pop/R&B duo Black Grapefruit was formed in 2016, but their history in music stems as far back as 2012 when they recorded under the moniker “SOS.” After a series of life changing events, Randa Smith and Brian Dekker found refuge deep in the Catskill Mountains of New York where they built a home studio in a late 1700’s farmhouse equipped with no cell phone reception and scarce internet connectivity. In the calm of the forest, Randa began researching the sacred feminine for creative direction and looked to her ancestors for inspiration, especially her matrilineal heritage of medicine and shamanism, to create her own version of divine Blackness. This exploration led her to create her own practice centered on water healing and aromatherapy, growing the same herbs and brewing the same teas and tinctures her grandmother used to make on the Caribbean island of Grenada. In effort to sonically reflect her awakening, Randa and Brian began crafting sounds synthesizing her mother’s West Indian roots and the gospel of her father’s American South. The result is Black Grapefruit, an honest exploration of the common ground that exists between genre, synthesizers, field recordings and two human beings from vastly different backgrounds.

Randa Smith and Brian Dekker formed the Pop/R&B duo Black Grapefruit in 2016, but their history in music stems back to 2012 when they recorded as “SOS.”