Ari Lennox is being real about the financial pressure she’s under as an artist.
During a performance at London’s Jazz Cafe Festival on Aug. 2, which also featured artists like Smino and Durand Bernarr, the 35-year-old R&B singer broke down while singing “Whipped Cream” from her 2019 album, “Shea Butter Baby,” later admitting she always gets emotional when she sings the song.
“It’s so tough to know, like, you give so much to this s–t, and to go on such an amazing tour,” Lennox said during her set at the festival. “For every single one of us, to be killing it every single night, and to know at the end of that s–t, the bill that I have, that I’m sitting with, is just astronomical and really depressing.”
Lennox went on to explain that performing “Whipped Cream always gets her in her feelings.
“That song always makes me cry,” she said to the crowd, adding that she usually tears up thinking about the loved ones she has lost. But this time, the grieving was for something different.
“Today it was financial loss, and it just hit me. And I’m so sorry about that.”
The Washington, D.C., native released her third studio album, “Vacancy,” earlier this year in January, following up by announcing a 30-stop tour in the U.S. and Canada in February. The tour began in April in Seattle and concluded in June in Charlotte, N.C.
Lennox has previously been vulnerable about the downsides of touring. In 2023, she opened for the artist Rod Wave on his “Nostalgia” tour, but her performances began receiving negative attention for the way the headliner’s fans reacted to her. Agitators in the crowd would heckle her from the audience, and in one viral video, someone in the crowd threw a water bottle at her head. Lennox responded immediately to the bottle thrower, saying, “B—h, I’ll f–k you up! […] Don’t you ever disrespect a beautiful Black woman on the stage like that!”
In an Instagram live session after the tour ended, she told the truth about how she felt about the experience, and called it the “the worst tour of my f–king life.”
“It was so annoying because, like, you could be singing your a– off and they just don’t give a s–t. They’re not there for you. They’re there for music that will never be like my music,” she said. “They’re there for voices that’ll never be like my voice. And so, it just got old after awhile. I’m giving you my soul, my vocals, and nothing was ever enough.”
