Dua Saleh is probably best known for memorably playing the role of Cal Bowman in Sex Education. But the 29-year-old Sudanese American has also been a poet, an activist and – perhaps a natural culmination of these two – has a longstanding career making genre-spanning music that centres queer desire.
Since 2017, the artist’s songs have folded in rap, indie, rock, jazz and R&B with poignant musings on love, self and grief. Saleh has previously said their comfort in making such unapologetic self-explorations is rooted in finding their voice from a young age. Their family were refugees from the second Sudanese civil war, moving from place to place before eventually settling in the US, in Minneapolis. There, a teenage Saleh led a high school walkout in protest against the disproportionate school-to-prison link for disadvantaged young people, acutely aware of injustice and the need for collective action and care.
Their spectacular forthcoming debut album, I Should Call Them, is somewhere in the same league as Ghanaian American star Amaarae in terms of its boisterous, unrelenting ambition. Saleh flits between sugary vocals and more unflinching, rap-adjacent inflections over cosmic electronics, sultry strings and cacophonous guitars. It’s a bold, mesmerising set of songs examining softness, toxic relationships and climate anxiety. Saleh is unafraid to take up space and, in turn, create it for others. In doing so, they look set to become one of the most inventive, sensual pop purveyors of the moment.
