I showed up to my ex’s birthday party six weeks after we ended things because his friends still didn’t know and I wanted the night more than I wanted to be decent about it. I wore the dress he’d watched me buy in Barcelona – the one he said made him want to lock me in the hotel room for the rest of the triP which he absolutely did. I walked in like I owned it and he stood there with the expression of someone who wants to fuck you and is furious about it and I smiled at him the way you smile at someone who is no longer your fucking problem. I left with the guy he’d always been weird about, and what happened after that is between me and that guy and the inside of a very cooperative Uber. I didn’t cry once that night. I texted my best friend at 2am: ain’t God good. She replied “bestie is thriving.” She was not wrong. Keeana Kee and Valery Kaufman made a whole track for that feeling, and they called it ‘Ex’s Funeral.’
Sergio De Anda put a Santana-inspired guitar through the center of this thing and the Latin heat it kicks off goes straight to your hips before your brain has caught up with anything. The Exotic Pop DNA is Afropop and reggaeton run through cinematic pop and the whole damn thing sounds expensive and dangerous and completely in control of what it’s doing to you.
Keeana opens the first verse like she’s ready to burn the whole thing down for him before she decides he’s not worth the lighter fluid. “Wanna knit on a / On a horse for ya / Get the barber knife / Reinforced for ya / I’m in need for ya / Taking leave for ya / Got enough of your blah blah blah blah blah blah.” That opening is a woman who would have fucked him up in the best possible way and he blew it. She ran the whole unpaid internship with terrible benefits and finally handed in her resignation. She was ready to be filthy and devoted and he handed her back blah blah blah, and now that energy is going somewhere that knows what the fuck to do with it.
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She tightens it in the second verse. “I have had enough / Of your stone-cold bluff / With your shifty eyes / Wishing mazel tov / I’m in need for ya / Taking leave for ya / Got enough of your blah blah blah.” That mazel tov is the whole verse in one word. It’s warmth deployed as a weapon, the grace of someone who no longer needs to be angry because the damn accounting is done. Keeana described the track as “that shift when pain stops holding you back and starts pushing you forward,” and right there in those two verses you can hear the shift complete in real time.
Then she spots him somewhere wearing what she told him was devastating on him. The full pre-chorus is the most physically charged section on the whole track. “I see you there / The suit you wear / The one I said looks so good on you / That you never should wear it / If you’re not with me yeah / I wanna rip it off / In front of all your girls / But I’m afraid they’re gonna love you even more / And it hurts like cigarette burn.” She put that claim on him when she told him how good he looked in it, and him wearing it now is a violation she wants to answer with her hands. She stops herself because she’s fucking strategic about it, and a woman that strategic doesn’t waste a move on a room that’s already rooting for him. The want stays inside her body instead. Applied slowly. With intention. Something that doesn’t fade for days.
Everything in the back half hands itself over to the car and the open map and the woman riding with her. “I got this old car / Hop into it / We’re gonna ride off / Yeah let’s do it / Let’s get the paper map / Turn on your favorite track / And even if we get lost / Let’s do it.” That paper map is her pointing herself at a night where nobody knows her name or her business or who she’s been sleeping with, her best friend riding shotgun and both of them dressed like they’re about to make some poor bastard’s entire year. Then she closes the loop on it: “And that being said / Thelma and Louise / We’re bad bad bad / I’ll cross it on the map / Delete his favorite track / ‘Cause now it’s making me mad mad mad.” The Thelma and Louise call lands the way it’s supposed to because that reference was never about a destination. It was always about who you trust enough to get in the car.
She sits with the whole mess of feelings for exactly one verse before moving through it. “Not sure I’m glad / But I am mad / And yeah a little bit sad sad sad / But I’ve got my best friend / And her favorite track.” There’s more honesty in those five lines than in most full albums. She doesn’t perform certainty about feeling fine. She just knows what she has and keeps going.
Then she gives the whole thesis in six lines, written down and dated and filed. “Fake tears / At your ex’s funeral / Oops can I be that humorous / Three words I put in my journal / This day / Ain’t God good.” That “oops can I be that humorous” is the most unhinged shit on the track. It’s the sound of someone checking in with herself mid-performance and deciding she is completely at peace with everything she’s doing. The fake tears aren’t denial. They’re the final act of a woman who already grieved on her own schedule and showed up to the ceremony as a courtesy.
The music video, shot in a Tarantino-inflected western setting with Von Dutch Y2K looks, puts Keeana and Valery together with this nearly feline, feral energy, two women moving through a landscape with the confidence of people who have already made every decision worth making. It’s the kind of shit that makes you want to call your best friend at 11pm and say get dressed we’re leaving.
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Valery’s presence on this track deserves its own conversation. She brings the same commanding physical authority to the song that she carries down every runway she’s owned, the kind of quiet sexual confidence that doesn’t announce itself because it has never needed to. Two women who have spent careers being perceived and have decided the perception is now entirely theirs to direct. The chemistry between them is the whole damn point and it comes through in every second of the track.
Keeana Kee is a London-raised, New York-based singer, songwriter, and fashion model who makes the kind of music that sounds like it was written in a hotel room at 2am with a drink in hand and zero apologies planned for the morning. Her sound is Exotic Pop – a genuinely addictive blend of Afropop, Latin, and pop influences that hits different from everything else in the room and her voice is the kind of sultry that makes you want to do something dirty. She refuses to be labeled on basically every front, from her music to her sexuality, and that refusal is honestly the sexiest thing about her. She’s worked with Grammy-winning producers, collaborated with DJs and rappers across the globe, and is a member of the ISINA mentoring program alongside industry legends including Paul Oakenfold. Keeana makes music the way she lives, on her own fucking terms.
Keeana’s partner in hotness on this track is Valery Kaufman, a supermodel who has walked for Chanel, shot for Dior and Tom Ford, closed campaigns for Vogue, and done the Victoria’s Secret runway, which means she already knew how to hold a room before she ever opened her mouth to sing. She brings the same devastating presence to music that she does to every runway she’s owned and ‘Ex’s Funeral’ is proof that some women are just built different. She’s not transitioning from modeling to music so much as she’s adding another weapon to an already ridiculous arsenal and the confidence she brings to this track makes it clear she was never going to do this halfway. Valery steps into a new lane and somehow makes it look like she’s been here the whole damn time.
The morning after that birthday party I woke up to a text from my best friend that said “full report NOW.” I gave her everything. Keeana had already written it down anyway, dated it, showed up in the right dress, performed the tears, and got back in the car. The damn funeral ran on schedule.
