In 2005, an indie band from England burst onto the music scene and started challenging our preconceptions about pop music with thoughtful arrangements and intelligent lyrics. The songs penned by Bloc Party's lead singer and principal songwriter, Kele, dealt with topics such as terrorism and fluid sexuality. Over time, the band started distancing themselves from the guitar-driven rock-pop sound on which it had built itself, moving instead toward a more electronic sound, and now, five years later, Kele is releasing a solo album with a sound even further from that which originally made his band famous. (Bloc Party is on hiatus.) This was deliberate. His solo debut, The Boxer, released yesterday on Glassnote Records, is all about doing things differently—and, if you ask us, he has certainly succeeded. Kele sat down with BlackBook to talk about New York, new instruments, and new beginnings.

It’s great to be talking with you. Are you just in New York just for the moment, or do you live here now? No, no, I’m just here for the moment. I’m here for promo until the weekend. It’s a shame, because it’s such a beautiful day and I imagine it’s going to be beautiful for a while. I think part of Saturday and Sunday I have off, so I’m going to try and just enjoy the weather.

Where did you record The Boxer? I started recording in London but then I finished it off in New York, in Brooklyn, with the producer XXXchange.

Really? I’m reppin’ Brooklyn. Oh, really? I didn’t see much of Brooklyn at all; I just literally saw the producer’s bedroom and his back room where we made the records.

Did your surroundings influence you while you were putting together the record? Well, I wrote the record in London, really. I didn’t really go out much while I was here in New York because I wanted to be focused. I didn’t want to be hungover or whatever while I was recording, so I didn’t go out too much. The one big thing that was inspirational was that I was listening to a lot of R&B. Alex, the producer of XXXchange, is a big R&B fan, so I was hearing lots of new R&B that I hadn’t really heard that was interesting. I really got into this rapper Nicki Minaj. He kind of schooled me on all the different regional variations of R&B and hip-hop from across the U.S.

Would you say that affected the sound of the album, or was it pretty much all developed by then? I think it was kind of somewhat developed by then, yeah, but there were some cool things. I really got into Gucci Mane whilst I was in New York making the record, and Lil’ Wayne, actually, who is not very popular in the U.K.

Your record’s pretty introspective and focused more on self-expression rather than on making a statement. I guess I would say it is pretty introspective. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to qualify how it is to other people, because for me I only have my own impressions of making it. I don’t know how people break it down.

You’ve mentioned elsewhere that you consider it a happy album, right? It feels pretty happy to me, yeah.To me it has a sense of optimism about the future, maybe, whereas I think a lot of Bloc Party records have more of a sense of melancholy. Chapters are ending, but new chapters are starting. All the songs seem to be about things starting again.

It was interesting listening to the album with that mindset and hearing you go from “I could have given you everything you wanted” to “You are stronger than you think.” Everything You Wanted is really the only song on the record that’s looking back; the other songs are all full of positivity. For me.

Sound-wise it’s also a departure from what you were doing with Bloc Party. Did you make a conscious decision to do that? Well, I really didn’t want to repeat myself. I’ve never want to repeat myself while making music. I guess the only real rule for me was I didn’t want to start everything on the guitar because then I thought I’d end up in Bloc Party territory, so I went in and just recorded stuff using drum machines and synthesizers just to see where it was going to end up. Really, that was the only reason, to see where it was going to end up. It was limiting—guitar is my best instrument—but it was also very exciting for that reason.

While you were exploring these other ways of making music, did that inform the lyrics as well? Well, usually with Bloc Party records I write the lyrics separately. I write them months in advance, and then in the final stages of the recording process I sing what I’ve already written. It’s just a case of shoehorning things into place. I didn’t want to do that with this record. I didn’t write anything down; after having an initial idea, I just started generating vocals. I didn’t care what I was singing about, I just started, and the songs kind of wrote themselves over the course of the year. I edited them down and got them tight, but it was very much about seeing where the music took the album.

I know you’ve been reluctant to call The Boxer a dance record because the implication is that it can only be listened to in clubs. What would you call it? Well, pop. I’d call it a pop record. All the songs are concise—they’re like three or four minutes. It obviously has sounds or textures from clubland or electronic music, but it is definitely a pop record to me.

The pop genre gets a really bad rap sometimes, but most iconic music from past decades is pop. Yeah, I do think pop’s a dirty word now because of the machine behind it, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being popular or populist. I think there definitely can be smart pop; it’s harder and harder to find, but I do feel that it’s there.