Recea Marin: Quiet Like a Storm
The Berlin-born artist on her debut EP, gliding between sound and style, and why some things are better left unposted.
Words by Talia Bissett
“I like things that feel like they’ve already happened,” Recea Marin says softly, her fingers grazing the rim of a ceramic teacup. “That moment when you realize you’re in the middle of something, not at the start. That’s where I like to live.”
We’re sitting in a corner booth in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and Recea—known to the world simply as Rece—is exactly as you'd imagine: calm, impossibly stylish, and just a little hard to hold onto. She speaks in measured rhythms, pausing often, like she’s composing each thought the way she would a song—intentionally, patiently, and only when it matters.
Her debut EP, heatless, dropped the way everything in her world does: quietly. There was no formal rollout, no press tease. Just a late-night post, a quiet SoundCloud link, and a limited vinyl pressing that’s already sold out.
“I didn’t want it to feel like a moment,” she says with a soft smile. “I wanted it to feel like a memory.”
Born in Berlin to a Senegalese-German mother and a Black American father from Washington, D.C., Recea was raised between sound and vision. Her mother, Adja, a former runway model turned gallerist, taught her the poetry of silence, curation, and stillness. Her father, Charles, a DJ who stayed in Berlin after serving in the U.S. military, passed down the beat. “Our house was always full of sound. Even when no one was talking, something was playing,” she says.
Rece’s music lives in the space between: R&B, glitch, art-pop, and ambient all bending toward her voice. Her lyrics feel handwritten. Her vocals, processed and intimate. heatless feels like a voice note you weren’t supposed to hear, stitched together with synths that tremble and textures that breathe.
The project closes with a remix featuring Kelela, a co-creation that feels less like a feature and more like a fusion.
“She didn’t sing over me,” Recea says, almost shyly. “She joined me. That track is about knowing when to disappear… and when to let someone stand next to you inside the feeling.”
Fashion has followed Recea just as naturally. She’s styled exclusively in pieces she has a relationship with vintage pieces, custom deconstructions by her longtime collaborator Stacy Strange at Studio Atelier, and pieces she’s inherited from her mother’s modeling days.
“I like when clothes already have a story,” she says, adjusting the sleeve of her oversized leather blazer. “I don’t want to wear anything that needs to be explained.”
Recea’s Billboard Women of the Year appearance—her first major U.S. red carpet—was styled by close friend Vincent and custom-built for her. It was a slinky ivory gown, open-backed and soft in movement. “It was simple. But it felt like me. And I think that’s why it landed,” she says, glancing down with the slightest grin.
When asked how she feels about suddenly being in New York more often—performing, showing up on carpets, appearing in fashion week front rows—she tilts her head and smirks.
“Berlin raised me. But New York? New York reminds me I have a body. I’m learning how to stay quiet in the noise. To share enough… and leave the rest for the people who really see me.”
It’s nearing golden hour when we leave the cafe. She slips on a pair of vintage sunglasses, thanks me for the conversation with a gentle hand on my shoulder, and disappears around the corner.
Not rushed. Not loud. Just gone—like a breeze you only realize was there once it’s passed
This story appears in i-D’s Fall 2024 digital cover series, following Recea Marin’s debut EP heatless and her MoMA PS1 installation, a room with no corners.
Published by i-D Magazine
