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Chibia Ulinwa and Alex Koehler of Chibia are debating whether even to volunteer the origin story of their debut single and biggest song to date, “Honey,” perhaps fearing a headline like “From Toilet to She-Hulk.” But here goes: Ulinwa wrote it in the bathroom.
“Alex keeps telling me not to tell people that,” says the Portland singer-songwriter and violinist, who collaborated with Koehler (her husband) on the eponymous project. “But that’s literally exactly what happened. I came up with the lyrics in the bathroom, I got the chords together on keys, and then Alex used his jazz brain and we expanded it.”
Since then, the song’s appeared on the Marvel show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (“during a cool little bar scene,” Ulinwa says) and on the Oprah Network show Queen Sugar. She submitted it as an NPR Tiny Desk Concert entry, which didn’t get far in the preliminaries but at least gave Ulinwa an opportunity to show off her sideline in lettering. (The “Honey” calligraphy that flashes over the screen when she says the word is hers.)
It would have appeared on a debut album called So This Is Love that might’ve dropped a couple of years ago if the duo hadn’t lost a crucial hard drive and been forced to re-create it from scratch. They’ve decided instead to release the album as a series of EPs; the first installment came out last year (which included “Honey”), while the second installment came out Nov. 19.
“With smaller, up-and-coming artists, it’s nice to have something small and then break up those releases so that you’re not just putting all your eggs in one basket,” Ulinwa says. “You can be like a little bit here, a little bit there, without burning yourself out.”
Chibia describes their sound as “alternative R&B,” but while that descriptor might bring to mind wolfish Torontonians like the Weeknd, Chibia’s sound is lush and baroque. Huge synth chords drawn from the deepest of house tracks shimmer beneath curling strings and rosy keyboards, with Ulinwa’s contralto adding dusky shades to the palette.
Ulinwa was born in Miami to Nigerian American parents and moved to Portland at the age of three. Her siblings all played in the school band growing up, and she was the first to pick a string instrument (violin), followed by her two younger sisters. She never took lessons as a kid, instead committing to a rigorous practice regimen to build up her skills.
“When you’re a string player, it really does go a long way to have that individual help because it takes so much skill to be able to play one of those instruments,” Ulinwa says. “I didn’t have that, so I just spent a lot of my time practicing. I would practice for three hours a day as a little fourth grader because it was just so inspiring and exciting for me.”
In college, Ulinwa started a group called Jazz Boyfriends. Many of the songs in the So This Is Love series were written during this period.
“It was just my diary,” Ulinwa, now 30, says. “It was how I was able to grieve losses and understand myself without having to put those words onto somebody who doesn’t really want to hear them. Now as an adult, I feel comfortable enough with sharing what I felt with the world. It’s nice to have this EP as a realization of what love means to me now.”
After Jazz Boyfriends split up, Ulinwa started working with Koehler, a musician and designer whom she met at Portland State University—and, as time made clear, a kindred spirit.
“We like to tell people we met in a Walmart,” Ulinwa says. “His friend and I were friends, and then he was always talking about Alex and I would always kid him that Alex was fake. And then I met Alex at Walmart. I was like, oh my gosh, he’s real. Then we were in jazz choir together. He played bass and I sang, and it kind of just went on from there.”
Like Sade and Alice Cooper before them, Chibia is both a band and a person. The band isn’t nearly as large as it was in the extravagant Tiny Desk video, and the current live configuration consists of the couple plus Clay Parkman on guitar and Chris Parkman on drums.
Chibia the band is in full display on So This Is Love, Vol. 2, flexing their jazz chops with the ease of a band that’s been playing together for a long time and has little to prove. Yet it’s just as interesting for the picture it paints of Chibia the singer, who’s been honing these songs for so long they effectively serve as a dialogue with her younger self.
“There’s pieces of younger me that are there, and then pieces of older me that are there,” she says. “And it’s just about understanding those two people at the same time.”