Kareen Lomax has spent years writing songs that ended up in other artists’ catalogs and lending her voice to records by Diplo and others. On NAJI, released September 18th, she gives that accumulated experience the scale of a full album built entirely around her own story.
The 13-track debut arrives through Music is Fun, the Seeker Music-backed independent label, and runs just under 39 minutes. Producer and multi-instrumentalist Daoud anchors the record alongside Lomax, building an alternative R&B sound that moves through ambient soul, indie-pop, acoustic instrumentation and electronic production without settling comfortably into one category.
Its title is more personal than an artist alias. Naji is Lomax’s first name; Kareen is her middle name, the one she grew up using publicly. On her official album page, Lomax describes the two names as different sides of the same person: Kareen processes grief, love and uncertainty, while Naji is more direct and confrontational.
That split gives NAJI its center. After losing her adopted sister in 2020 and her father in 2021, Lomax began making a record about grief that gradually became just as concerned with adoption, belonging, self-preservation and deciding which parts of herself no longer needed to stay hidden.
NAJI Puts Both Sides of Lomax Together
Lomax has lived with the distinction between Kareen and Naji for much longer than this album has existed.
Growing up adopted, she has described her first name as a reminder of another identity running alongside the one everyone around her knew. Questions about belonging followed her into adulthood and eventually became part of the album’s emotional foundation.
“Naji is my first name, which a lot of people don’t know,” Lomax explained when the album was announced. She described Kareen as the part of herself that feels deeply and tries to make sense of grief and love, while Naji is less afraid to confront something directly.
The distinction is not presented as a good side and a bad side. The album announcement describes the record as the meeting point between both identities, with grief, healing, nostalgia, love and self-preservation moving between them.
Rather than turning that duality into an elaborate alter-ego exercise, Lomax keeps returning to ordinary emotional decisions: whether to answer someone, when to disconnect, how to care for herself and what adulthood looks like when the people who once provided direction are gone.
Daoud Gives the Album a Musical Center
One collaborator appears throughout nearly every corner of NAJI: Daoud.
The producer, whose credits extend to artists including Kehlani, J. Cole and Lizzo, worked with Lomax across the album’s development between Los Angeles and New York. Detailed Qobuz credits show him moving among piano, Rhodes, synthesizers, guitars, bass, percussion and drum programming across the record.
That range helps explain why NAJI can shift between styles without sounding as though Lomax is trying on unrelated genres.
“remedy” places Rhodes, guitar, synth and percussion around her voice, while “self care / flowers” expands the palette with piano, organ and a fuller band arrangement. “somewhere in the world” introduces glockenspiel into another layered production.
The closing “if pain was a color” stretches further, bringing vibraphone, alto saxophone and flute into the album’s familiar mixture of keyboards, guitars and rhythm. Lomax remains the focal point, but the arrangements can grow substantially around her without turning into oversized pop constructions.
Much of NAJI was also made outside conventional commercial studios. Lomax recorded the project herself, working primarily from home setups, release-day coverage notes.
The approach suits a record whose subject matter was never meant to feel detached from the person singing it.
“OFFLINE” Lets Naji Speak More Directly
“OFFLINE” provided the clearest early introduction to the album’s more confrontational side.
Released in July as the first single from NAJI, the compact track centers on stepping away from the constant demand for attention. Rather than presenting disconnection as isolation, Lomax treats it as a boundary.
That idea had already appeared elsewhere in her music. Her earlier “SELF CARE” similarly connected leaving the internet with reconnecting to herself, and Lomax has described journaling, walking in nature and musical reflection as ways she handles grief and regains perspective.
On NAJI, however, self-care is not always soft.
“WARFARE,” released in August, pushes that idea into conflict. Short for “spiritual warfare,” the song deals with the contradiction between protecting your peace and admitting that a relationship, financial pressure or general dissatisfaction still has emotional control over you.
The track grew from a relationship Lomax had tried to leave behind, but its focus eventually turned inward. The song’s release describes that conflict as extending beyond an ex into the broader work of staying grounded while life continues applying pressure.
Together, “OFFLINE” and “WARFARE” make the Naji side of the album easier to hear. Boundaries are not simply comforting ideas here; sometimes they require confrontation.
Grief Was Already Running Through ijan
NAJI did not arrive without a smaller project pointing toward it.
In February, Lomax released the six-song EP ijan, its title spelling Naji backward. Several of those songs now live inside the album, including “remedy,” “self care / flowers,” “idea of you,” “apartment” and “somewhere in the world.”
Lomax called ijan a “document of grief,” giving listeners an earlier version of the emotional territory the full album would eventually expand.
During a March EARMILK interview, she explained that songs often begin for her with titles rather than chords or finished melodies. She keeps phrases from conversations and everyday life in her phone until one creates an entry point into a song.
“somewhere in the world” developed that way. The phrase sat in her phone for months before she brought it to Daoud in Brooklyn and the two turned it into a finished recording.
That process makes the apparently casual language of NAJI‘s titles more revealing. A phrase can carry an emotional charge long before Lomax knows what music belongs underneath it.
ijan introduced that method through grief. NAJI opens it into a broader record about what happens after grief starts changing the way someone sees everything else.
Lomax’s Artist Career Was Already in Motion
The familiar songwriter-to-solo-artist narrative only partly fits Lomax.
She has accumulated a substantial writing catalog for other performers. Spotify’s songwriter page currently credits her on 54 songs, including Maroon 5’s “Nobody’s Love,” while her wider résumé includes work with artists such as ZAYN and Leon Bridges.
But Lomax has also spent years putting her own voice on records.
Her collaboration with Diplo and Paul Woolford, “Looking For Me,” became a Top 5 UK single and reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart. The Songwriters Hall of Fame traces that dual career through both her own releases and writing credits for other performers.
That makes NAJI less a first attempt to emerge from behind somebody else’s name than a change in scale and authorship. Lomax has been an artist throughout the process. What she had not made before was a full-length record with enough room to organize those instincts around one sustained personal narrative.
Writing for another performer can require finding language that works inside someone else’s voice. NAJI removes that separation between writer and subject.
Music Is Fun Gives Lomax an Independent Home
The album’s release structure adds another layer to that control.
NAJI arrives through Music is Fun, an independent Los Angeles label operating with support from Seeker Music Group. Music is Fun describes itself as an independent imprint based in Frogtown, Los Angeles, with Seeker providing broader music-company infrastructure.
That relationship is notable for Lomax because Seeker’s business reaches beyond records into publishing and catalog management. She arrives at her debut album with years of experience in the songwriting economy rather than encountering publishing as an afterthought to an artist career.
Available reporting does not disclose the detailed financial terms of Lomax’s label or publishing arrangements. There is no basis to infer royalty splits, ownership percentages or contractual control from the release structure alone.
What is visible is the release itself. NAJI is available digitally and on vinyl, with the physical edition carrying the Seeker Music name. Retail listings confirm the September 18th LP release alongside the digital album.
For an artist whose career has crossed songwriting, featured vocals and independent solo releases, the debut arrives through a structure that keeps several sides of that business unusually close together.
NAJI Finally Gives the Full Story Room
At 13 tracks and roughly 39 minutes, NAJI is not oversized for a debut. Its significance comes from how much history Lomax brings into those 39 minutes.
Years of writing for other voices sharpened the pen. Dance records with Diplo proved her own vocal could travel far beyond alternative R&B. Earlier EPs gave her space to work through grief before committing to a full-length statement.
The new album pulls those paths together without pretending they were separate careers.
Its final track, “if pain was a color,” closes a record that began with “adulting,” moving from the uncertainty of living without instructions toward a song whose title tries to give something intangible a visible form. Saxophone, flute and vibraphone widen the closing arrangement beyond the keyboards, guitars and rhythm section heard across much of the album.
On her album page, Lomax describes the record as ultimately being about choosing yourself and living truthfully through grief, identity and love.
That makes the title feel less like a reinvention than a correction.
Kareen Lomax has already written songs people know and sung on records people have heard. NAJI is the first album that asks listeners to know the name she was carrying alongside all of them.