Qamil Wright finds her place of comfort

When Qamil Wright first started performing years back, she would frequently find herself tormented by a running inner-monologue. She would worry her hair and makeup were out of place, stress that the facial contortions present in the act of singing might read as less than flattering to people in the audience, and linger on the potential for mistakes as she neared those particularly vocally challenging passages. 

“In those first few years, [the stage] was a terrifying place, because I was always in my head,” said the Columbus soul musician, who has long functioned as a caretaker of the local soul and R&B scenes under her Soul Dope Entertainment banner. (Most recently, Qamil announced the October return of the Ohio R&B Music Festival, which she founded and curates.) 

These inner thoughts once present during performances have long since quieted, however, with Qamil sharing that her mind nearly went blank during an early July showcase in Indianapolis, the singer so intently focused on the moment that these outside concerns instinctively washed away. It’s a sense of ease that bleeds into Qamil’s new mini-album, Comfort Food I: Appetizers, released today (Friday, July 25) and due to be followed by parts two (The Entree, due Nov. 21) and three (Desserts, due Feb. 2026). 

Framed as a tone-setter, the lush, comforting Appetizers opens with a brief intro in which the musician acknowledges the chaotic outside world while summarily shutting the door on it. In its stead, Qamil ushers listeners into an intimate space where adult love is given room to flourish, the singer filling the release with songs centered on the necessity of maintaining romantic passions amid the demands of family life. With “On My Mind,” for example, her thoughts keep returning to the fires that will ignite with her partner once the laundry is folded, all the errands are run, and the kids are tucked away dreaming in bed.

“The days and weeks can go by so fast when you’re raising a family, and I could see how easily the opportunities to really romance each other and just hold space for each other can get away from you if you’re not intentional,” said Qamil, who in March married the Columbus rapper Jai Carey – one in a series of life events that have greatly evolved her views on love. “Before, thinking about love and getting married, it was more whimsical, you know, Disney romantic, where my prince would come. And now it’s like, okay, we’re married. We love each other deeply. And we also have to keep the kids alive, and the electric bill is due. So, while it’s still very romantic, there’s also a practicality to it that you can only really learn by experience.”

It’s a feeling prevalent in songs such as “Same Team,” where the remnants of an argument give way to the reality of shared existence, and “Staycation,” about how some romantic ventures require little more than a few short steps to the bedroom. 

Aspects of the unfolding Comfort Food project began to take root a few years back, when Qamil was coming off a challenging stretch in which she suffered from a life-altering bout with Covid (an experience that quite literally changed her voice, lending it increased deepness and texture) and the death of her grandmother, a woman she described as her “favorite person in the world.”

“And I was pretty much in that place people often find themselves in when they’re grieving, where you just don’t want to do anything and you don’t know if you’ll ever find that desire again,” she said. “But eventually I did pick up a pen again and started writing down ideas. And then I just took my time over the next three, four years, adding a song as the urge hit me. … So, yeah, it was a journey coming out of that fog and to get here feeling healed and like I can throw myself into the music like never before. I’m happy to be creating, and I’m happy to have come out of it with more fire than I had before, which was a lot.”

While Appetizers doesn’t directly address the events of these years, the music has been irrevocably shaped by them, surfacing in everything from the musician’s mature perspectives to her vocal approach, which shifts toward the conversational, creating a sense of intimacy that Qamil described as intrinsic to the project.

“It’s maturity, but it’s also taking the pressure off of yourself to sound a certain way or hit a certain note just to impress people,” she said. “Ten years ago, I’d be like, ‘Oh, I want to sing in a stadium in Paris,’ and everything was the bigger the better. Now, I really like intimate things. I like to be in a room with 25 to 30 people. That’s what I had at my listening party, and it was perfect, because I could talk to everybody as they came in the door. … I want people in years to be like, ‘Man, I remember I went to the show Qamil had and she was just in there talking to everybody, eating chips, and then she got up there onstage and blew our minds, and then was talking to us again at the end, taking pictures.’”

This newfound embrace of intimacy coincides with a decision the singer made to finally prioritize her own creative needs after spending the better part of the last decade focused on creating platforms for musicians citywide – a process that has involved setting aside the various excuses that she now understands to be rooted in fear.

“It’s human nature to be in your own way and use anything and everything as an excuse, like, oh, my family, my job. And sometimes it’s just that we’re afraid,” said Qamil, who has more recently been pushed to go all-in by a growing awareness of her own mortality (“I’m seeing celebrities who are not much older than me passing away”) and a desire to have her young children witness her live not having left anything on the table. “You hope to explore every corner and leave no stone unturned, and when it’s all said and done, I want to leave this place empty. And, having my kids watch me, I want them … to see me happy and thriving and taking risks on myself, so that they’ll be empowered to do the same. … I’ve never doubted my talents or gifts, but deep down inside I think I was maybe a little afraid to see how far I could go. If I do end up in Paris, what do I do with that? And I don’t have that fear anymore. Now it’s a childlike curiosity. I want to see what can happen now, like, let’s do it. Let’s see.”