Jessie Reyez is spent. It’s 10 o’clock on a rainy, misty Monday night in the heart of the South, and she is onstage at the Loft off West Peachtree Road in Midtown. She wears her own merchandise—first a black hoodie and then a big, bright orange t-shirt to commemorate the Being Human On Tour that has been selling out seemingly wherever it goes. Ms. Reyez is Colombian, and so it feels is half the crowd. Her shows are both Viva la revolución! and a class in exasperated gratitude all at once.

Drenched in sweat, she starts singing in Spanish for thirty seconds or so—she does these little medleys throughout her sets—her first song performed in the language tonight. Her style is fluid, improvisational, and very much rooted in the energy of the room. Nothing she does feels rehearsed, and she’s genuinely excited to be in Atlanta. She gives it up for opener Savannah Ré before asking if we can all get serious again. She says there’s something she wants to leave with us.

“If you pray, and God gives it to you, don’t fuck it up.” Later, she notes: “A few years ago, I was mad depressed and 20 pounds underweight. I got the chance to go to the studio. I cried on the mic. In the video, I broke down. [Those were] real tears.”

The craziest thing to grasp of all that was that the song of the night, the song that hit the mark any artist could ever ask for, the song that had ATLiens losing their minds was from a dark, dark place. Maybe that’s not so crazy. Maybe that song is the catalyst to her dreams coming true. If she doesn’t weep trying to sing, collapse trying to act, if she doesn’t play the part of a budding star, doesn’t headbang her long curly black hair back and forth, doesn’t stage dive just to feel the audience lift her up, maybes she doesn’t sell out a show in Atlanta.

It’s getting late. All eyes are on Jessie. She ties her hair up into a bun. She asks the lights to go down so people can’t look at her tears. When she was back home in Toronto, she used to play shows in tiny rooms with maybe five people who gave a fuck. Now she’s here. Before launching into her final song, she asks the crowd, “Who knows all the lyrics to ‘Figures?'” and the room turns into a rowdy sing-a-long. Figures.

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All photos © Copyright 2018 Wildy Civil. You can connect with him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, or via his website, Civil Creations.