While in New York, Kehlani forged relationships with other artists and producers on the East Coast. She had autonomy, and for the first time in life felt free to create and build her career. She recalls this as “some of the happiest and most joyous times I’ve ever had.” This period would serve as the catalyst for making deeply personal projects reflective of love and loss. It placed her into the gaze of music aficionados. She toured off the project, signed to Atlantic Records, and Cannon got a return on his investment. Over the next five years she would put out two studio albums, three mixtapes, tour globally, headline 2018’sL.A. Pride Festivalbe nominated fortwo Grammys Mesbah and her team have been working to create a more robust infrastructure for dealing with issues of prejudice within CDA. This includes creating a reporting system to deal with issues between members. Along with vice presidentTas Al-MichaelMesbah’s team createdcommunity agreements She notes, “Love doesn’t have to be difficult and it doesn’t have to hurt to measure how much and how good and how deep it is. We grew up getting taught the ride-or-die mentality.”