This week is definitely turning into an R&B showcase—a bit of a soul protest record for grown folk, a busking-bench intimacy, and two about the sort of love you just know you need to break free from, while still going back for more. Get into it.

Eric Benét, “Who’s Gonna Save Us?”

After ten minutes trawling Eric Benét’s social feeds, it becomes clear this four-time Grammy nominee with two recent No. 1 Adult R&B songs believes the only way to get ahead is to tell the people running the country what you really think of them. The posts are scathing. The food supply, the Epstein files, who the country gets to send to war and who doesn’t. “Who’s Gonna Save Us?”, produced by Camper and released by Benét’s own JBR Creative Group, translates that rage into a brand of slow-burning soul he’s been crafting since the late-90s, a kind of soul that’s as direct and church-bound as possible. He delivers the title question as one he’s already answered for himself.

The verses are where Benét really unnerves, in a satisfying way. “The people suffer from disease/You know it’s from the food they eat,” he begins, then lands a couplet the whole track rests on, “They found a cure for cancer/But that ain’t no good/Cause business won’t do well without sickness in the hood.” It’s a conspiracy theory that, delivered in the mellowest baritone in modern soul, makes you want to crawl under the covers. This isn’t a shouting match; this is a lullaby being sung toward your dread, as he explains it as gently as he can. The second verse focuses on recruiters: “The ones that sent them, they would never send their own.” The track turns again, mid-way through, into a near Curtis Mayfield call-and-response, the familiar call to arms of “people get ready” bubbling up through the chorus like a half-forgotten hymn. Benét’s answer is anything but warm. No one’s coming. “If we don’t, you know.” —Phil

Mai Anna, “Baby Blue”

There’s a specific genre of songs that psych you into being brave before you have decided that you’re brave, and I’ve had this one stuck in my head (since she teased it with a Tiny Desk submission years ago) trying to figure out exactly how it does it. Mai Anna and co-producer Solomon Fox create “Baby Blue” from a pile of clichés about seizing the day that should completely collapse under their own corniness and somehow do not. “You only live one time/You only live once so/Imma take my chances,” she says, and stacking the lines, “Not once but twice and three times,” somehow turns a Valentine’s Day slogan into a declaration of faith to herself.

Then she stops bluffing in the chorus: “Wake/Wake up and feel the love/Put on your favorite shoes/And dance all around your room,” she commands, and the direction to waltz alone in your bedroom is such a small and unglamorous thing that it somehow feels like the only true statement here. But I’m stuck on the next image: “Im in the rain in my church clothes/Got to breathe with my eyes closed/So wherever I go/I know I’ll be home.” This picture of a grown person standing in the rain in their church clothes and trying their best to get it together with their cap off, who then declares that home is a state of mind rather than a physical location. The title seems like a reference to the ache-baby blue is a fresh bruise-but Mai Anna sings like she’s already been over the hump and she’s just looking for company on the other side. —Mina Abdel

Lala, “Do Better”

Is there a theme in R&B that lasts longer than the lover you shouldn’t get back with, and Lala’s “Do Better,” produced by good.will, does nothing if not luxuriate in just how great it feels to make the bad choice. “My friends told me to do better/I should’ve known but you’re clever,” she starts, and she’s already lost the argument she’s pretending to have in that second line alone. The story of the whole train wreck can be told in just five words: “Not trusting/Just friends to/Good lovin’/To just fuckin’.” No lead-up, no apologies, just the simple, inevitable slide from one to the other, like naming the stages would stop her from having to go through them.

What’s truly appealing about this is how she’s not at all ashamed about being the instigator. “Have to admit, I like when you chase me,” she says, leaning into the part of herself that craves the danger. She collapses in the very act of talking about her commitment to the break up, “When you got me alone, I fold and I fold into your arms,” the double-fold says all a verse about self-control would. And the chorus is absolutely unconcerned with the glaringly obvious hypocrisy (“We can break up-up to make up-up/And then wake up and do it again”), before she seals it with the least innocent booty call-line of the year: “Let’s keep it simple/You got my location.” She knows this is a mistake. She’s telling you where to find her anyway. —Jamila W.

Debbie, “Weight On Me”

Two weeks ago, when south Londoner Debbie gave us “Weight On Me” on COLORS, in that stripped-down, pastel room in which any slight vocal vulnerability has nowhere to hide, she sang like the breakup had just happened that very morning. The song is the pure, unadorned physics of being rejected, “Look how you left me/Bags on the floor/I don’t sleep anymore/Living on empty,” she wails over Luis Navidad’s arrangement, each sentence heavier than the last, the title landing less like metaphor and more like flat fatigue.

What elevates this above the ten thousand other heartbreak tracks in the space is how honestly she copping to needing him back- “Push you away, need you again/Wearing your t-shirt,” and that detail is everything to the song: the object that grief holds onto, the souvenir of this thing at its worst. She takes one good swing at the most obvious piece of advice you get when you’re distraught: “They say time is a healer/It’s not healing me now, with my head to the ground/I go deeper and deeper,” she sing-screams, and frankly, not since Jorja Smith’s early singles have we heard a new UK voice make this much with so little. —Ameenah Laquita

Mychelle, “Sunday Afternoon”

Before a label took notice, Mychelle had been singing on the streets of London for four years, practicing a trick that all the good ones have figured out—how to be utterly vulnerable and yet seemingly pay it no mind. “Sunday Afternoon,” her new single out now on FAMM, is a song about realizing when you want something the trick fails completely. In her own words, the Stoke Newington singer, early in the track, bluntly lists her limitations: “Vulnerability doesn’t come easily to me/I can’t lie I’m scared/All my friends keep telling me/I really need to put myself out there.” It’s the oldest of the love song tropes, and she delivers it with the tone of a confession she’d rather not be performing on her record.

But what saves the track from being anything like an inspirational meme is that she names precisely the thing that frightens her. The reality she longs for, that she continues to outline here, is not spectacular. It is “to dance with someone on Sunday Afternoon,” it is “to tell someone how my day went so they can tell me how their day went too,” it’s mundanely domestic, and in that way is therefore more dangerous to risk than something extraordinary. Her self-awareness about her dodges, too, is clear. The people she holds close are “just a placeholder until it’s all worth it,” and she’s aware enough to understand that that’s really how she makes sure she’s not worth it to anyone. The core small heartbreak of this song comes at its end, with her retracting what she just put out: “Right now I don’t think I’m ready/Right now I know I’m not ready.” A busker learns to keep a crowd at arm’s length and calls it performance. Mychelle finds herself doing the same to the one person she may have truly wanted. —Imani Raven

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Blxst: Labor of Love

• Jessie Reyez: A Little Vengeance

• Eloise: My Man & Me

• Melvin Riley: No AI

• KELS: Dirty Blues Princess (EP)

• Good Girl: Sugar Honey (EP)

• Luh Kel: Love Me, Love Me Not (EP)

• Claire Brooks: Book of the Cure (EP)

• Rebel Rae: Free the Girls (EP)

• Carla Prata: It All Leads Back South (EP)

• Elujay: A Constant Charade (Deluxe)

• 2BYG: The Yearbook: Second Semester

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Other Songs to Check Out

• The-Dream: Tampa (feat. Usher)

• Jacquees: Lick Back (feat. Juvenile)

• JHart: Memories

• Asha Banks: Come Down

• 4Fargo: Posted Alone (Remix) [feat. Ty Dolla $ign & Honey Bxby]

• Cheyanne: Angels

• Kaylee Ameri: Better Than Digital $ex

• Orrin: Pretend

• Dylan Chambers: I’m Already There

• Gnoir: Safety 1st

• Ama Louise: Love or War

• Khal!l: MY FEET

• Sonny Tennet: Innocence

• Indigo Mak: Truck Driver

• Pere Navarro: You Know (feat. Braxton Cook)

• Quinn Oulton: Circles

• Kalisway: Not So Sweet

• Cherrelle: This Time

• pastels: Pastels World

• Ryan Trey: Need You (feat. Lecrae)

• Zacari: Real Life

• H3rizon: Future Self

• Ambré: Go to Hell

• Yellow Shoots: WALL STREET

• PJ: To the Ones

• H3adband: Move Your Body

• MYST: Dynamite

• Justelle: Keep It from You

• Noah Guy: GREEN VOWS (A COLORS Show)

• Parisalexa: Wrong Generation

• Nick Hakim: I Can See

• Vandell Andrew, Jah Born & Jordache Grant: Tasty

• Kendra Morris: If I Called You (Acoustic Version)

• Roy Woods: Trust and Believe

• Yazmin Lacey: Sweetest Season

• Davion Farris: Frontin’

• Ash Minor: Okay With Me

• Ryael: Changes

• Biirthplace: LOST FAiTH

• Dave Hollister: Voodoo Magic

• Gemaine: Less of You

• DAMEDAME*: FIRE BURNIN’ THRU THE RAIN

• Oranj Goodman: Drama

• Jabriel: Wanna Be In Your Skin

• LARIICA & Isaiah Kaleo: kiss in public

• Flyy Armani & JULY: ti ti ti.

• Pino & ZaeFyeHunnit: Move

• Nanette: Ask for Nun (Freestyle)

• ZURI: Satisfied

• Ria Sean: You Want It

• SICKOFTHEINTERNET: H.I.M

• Reign Judge: Wouldn’t You Like to Know

• Andye: Centerfold

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Mýa, Smoove Jones

Some R&B lives after midnight—in the quiet-storm slot, where the DJ has a voice like warm bourbon and every record is built for two people and a dimmer switch. This is the room Mýa moved into on her seventh album. Built with her own cash on her own Planet 9 label and dropped Valentine’s Day 2016 with a 17-month zodiac calendar and a bottle of vegan wine with every direct order, Smoove Jones, which is named after an alter ego of hers that she described once as “Pam Grier with Billy Dee Williams’ flow”—a smooth operator working the late shift. She doesn’t break character even once. Welcome to My World is the mood and the instructions. Team You is a ride-or-die promise delivered at the speed of a 2003 morning radio record: devotion sans all the sarcasm. Coolin’ is the sonic representation of being completely relaxed with absolutely nowhere to be and all the time in the world. After 18 years that turned a teenage dancer from D.C. into a star with “It’s All About Me” and “Case of the Ex”—Mýa had plenty of opportunities to make a quick cash grab with a Nostalgia tour, but instead spent three years trying to find the sound the radio station no longer supports. So the Grammys put her indie, throwback album in the running for Best R&B Album along with a host of talented and established artists, including Lalah Hathaway, BJ the Chicago Kid and Mint Condition (none of whom had to create their own zodiac calendars for the occasion). It took her three years, a decade worth of unheard of, grown-up slow jams that Y2K left behind, and she created a whole album and even poured herself a glass to enjoy it. —Imani Raven

Anthony Hamilton, What I’m Feelin’

It was hard to hear a forty-something Charlotte soul man driving down to make a country-soul album about picking his life up again over some twenties rapping apologies over 808s. It was the sixth full-length LP from Anthony Hamilton, and the five years since the album Back to Love had thoroughly roughed him up—he and his wife Tarsha got a divorce, he gained three sons, he ended up with a DWI, and it all wound up in these songs. He found the man who built him, Mark Batson (whose earlier production includes “Charlene” and the title track from Comin’ from Where I’m From), in Mark Batson; who produced all but two of the dozen tracks. He recorded at Blackbird in Nashville with the intention of obtaining a country-soul feel that he could not find in NY or LA; there are gospel, church, and honky-tonk sounds interwoven throughout every single one of these songs- they’re all in the same pew. The first single, “Amen,” with production by Salaam Remi and James Poyser, is a direct reference to taking that instinct of praying and directing it towards a woman, not a deity, which is one of the oldest tricks in the soul music arsenal and one that still works. With a track that features the HamilTones (a trio of backup singers for his live show), he laments arriving at his middle age without having the faintest clue what true love feels like, which really resonates coming from a man who’d already addressed every other aspect of his life in song. Hamilton wasn’t going to reinvent the wheel, especially since 2016 wasn’t really asking him to; he’s standing in the ruins of his forties, singin’ it out just like soul singers of the past, like Bobby Womack and Bill Withers. Remove the year, and “Amen” is nothing but a grown man expressing gratitude for somebody who stayed around, straight up loud and clear. —Phil

TWENTY88, TWENTY88

Big Sean and Jhené Aiko lived out a short fling playing adult film stars. The short film (titled Out of Love) accompanying their joint debut as TWENTY88 also dictates the boundaries of all surrounding material: a collection of eight songs about a real-life couple playing fictional ones on the rocks, performance and intimacy blurred until it’s impossible to discern which is which. The real-life pair previously shared verses on “Beware” and “I Know” before solidifying themselves as a couple on record, with the Detroit rapper and Los Angeles singer charting the ebb and flow of their relationship from the wary push-pull of “Déjà Vu” and the self-serving swagger of “Selfish” to the painful, slow deterioration of “Memories Faded.” In the project, neither party is spared, and Jhené’s responses to every single line Sean utters are sharp, as in “2 Minute Warning,” the collection’s single guest spot where she ventures into a realm more explicitly carnal than what she’d put to tape prior to the legendary crooners K-Ci and JoJo of Jodeci stopping by for some ‘90s grown-folks blessings. The collection’s beats, crafted by a young roster including KeY Wane, Cam O’bi and a teenaged Steve Lacy, aim for the group’s described intent of ‘90s R&B and ‘70s soul run through trap drums.” They soon broke up (rekindled years later), leaving Jhené to process the rubble in Chilombo, which, given that the squabbling throughout feels like two people commenting on a car wreck from within the automobile, makes “Memories Faded” feel like more of an auto-crash tape on today. —Cierra Marcel

Gallant, Ology

A falsetto could be a hiding spot or a high wire, and for the entirety of his debut, the Maryland singer born Christopher Gallant sticks with the wire, hanging on notes that most of his contemporaries wouldn’t attempt in front of a microphone. He came up loving Stevie and D’Angelo and writes like the literature addict he seems to be, metaphors so elliptical they function as riddles that are both beautiful and partially unintelligible. “Weight in Gold” was the one that connected, a plea for the unburdening that Zane Lowe supported but which the chart otherwise mostly overlooked; it’s still the clearest look we get at what he does, which is to circle an emotion without quite naming it. Producer Stint built and co-wrote the majority of Ology, giving that falsetto an appropriate place to land, and the only other vocalist is singer Jhené Aiko, who shares “Skipping Stones,” which she joins on top of a slab of Adrian Younge psychedelia, turning a drying up creek into the vision of a love going stagnant. Every other song, he operates entirely alone and within his own private language. He called one song “Miyazaki” and another “Percogesic,” the names referencing the Japanese animator and the over-the-counter painkiller, respectively—the latter indicating the height of his despair, which resides somewhere between a children’s cartoon and a medicine cabinet. —Tabia N. Mullings

Ro James, ELDORADO

The quickest way to sex record status goes directly through a stern church. Ro James, born Ronnie Tucker on an Army base in Stuttgart and raised by a military father turned preacher on gospel, Donny Hathaway and Otis Redding, took the road right to the bedroom and kept his hymnal in his back pocket. His debut, ELDORADO, contains a song entitled “Holy Water,” which has both meanings at the same time, an organ-and-guitar benediction that would play fine as a Sunday service offering were its object not a woman, and the song “New Religion” carries the same duality. Even the song that established him as a performer, “Permission,” was based on a sample of Willie Hutch’s 1973 “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out,” and sexual desire becomes a request instead of an assertion, a civility that the genre typically forgoes. James himself believed that “Permission” was too simple a statement to be a single and fought the decision until he lost to his A&R, Mark Pitts, who correctly anticipated the Grammy nomination that the track received. Prince’s fingerprints are all over the electric guitar on most of the track, and he shares writing duties with Miguel (whom Prince has worked with). “A.D.I.D.A.S.” stands as the funniest track here, bringing to life the childhood acronym All Day I Dream About Sex, sung over a guitar solo; the minister’s son laughs out loud from the balcony. —Brandon O’Sullivan

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This week is filled with so much self-persuasion: Steve Lacy singing a love song that’s so self-aware that he has to talk himself through its own defenses, a Fana Hues song where he stops believing anything anyone is saying. Ama goes after somebody who really can’t believe he’s been asked out by her, a friendship anthem from FLO that’s also an intimidation to some girl’s boyfriend and finally BOY SODA and his break-up caused by an act of God. Five forms of love.

Steve Lacy, “The Feeling”

Whatever happened to the love song where the singer is totally aware of how pathetic they sound and cranks the emotions up higher anyway? “The Feeling,” the single Lacy wrote and produced himself, is entirely constructed out of just that; the entire thing exists because he understands how much of a fool he sounds. This particular verse is a standard trope: the plea toward the person whose body is halfway to out-the-door, except he keeps stammering over himself in embarrassment-he understands, and so he shouts it louder. The opening couplet (“Something’s burning, I smell fire/The devil’s working hard to keep me alone”) turns to the mundane, then at the next section where he actually becomes profound; catching himself in the act of emotional processing: “When you start writing songs just to stop thinking ‘bout him/Oh, then you start writing songs and you make ‘em about him,” and the name of the other person appears without decoration, the lust travels where lust goes. He follows it with a happy memory of that night that “Seemed it was some kind of dream but it happened,” on a AirBnB in 2019, when he kept stumbling, and they’re all just one movement. —Jhanel

Fana Hues, “Recognize”

After hearing “Recognize” so many times from people who are clearly on their way out anyway, you stop believing what they say and begin to count the escape routes. Fana Hues leaves “Recognize” anchored in that suspicion, and what’s brilliant about the track is that she allows herself to become the target of her own cynicism. Hues isn’t sure she would be able to recognize love if it landed on her doorstep. Its disappointment has already eaten away at her capacity for it.

The verses stack up received statements of “It ain’t hard to say it/Or to lie/I’ve heard it all before halfway out the door” that she’s no longer willing to consume. Her hesitation comes across less as woundedness and more as weary, self-acknowledging weariness: “Can you really blame me/For being tired?” (No, Hues. No, we can’t.) Mulherin and Mulherrin’s catchy production lets her stay in control of the conversation, interrupting suitors mid-spiel with her flat dismissal, “I won’t take the bait/That same old line.” It cuts deepest when she reveals that the scar may be imperishable: “Been looking/But I don’t think I’d recognize love/If it was close enough to hit me.” And “This ain’t high school anymore” decisively ends all the old approaches, the lines that used to lure her in. —Mina Abdel

Ama, “Holding Back”

With a seduction song, ownership of the flirt is normally with the desired. But on “Holding Back,” Ama owns all of it and is even on the offensive, trying to wear down a shy guy who just won’t budge. The serenade runs on her assurance versus his hesitant nature, a funnier take than the style’s often inclined to explore. Her certainty that she will get her man before he says hardly anything back drives it, where no time is lost for laying down the challenge: “Better take your clothes off, it’s getting hot in here” and immediately framing the appeal in the here-and-now: “Watch these hips rock TikTok type like that post you hearted.” Ama does all the walking with the Dpat production; in one moment she has the full movie mob swagger (”Come be my don and daughter, top shotta baby”), and the next she has an infomercial vibe (“I’m a pro, you’re my snow, I don’t waste time”). It’s on the bridge that the challenge gets a bluff call: “So we know that you big and bad/But I got things you’ve never had,” where even the neighborhood gossip is on her side: “A little birdie told me you want more than that.” In light of this, the title query is almost entirely genuine; it’s not that he shouldn’t be holding back, it’s why is he? —Jamila W.

FLO, “Don’t Break Her Heart”

If “Don’t Break Her Heart” was an earnest best-friend-pact, it would be cute. Instead, FLO have fashioned a thinly veiled protection racket. They skip the catharsis and head straight for the boyfriend, outlining what awaits him in advance, should things get out of hand. The love they’re protecting is the friendship and the boyfriend is a factor requiring a good talking to. The taunts are playful, the UK slang a fantastic detail, “Post up on you block, blow your spot/Send the mandem ‘round your way” is both aggressive and silly; or “Beep-beep, it’s me at your front door: after which, you disappear like “poof-poof.” Julian Bunetta produces it and keeps the cartoonish threats consistent throughout, “If you break her heart/I will break your face.” The genius line is obviously “You can break her bed but/If you break her heart,” the distinction is made perfectly clear. FLO would rather drag the culprit’s doorstep to his house, than dwell over the spilled tears. —Tori Hammond

BOY SODA, “Elements”

“Elements” has to be the most forgiving breakup song that has ever existed. No one is to blame in BOY SODA’s latest single. Instead, two people built from different climates are just unlucky. He can’t help but harp on the shorthand for the breakup: ground vs. Wind, something neither party can control nor have picked for themselves. As a breakup song that absolves both parties involved, perhaps that is why it works so well.

He even escalates it beyond a relationship toward cosmic forces: “You like the ground/I like the wind/Don’t start a war with elements,” and a search for explanations persists through verses. “It all comes down to fundamental difference,” “a Your normal natural disaster,” and even the date are called as witness. Produced by MXXWLL, the astrology and the elements exist as a pleasant distraction from the simple truth: “Said you need a change wanna be a new woman/And I could never be the one to hold you.” All of the elements are a gentler version of the underlying message. He bookends the song where he began: “I’m on the ground/You’re in the wind,” two people rooted in the same place facing in opposite directions, neither reaching the other. —Phil

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Imani Imani: Papercut

• Jalen Ngonda: Doctrine of Love

• Latanya Alberto: SEEN

• Inayah: Therapy Wasn’t Enough

• sparklmami: in this body

• Mica Millar: A Little Bit of Me

• Lex Aura: see you never.

• Will Preston: Erratic Heartbeats

• Architects of Sound: Architects of Sound II

• okay coleman!: 001

• Chant God: Sable (EP)

• Mannywellz: Small Chops (EP)

• Pheelz: A Rii Set (EP)

• S!MONE: There Will Be Signs (EP)

• Kavi Synatra: Emotional Value Vol. 1 (EP)

• Dxtiny: Sweet Sins (EP)

• Viuta: Refer to Judgement (EP)

• IYAMAH: chapter five (EP)

• Ny’Aira: Melodramatic (EP)

• April + VISTA: April + VISTA on Audiotree Live (EP)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Prince: Stone

• Glenn Lewis: Impressions

• Natanya: CANDYLAND!

• Nina Sky & Statik Selektah: I’m Hot

• Jaz Karis: Faith

• Storm Reid: Clean Sweep

• Naomi Sharon: Weak

• Zenesoul: Summer Breeze

• The Colleagues & October London: Seduce Me

• Brenna Whitaker: Sunny

• Aaron Thomas: All I Need

• Joseph Solomon: HALF ON THE BLAME

• Bobby V: She Got It

• James Berkeley: my teenage dream (feat. J Warner)

• Dahi: Find Me (feat. Moses Sumney & Mez)

• Oscar Jerome: Everything In Between

• Nao Yoshioka: Safe Place (feat. Jamila Woods & Peter Cottontale)

• Sy’Rai: Late Night

• Jake&Papa: Don’t Hurt Nobody

• Sam Pounds: No Diggity

• Genia: Hot

• Kelela: point blank

• Blxst: Ruin (feat. Sasha Keable)

• FKJ: Soulmates

• Charlotte Dos Santos: Roses

• b.kae: snap ya fingers (jazzy)

• Alexia Jayy: Money

• Marie Dahlstrom: 1 Journey Away

• Michi & Mndsgn: Playing Pretend (Mndsgn RMX)

• Thelma Houston: Love is the Power

• Flwr Chyld: Squeeze

• Sipprell: Superstar

• Dreamer Isioma: On My Grind (feat. Vayda) / Love Me (feat. Dante Swan)

• Mai Mai: Why Me?

• Abrina: Gotta Get Home

• OVI WOOD: SHAKE THIS FEELING

• Richard Saunders: Bitter Honey

• Africaine: Whatever

• Chenayder, Vayda & Norah’s World: Solitude

• Chuka: Man on a Mission (feat. The Destroyer)

• Nectar Woode: Wine into Water (feat. Elton John)

• Qiuntellii: After Party

• cortex: Don’t Try

• Yo Trane: International Flavor

• Gerald Wicks: i get it, i get it

• twiin.: good life

• Monroe Jordan: freckles

• Cameron Wright: Hot and Heavy

• Ashya: Relapse

• sp84: Give It to Me (feat. Alexx Skyy)

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It’s obvious that negotiation is this week’s throughline: each and every one of these songs is a compromise. We get one who lays her terms out by the first chorus, one who dodges a want-to-be-commitment he sort of wants, and one who simply begs through a disconnected line. Ravyn Lenae provides a PSA set over a Dahi and Flanafi beat, one who turns a late-night encounter into a 911 emergency, while Jae Stephens comes to a success-or-else victory lap. Nia Smith gives us a relationship she throws away like a pair of old denim shorts; Saint Harison, the committed and apologetic, gives a stand your ground with a sorry plea. Five distinct and varied deals.

Ravyn Lenae, “Handle”

The time the count-in comes in, “Two, three, four” nestled beneath the hook, the you already locked in. “Oh my love is like a landslide, when it all comes down,” she opens, “only one way to find out.” This is Ravyn Lenae in full seductive, disclaimer fashion-the Chicagoan who perfected sounding weightless while being heavy on the Bird’s Eye run. Re-teaming with Dahi and Flanafi with a Pop sound, she’s constructing “Handle” as a proposition with all terms included. The thrill is in how calmly she lays out the terms: “Know I might be more than you could handle,” she coos over the keys, like she’s reading terms of service, before pulling the whole scheme under with: “hold on tight, one with me in the undertow.” Some of the finest pleasure lies on the fringe. After the third chorus, a voice is giving back in asides a voice would never use in a love song: “Look down beneath your fears.” “Your tail grew back, buddy.” “So what’s it going to be? Tell me.” It’s playful, a bit deranged, like this love came with a Greek chorus already knowing how it plays out. By the backstretch, she’s abandoned the pretense and only wants what she wants: “The more you think of me, the more you’ll want me calling your name.” “Can you handle me? You know I want you on the same page.” Lenae spends all of “Handle” telling you she’s too much; by the end of the song, that’s the appeal. The smart people just hold on and let it go under. —Jamila W.

Syd, “Callin’” feat. Blu June

Since when did the booty call develop an anxiety attack? Sometime between the read receipt and the rejected FaceTime, the midnight “come through”text developed a nervous system. “I’m callin’ 911 ‘cause I need your love, and you ain’t pickin’ up, I’m comin’ for your love,” Blu June wails at the very beginning of “Callin’.” For someone who’s fronted the Internet (Syd) for more than ten years and made being “too cool” an entire persona, that’s an almost alarming amount of want to begin with. The artistry is in the fine print. “I don’t really be out on the scene,” Syd confesses, “sittin’ in the section all night, that shit ain’t for me.” It’s a love song for a homebody, not a night out. Then comes the one bar that guarantees the song’s timelessness: “I know you got my messages ‘cause they ain’t turnin’ green.” She bubbles-redacted and unanswered. A generation’s worth of romantic anxieties in a single line. Syd comes back in the second verse, turning June’s anxiety into a game plan: “Take you out to brunch and get you T’d up, girl, put on that sundress that I like, I’m tryna see somethin’.” Blu June’s still calling; Syd’s already got the table reservation and a wardrobe consultation. —Jhanel

Jae Stephens, “Attaboy!”

“Good boy.” It’s two words, tossed out like a treat into a dog’s dish, and the song is in motion. The idea of “Attaboy!” is that the singer, has essentially taken a man of bad behavior, and, through what she refers to as her “unorthodox ways”,house-trained him. “I used to be a bad boy with a tail ‘tween his legs, couldn’t be fixed, that’s what all the girls said.” She fixed him. It’s Jae Stephens doing a full obedience school prime time on a Dallas Caton beat, and the joke is the lack of mercy she exhibits in it. She takes it all so seriously; there is no tongue-in-cheek wink with her, not once. The upgrades come via ad-libs that fill in details: “Now he calls on time (A miracle) and he’s so polite (And fragile).” Fragile! She trained this man and then ruined him a little, and this parenthetical doesn’t give us a chance to ignore it. “I only have to tell him once, then I’m quick to cut ‘em off if you make me wait.” By the bridge, he is furniture, and everything she has done in this song has built to this: “I got him trained, made him, taught him, raised and fixed that boy.” A long history of Pop/R&B women have sung about running their men and the interesting thing about Stephens is that it costs her nothing. She got what she wanted, and only the good boy is going to have any reason to be uncomfortable with it. Good for her. Debut on the way. —Charlotte Rochel

Nia Smith, “High”

Some breakup songs function as temperature changers, never raising their volume above conversation, and High functions in that quiet way. “High” starts almost too quiet to even be heard. “It’s only a feeling,” Nia Smith sings, “not a vibe. Used to make me feel alive.” By the fourth line, she has already categorized the relationship as a past tense phenomenon. Over production from Jack Rochon, she strings together small, mundane sentences that read like they’re only the equivalent of a shrugging shoulders until they don’t: “It’s over. Let it go. Don’t know how to let it go. But I will know soon.” The saddest metaphor is in the laundry section. “Like jeans that are faded, lost and frayed,” she sings, “it’s nothing worth saving, throw it away.”

Anyone who has clung onto a relationship long after it expired knows the specific embarrassment that comes with a comparison of worn-out, torn up jeans.The casual line cuts deeper: “I watered us so we could grow, but I know we’re dying.” This is the entire tragedy of attempting: the portion where one does everything right and the thing dies anyway.The most heartbreaking pun is in the title itself. “You don’t get me high high high, anymore.” The effect wears off, and there’s no anger involved. She just isn’t feeling it anymore, and she simply states it as she exits, the same detached tone a person might take in explaining that the milk is spoiled. “High” works by changing the temperature of whatever room it plays in, and then leaving. —Mina Abdel

Saint Harison, “minute”

The standout from the ghosted EP tries to decide between keeping someone in bed with him and needing them gone by morning. Saint Harison in “minute” can’t remain still, or in one position for longer than two lines. “Said you want forever, baby, now I need a minute,” he belts out in the chorus, “little time to lay up in this bed without you in it.” This is the entirety of the song’s machinery: a man who adores love right up to the point at which love requires any effort from him. He plays the commitment-phobe with a level of self-awareness that makes the entire persona nearly endearing.

The boasts continue to alternate with apologies. At one point he’s casual to the verge of rudeness: “And if you leave your t-shirt, I’m alright with that.” At another point he’s divulging the most inconvenient thing possible: “I admit I think about your ex, boo, a little more than maybe just a friend would do.” He lays out his deal while taking a glass of reposado: “I’m just being honest,” as though truth itself negates the hurt caused. Toward the end of the track, the swagger breaks completely. “I wish I was what you hoped I was. I’m sorry, really sorry.” He’s been wearing armor of chill the entire track, but his one genuine emotion breaks through. That leaves the question he’s been spending all his time dancing around: If you already know you’re not who she needs, what do you need her to stick around a minute for? —Imani Raven

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Chxrry: U, Me & My Ego

• Brian Jackson: Now More Than Ever

• Skye Newman: SE9

• Cecily Wilborn: Soul Therapy

• Amani Burnham: Roots and Wings

• Joey Quiñones: Inna Soul Steady Situation

• Reuben Aziz: mind the gap

• Alicia Waller: Louder, Then

• Mitchum Yacoub: A Way In

• Kat Eaton: What Happens Now

• annonXL: PRINCESS OF CHAOS

• reggie: UNDRA

• Saint Harison: ghosted (EP)

• Jordan Jackson: Back to Basics (EP)

• Phoenix James: Teeth (EP)

• MALIA: If I’m Being Honest (EP)

• Ye Ali: AFTER U LEFT (EP)

• Stevan: DEMO TAPE 1 (EP)

• Kennedy Ryon: Can I Evolve? (EP)

• Ania Hoo: MORNING STAR: SIDE A (EP)

• The Philharmonik: Transcendentalism II (EP)

• KFMD & Qing Madi: Barely Legal (EP)

Other Songs to Check Out

• CARI: Crashing Out!

• Noxz & Shae Universe: Can’t Phase Me

• Camper: MISSIN / NEXT TO ME (feat. RAHSAAN)

• Patchwork Inc. & Lynda Dawn: Anyone

• MIRIAH.: BLUE FACES

• YalaBear: $HOW U OFF (feat. Rakiyah)

• Arima Ederra: You’re My (A COLORS Show)

• H.LLS & Mahalia: FCUK

• Gotts Street Park & Matt Maltese: Some Birds Don’t Fly

• Samant & Barney Bones: BENJAMINS

• Olivia Escuyos: GET RIGHT!

• The Erikson Project & Odoneila: Camisole

• Aaron Taylor: Lifeline

• Jessie Reyez: UR HEARTBEAT (WHO DO U THINK ABOUT AT 2AM)

• Rory, BLK ODYSSY & Lucky Daye: Still Be Mine

• AJ McLean & Ty Dolla $ign: Flowers

• Baby J: Fallen Angel

• Blood Orange: Essex_Honey.mp3

• Khadi Lee: DON’T

• BLKPRL: Art of Desire

• Kareen Lomax: AOTW

• Jazlyn Martin: Germy

• PJ Morton: Close Enough

• Cautious Clay: Green Screen (1pm)

• Lex Aura: Denicia

• Dylan Sinclair: On Cam

• Brianna Castro: shot in the dark!

• Aaron Page: Mine

• Low.bō: Spine

• Flozigg: A Thousand Degrees

• Makindé: thrudavine (feat. Niko Noir)

• CANDIACE, Tamar Braxton & Darrel Walls: If Only…. (The Conversation)

• Guordan Banks: Alright

• Sylo: How Sweet

• WILLOW: Talk On the Hill

• BenjiFlow & Haile: Standing Here

• Faye Meana: The Way I Love

• Misha, Phil Beaudreau & cocobona: Dream of Summer

• Mia Lailani: EBB & FLOW

• Jacob Sigman: X OVER ZERO

• Echo Huang: PRAY FOR ME

• Arlissa: A Girl Just Wants to Be…

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These are songs we keep reaching for—on the morning commute, in the kitchen, late at night when the phone is charging and nobody’s texting back This batch leans hard into R&B’s most tender corner: desire without shame, reunion without guarantee, and the kind of self-worth that refuses to negotiate. From an East London singer-songwriter-producer who self-produces her own longing to a Manchester vocalist painting entire moods in purple, here are five songs that had us reaching for the replay button all week.

kwn, “Touch Myself”

In recent years, many younger R&B vocalists have adopted a very specific style (which I hate): a muffled, half-whispered vocal that prioritizes texture over technique, hiding behind the production until you aren’t quite sure who the vocalist is. But East London’s Khyra Wilson, who writes, produces and records under the name kwn, turns that on its head. On “Touch Myself,” the producer-singer sits right at the front of the record, close enough that you can hear her take a breath between lines, and lets her voice do the sweating.

Backed by swishy percussion and slick synthesizers from producers FAXONLY and Zeek, kwn’s track is a slow-jam reminiscent of SWV that maintains a slow tempo but keeps the intensity building as it goes. kwn herself matches the pace perfectly. Lines like “I touch myself just thinking about you” can be heard as boastful or a confession, depending on who delivers it, but with a raspy, breathy delivery, it can come off as both, as if the singer is revealing something they didn’t plan to say. Things get a little looser and sweeter in the second verse (“I’m sexually frustrated/And I can demonstrate it if you like”) as if she is grinning through the lines as the drums close in on her. She has clearly written this line for herself, as the delivery is very personal (“I nominate myself tonight”), almost like it’s not that unusual to hear those words spoken outside of a song.

Last June, kwn released her debut EP, With All Due Respect, on RCA and featured a collaboration with Kehlani, “Worst Behaviour,” for which she earned a BET nomination, alongside a sold-out headline tour last summer. kwn’s sophomore EP, And All Pride Aside, will release on June 26, and if there is one thing her latest release shows, she certainly knows not to ask for permission to get the job done. The Walthamstow native, who grew up Nigerian and Irish, learned to play the piano from a young age and started making music on SoundCloud at 11 years old, has spent more than a year making music she has produced herself. On “Touch Myself,” she makes you feel like you’re not going to get the chance to wait any longer. — Jamila W.

Glenn Lewis, “G.Y.A.M.L. (My Love)”

It’s been 24 years since people were comparing Glenn Lewis to Stevie Wonder. Glen Ricketts, who released the album World Outside My Window in 2002, got the comparisons early, as he was a singing competition winner back in high school, and he didn’t have the “thug” or “preacher” vibe that was in demand for R&B singers back then. Then, like many artists whose sounds didn’t fit neatly into a category, he dropped off. He released the Moment of Truth album on an indie imprint in 2013, and a concept album with DJ Jazzy Jeff followed in 2017.

“G.Y.A.M.L. (My Love)” will be on the upcoming album Overture, and you can tell Lewis has been honing his craft in the background. “Giving You All My Love” originally was an instrumental released last year by Seige Monstracity. It featured drums, piano, and horns, and the instrumental itself created a groove that made you want to nod your head. It wasn’t trying to sound like a specific period. So, it’s very easy for Lewis to just slot in his voice like he’s been listening to this track for months.

“Crazy seeing ya
Was wondering how you been
You stayed on my mind
Swear it’s like fate brought us back again.”

It’s a classic romcom theme, seeing someone you once dated, and rekindling a flame, and Lewis sings it all with so much control that it doesn’t sound needy at all. He plays with phrasing so much that it makes you think he’s singing “questioning” for a few beats while you really only hear it once. His father was a part of the Canadian funk band, Crack of Dawn, so it’s easy to notice that the rhythm is driving the music, not the voice. The voice is just comping to the rhythm. “Zimbabwe to Kenya/Sun kissed ‘cause she African/You been stole my heart but you caught/Ain’t need to I’m giving in.” It’s a song about reconnecting with someone, with the smoothness and lack of urgency in Lewis’ voice helping sell the idea of being out of touch for the past decade-plus of years. — Phil

Tiffany, “Treat Me Like a Princess”

Somewhere in a box or on a hard drive is a clip of eleven-year-old Tiffany Evans competing on Star Search and receiving perfect scores from every judge. She was the only contestant in the show’s history to ever do that. Fast-forward three years and she had a Columbia Records deal and a Ciara feature on the smash “Promise Ring,” the track for which sounded out a summer of MySpace profile pages and Limited Too shopping bags. She was in two of Tyler Perry’s films. She worked with Timbaland, too. Eventually, the phone stopped ringing, as it would for many young Black women who grew out of whatever it was that was profitable.

The time gap that occurred between 2015’s All Me EP and now has been spent doing things that don’t make for press releases: writing, strengthening her vocal skills, and determining what it is that she really wants to say, without the involvement of a major label. “Treat Me Like a Princess” is Tiffany’s first release in almost a year. It’s the first track off of a new chapter called Tiffany, and its release reveals that entire period of resetting herself in all its entirety. Produced by Dwayne “Toruxd” McPherson, Michael “Raz” Melvin and Prince Happoldt, the track wraps a diamond-filled request in a soft, smooth vocal delivery. She sounds more loving than forceful on this track, as if she’s wondering whether it would be easier on her part to ask nicely than to demand.

“Diamonds on me dancing/I like when I’m your main attraction/I don’t really like when you miss the vision/If you can’t do nothing else, just treat me like a princess,” the lyrics are clever in their construction. She sets the tone by stating something she does enjoy, then negates something that’s not quite right; thus, when she gets to her demands, it’s not so much of an ultimatum as it is a correction. On the second verse she gets even more direct, like she’s leaning in closer to the microphone: “I can be subtle about what I need from you/But it’s so exciting when you’re doing things that I teach you to do.” The wisdom gained over the last two decades of industry experience seeps through that line; she was teaching people how to be to her at age fourteen. The song was written by her, and the VVS reference continues for the entirety of the track, seamlessly transitioning from jewelry to clarity to self-realization. By the bridge, you want to be ice-ing her up to your core. She’s earned that right. — Imani Raven

Blxst, “Just My Type”

You might say Blxst’s self-produced drums sit just past where you’d expect them. Not lazy or dragging, but a beat upbeat that your body instinctively leans forward to catch it. “Just My Type,” which is Blxst’s latest single and the first lead from his upcoming album Labor of Love (June 12), rides that pocket like a weapon. It begins with a guitar loop from Sam Wun so rich it feels like the warm glow of a space heater in a small one-bedroom apartment, and when Blxst comes in, it’s almost as if he’s starting mid-sentence, “You can’t take me nowhere/I don’t care nothin’ ‘bout no time and place, I want you here.” It feels like he is telling us something, like he’s speaking it as he goes. And that is a trick. One day, all we have left are the memories we made. On paper, it’s just Hallmark fluff, but here it is like a man who knows how to count down his life and chooses to count recklessly.

“How many risks did we take? (Too much)
How many rules did we break? (Too much).”

These are questions he answers himself before you can get a word in edgewise. Like he’s already having this conversation in his mind. — Randy

Daley, “Lavender”

Here he is. Daley has taken the best part of a decade and a great deal of labor to build up a global career on such vocally striking tracks that he risks sounding too smooth a song, the kind of glossy delivery that is easy to tune out. He’s performed alongside such luminaries as Pharrell Williams, Stevie Wonder, Robert Glasper and Jill Scott. His most recent single, a collaborative piece with UK producer Swindle titled “Lavender,” finally allows all that prowess to find a space worthy of its potential. “Is there any way/We could lose this crowd?/Make a getaway/Up to a distant cloud,” and you know where this song is heading: “Lavender” is about escapism. But it’s not about tucking yourself in bed and singing a soothing song; it’s about placing yourself in a highly controlled state of mind in order to escape to the heavens. Swindle’s sound, which sits somewhere between the realms of jazz, neo-soul and UK bass, isn’t something you want to get lost in, because you want to be able to keep track of yourself, given the track is so leisurely and relaxed. The walls are coming down and the ceiling is levitating and your home is increasing until it’s just you and one other individual. You can only imagine the presence of the other person speaking to you while you float in the clouds. “There are new colors that appear/When you’re here with me,” Daley raptures. — Nehemiah

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• 6LACK: Love Is the New Gangsta

• Moses Sumney: Is God Is (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

• Thee Marloes: Di Hotel Malibu

• Patrick Paige II: Love You, Mean It

• CJ Monét: Confessions of a People Pleaser

• Willie Clayton: Evolution

• Bri Babineaux: Briana

• Keenan TreVon: Buy Me Flowers

• We the Band: 911!

• REMI: Left On RED (EP)

• Anaïs Cardot: Map of Her Shadow (EP)

• SIPHO.: YEARN (EP)

• Ooma: A Timeless Echo (EP)

• Deliverie: From Deliverie with Love (EP)

• Rebel Rae: Typewriter (EP)

• BVNGS: Only Cause I’m Drunk Too (EP)

• Justin Garner: songs you can feel (EP)

• Yoko Gold: Gemini Moon (EP)

• Suzanne Sheer: Voices (EP)

• Konyikeh: Cincere (EP)

• DAMOYEE: Not My Place (EP)

• CARMIT: CARMIT (EP)

• Kali Sade: Take XXI (EP)

• Qui: Cold Summer (EP)

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Other Songs to Check Out

• Ro James: 5th Gear

• Arno Sacco: Bridges

• Adrian Younge: Feel the High Life

• NappyHIGH: Angel (kp) [feat. Devin Morrison & Brad Bellard]

• Jesse Gold, Jesse Barrera & Gabe Bondoc: Date Night

• DVYN: In My Face

• Charlotte Dowsson: Please

• Olympia Vitalis: Money Tree

• Vedo: Oooh (V-Mix)

• JACOTÉNE: Tell Me (I Heard It from My Father)

• Pimmie: Call Me When You Can (Live Sessions)

• The Crank Crusaders (Raheem DeVaughn, YahZarah & Bootsy Vegas): Tambourine

• Stefan Mahendra: Too Late

• r.em.edy: leaving with my lipgloss on

• Bobby V: Easy to Love

• I Am Roze: With You

• Lu’: MME

• Orla Rae: M25

• SemajB: Love Ain’t Fair

• Jimmie Allen: Shaking In My Boots

• THEHONESTGUY: WAHALA RIDDIM

• Devon Culture: HOW DO YOU SLEEP

• Johnny Gill: A Dance, A Kiss

• Heartbreak Alumni: Can’t Help Myself

• Felix Ames: I Don’t Wanna Die

• TA Thomas: I Found You

• 2BYG: I Want You

• Ne-Yo: Ms. Tundra

• Sean Leon & God’s ALGORITHM: MET SOMEONE ELSE

• Roses Gabor: RAINBOWS IN SPRINGTIME

• Jason Dhakal: Play

• Gayathri Krishnan: Self Esteem

• Lost Girl: Wild

• Stevan: Wishing That We Met

• Samba Jean-Baptiste & Rockie Rode: January Sweetheart

• Courtnie, Mad Keys & Phoelix: Commas

• Eric Penn: Hit & Run

• Zeke Bleu: Under Your Spell

• Avara: what did you think love would be

• Maleigh Zan: Bad Bunny

• KAYAM: Guilty Pleasure

• pacificjoshua.: luv u right

• Majid Jordan: Cold

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This week’s picks: a Jezebel, a therapist cameo, a runway strut, and two breakups going in opposite directions. All in one week.

Giveon, “JEZEBEL”

“Tonight, you’re mine, Jezebel, mine” uses a thumping swing that evokes a bar scene. The choruses created a build-up for a big note on the bar, but here, his baritone rests under live instrumentation, and this is Giveon’s best hook in a few cycles. BELOVED. Act II gives Giveon’s baritone a brief spot for “JEZEBEL,” the biggest of five new tracks. Giveon fulfills a brief seven-person production team contract with, from within the team—Jahaan Sweet, Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman, Kemy Siala, Los Hendrix, Matthew Burnett, Peter Lee Johnson, and Sevn Thomas—with a swing that refuses the brooding that BELOVED is known for. He keeps this brief contract for “JEZEBEL” with the best admission in Giveon’s discography. AD “He had you in him too/More than just a kiss or two/There’s no need to introduce/I know just what you are” is a baritone, and it is all four declaratives. The baritone refuses a plea.

Baby Rose, “But, Nvm”

Before her two albums and a Grammy, Jasmine Rose Wilson was the next Billie Holiday. Her press kit has had its elements removed since 2024. The song “But, Nvm,” from July’s album YEARNALISM, is her best single yet. “But, Nvm” opens with “Waiting on a train,” expressing her desire to take a train “somewhere you won’t call my name,” or “where every summer doesn’t feel like rain,” or “I just need a little sun.” Her contralto is still a contralto, as staging has flipped. “But, Nvm” was co-produced by Wilson with Joe Harrison and Ryan James Carr; the arrangement gets handed an acoustic guitar, a small horn section, and almost no room for the kind of wallowing the Holiday-comparison crowd has been waiting for. A verse’s worth of work is being carried by one syllable. Her Materialists soundtrack work and the Leon Thomas record Mutt were rest stops, but the press kit was being cleared all along. Streams were earned by “Friends Again,” yet the actual exit from the Holiday comparison was being saved for “But, Nvm.” Press kit cleared.

Tone Stith, “Pageant Stage”

Brass enters early on “Pageant Stage.” Three horn stabs that escort, not accompany, even before Stith opens his mouth. Strongest stretch on The Edge. Christopher “Brody” Brown and Kenneth “KP” Paige stack a runway-strut snare under those horns, but the tempo still pulls in by one beat so Stith can narrate his own entrance. “Straight from the pageant stage/There you are/Lookin’ like a star.” His vocal stays loose throughout, almost spoken in spots; the lift is saved for the punchline at the top of each refrain. “Lil Miss Expensive, she got good taste,” snaps the diction from the MC of the evening to a guy at the bar.

Within the song’s midpoint the swerve has arrived. Stith opens the script.

“You the definition of a perfect ten
Lighter, action, cameras flashin’, you the main event.”

Two lines later it detonates to the “Type to make me take it off of safety/And fire in it, fire in it/Fuck around and die in it, die in it.”

Jaz Karis, “Life Is Unfair”

Karis’s 2018 COLORS performance of “Petty Lover” pulled sixteen million views. Her first album took six more years. During that gap the songwriter who once wrote songs on a Barbie tape recorder in South London commuted between London and Los Angeles, dropped Safe Flight in September 2024, dropped the Loud in the Water EP a year later, yet watched the U.K. R&B discourse pass her by twice anyway. “Life Is Unfair” is the song the wait built. Prodigal Sons on Rhodes and brushed kit. Her first line on “Life Is Unfair” is an apology for ghosting. “It’s been a while, I probably should’ve text you something.” The apology gets replaced with a hum—”Life is, mmm/Not fair.”

Bryant Barnes, “Apollo”

“Apollo” opens with three images and no melody (“TV lights/In your eyes/Shine till I’m blue.”). Yet Barnes has already locked his cadence inside the first six lines. Short phrases stacked into a confession throughout the record. Each “maybe” line gets withheld until its closing word slams the verdict shut: “Maybe I’m helplessly in love with you/Maybe I’m desperate/For your attention/Maybe there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do.” It’s the opener Barnes wasted on a closer slot.

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Mýa: Retrospect

• Giveon: Beloved: Act II

• Tank and the Bangas: The Last Balloon

• Dua Saleh: Of Earth & Wires

• Tone Stith: The Edge

• Adria Kain: This Feels Like Home

• Karen Bernod: IRIS

• The Elovaters: Shark Belly Motel

• Ras-I: Heart of Love

• Brooklyn Funk Essentials: Black Butterfly

• Stella Heath: For Billie

• Bobbi Stella: Risk It All

• Down to the Bone: This Way Forward

• Randy Brecker: Espirito

• James Savage: PINE

• Tayc: JOŸA

• Johnny Drille: Before the Morning Light

• PawPaw Rod: Picture Day: A PawPaw Rod Album

• BNXN & Sarz: The Game Needs Us (EP)

• M’elle: Stages (EP)

• Maya J’an: Blindfaith County (EP)

• Shaylin B: Brand New (EP)

• Malaya: April Showers (EP)

• Zilo: Ready to Bloom (EP)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Jorja Smith: What’s Done Is Done

• Nao Yoshioka & My Anh: Pieces of Me

• Quanie: Right There

• Thee Marloes: 6 Years

• kwn: idea of love (A COLORS SHOW)

• Victoria Monét: Let Me (Live Rendition)

• Lee Lewis: The Long Way

• Michi & Mndsgn: Are You Lonesome?

• Iris Aeria: lavender

• Black Atlass: Yours and Mine

• Nick Hakim: Real Here Now / Water

• OVI WOOD: Playing Games In My Face

• Cerrone & Adi Oasis: New Highs

• Autumn Paige: Money Money Money

• LIZ: Juicy Sweet

• Leven & Flow Clark: how dare you

• Danny Singh: HONEYBBY

• Quail P: Happy Tears

• point 5ve & October London: Grown Man Business (Remix)

• Larissa Lambert: Blood On the Strings

• The Colleagues & Kevin Ross: A Little

• Owen Saward: Hard to Get

• Lex Aura: Delusion

• Courtney Bell & Ron E: He Don’t Know

• Latanya Alberto: Window to the Soul

• Adanna Duru & Bas: One on One

• MorMor & Celeste: Like Heaven

• Devon Gilfillian: Moonflower

• Devin Morrison & Seafood Sam: ZODIAC SINE

• Thutmose: PRADA YOU

• AMARIA BB: Break Me Off

• tg.blk: So Bad

• The Philharmonik & Jakhari Smith: I Might as Well

• ROME & Prod. Dior: Figure It Out

• Marley Bleu: Missin You

• Nezi: Waiting

• twin.: vibrations

• Paris Rabone: BIRDS

• Haley Smalls: Don’t Touch

• Angel: Call Me

• Shelby Ruger: nintendo switch

• VARTIDA: Slow Burner

• Ishmael Nehemiah: Bout It (feat. Natalie Chludz)

• Nectar Woode: Rivers End

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This week’s picks: a soulful piano confession from a British girl group chasing catharsis on the dance floor. One of electronic R&B’s most exacting architects delivering a wiry guitar manifesto. A veteran balladeer staring down temptation on both sides of Saturday. The Mother’s Day song that shouldn’t work but does. And a Fort Lauderdale falsetto making the case that nobody in R&B is giving the pillow-talk song enough reverence. We got into it.

FLO, “Therapy at the Club”

Before FLO’s voices even arrive, the piano has already done its job. Built around a single repeating chord progression that never resolves where you expect, the arrangement from Lostboy and Leroy Clampitt alongside Lauren “Amma” Keen gives FLO’s stacked three-part harmonies room to breathe in the gaps. Most piano-led R&B ballads in 2026 are drowning their singers in reverb and string pads, afraid of silence; “Therapy at the Club,” the title track from the British trio’s sophomore album (due July 24 on Republic), kills that instinct dead. Through the verses, Jorja and Renee and Stella trade the lead until the lines blur, and when they land together on “go run your mouth to a stranger ‘cause their arms feel safer/Than telling the man that you love he’s not enough,” the harmonies thin to near-solo before catching each other again. Given its weight by being almost unaccompanied, that second phrase changes the whole song. Girl-group records have always been about women holding each other steady when everyone else fumbles the job. This one knows it. Sneaky devastating. — Jamila W.

Kelela, “linknb”

A Three 6 Mafia that could belong on a mixtape opens “linknb” and plays the entire song without stopping. Oscar Scheller produced the track—Kelela’s second single from new avatar, her third album, out July 10 on Warp—and the drums underneath are metallic and heavy, closer to post-punk than anything she’s done before, or maybe closer to shoegaze--hard to place exactly. The sub-bass landscapes that made 2023’s Raven feel like it was recorded inside a submarine are gone. In their place: a coiling six-string figure and a beat that clangs. Kelela started the song during a stretch when she couldn’t write, and it sounds like one—the lyrics circle back on themselves, “Seed to a star/New avatar,” each pass adding force. The mantra origin bleeds into the structure. Lines loop, gain weight, refuse to land. Halfway through the second verse, “all I know is that I paved the way, underpaid”—the melody drops out of its register, drops to speech for a beat and a half, and the guitar drags it back. A labor complaint about the economics of being a Black woman building experimental music at pop’s edges, dropped into a dance track the way an overdue bill gets dropped into dinner conversation. — Phil

PJ Morton, “Sell My Soul”

PJ Morton plays keys for Maroon 5. Six Grammys. A Disney songwriting credit for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. He is also a New Orleans soul singer whose solo records operate on a completely different schedule, and his upcoming double album Saturday Night, Sunday Morning makes the split literal—R&B tracks and gospel tracks, divided by a comma and a conviction. “Sell My Soul” lives on the Saturday half. The piano and the organ underneath it could’ve come from Greater St. Stephen Baptist Church, where Morton’s father Bishop Paul Morton Sr. pastored for decades. The refusal—you can’t have control, I will never sell my soul—names no addressee. The industry, temptation, the devil. Morton never picks one. Then he breaks:

“I admit sometimes
It gets so rough
And I feel like I had enough.”

Four bars where the whole posture falls apart and the vocal wobbles. Fifteen years in a pop-rock arena band, a Disney ride, and the realest four bars Morton has put on tape all year are about being tired. — Imani Raven

Eric Bellinger, “Just Like You”

In 1958, Bobby Day sang “Rockin’ Robin.” His grandson Eric Bellinger, raised in Compton, co-wrote for Usher and Chris Brown before building a solo R&B catalog starting in 2014. “Just Like You” is a Mother’s Day song. Troy Oliver and Troy Taylor produced it—both quiet-storm architects—and the arrangement—not sure what else to call it—sits on brushed drums and a keyboard bed that sounds like somebody’s house on a Sunday. In the first verse the wedding ring stays on. Adversity goes unnamed. Bellinger sings about a woman who held her head up through whatever it was, never told him what it was, and quoted Philippians 4:13 enough that he eventually got it inked across his sternum.

“Told me I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me
Now it’s tatted on my chest.”

Second verse hands over a teaching method. “You taught me everything without sayin’ a word.” He’s been writing R&B since the early 2010s. Usher records. Chris Brown records. His own catalog starting in 2014. None of the catalog work prepares you for a Mother’s Day song with a sternum tattoo, a wedding ring she never took off, an adversity she never named, and a Compton address. — Randy

Kyle Dion, “Nature’s Perfume”

Anton Goransson, a Swedish beatmaker, produced “Nature’s Perfume” with Blake Straus. The synths underneath drip and pool, wet enough to feel humid. Over them, Goransson dropped a kick and snare so dry they could’ve been recorded in a closet, no reverb anywhere to soften the edges. Kyle Dion, the Fort Lauderdale singer who’s been working a breathy falsetto since SUGA in 2019 and through SASSY, If My Jeans Could Talk, and last year’s SOULAR, floats above the contrast. He opens: “Dripping nature’s perfume/Under pressure, babe/Lemme press you out.” Halfway through he sings “Perfect syncopation, no interludes,” and the song does exactly that. One pulse from bar one through bar last. No breakdown, no key change. Near the end Dion drops out of falsetto into a spoken register, asks his partner to undress, and the three minutes of held tension finally lets go. Ay dios mio. — F. Qureshi

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Mack Keane: Wide Eyed

• Slowe: In Moments

• Blue Lab Beats: The Blue Lab Beats Show

• Navah Sea, Braxton Cook & Saxton Chef: What Do I Know Now?

• Szymon Justyński: Last Romantic Warrior

• Hil St. Soul: Nasilyfa

• Brother Wallace: Electric Love

• Token Honey: Token Honey

• Matthew Stevens: Matthew Stevens

• Stix Hooper: Cookin’ Up the Groove

• Isaiah Kaleo: icymi (EP)

• Tia Gordon: i asked the stars for this x (EP)

• Toulouse: Blue On Blue (EP)

• Jenevieve: CRYSALIS (CODA)

• Janine: Pain and Paradise Deluxe

• Chris Brown: BROWN (Optional)

Other Songs to Check Out

• 6LACK: Ashin the Blunt (feat. Young Thug)

• Tank and the Bangas: Nighttime (feat. David Shaw & Austin Brown)

• Tiffany: Treat Me Like a Princess (Even.biz Exclusive)

• Karri: Charge It to the Game

• Kevon Edmonds: No Ordinary Love

• Aaron Frazer: It’s a Shame

• ROE: Body

• Yaya: That Girl

• New Edition: Im Feeling You

• Ojerime: 4ME

• H3rizon: Certified Lover Girl

• MALIA: Shallow

• Lizzen, Vedo & Jacquees: Work It Out (Can We)

• TA Thomas: You Got Your Wings

• Sonny Tennet: Call Her Home

• Teyana Taylor & Wale: Bed of Roses

• IYAMAH: sehuli

• Iris Aeria: lavender

• Sean Gibbs & Frida Touray: Wounded Healers

• Annie Tracy: Moment

• Tamera: Undeniable (feat. Aitch)

• reggie: 2b

• HXRY: ALL THE WAY THROUGH

• Jawan: Always On My Mind (feat. Sis) [Cover]

• Rebel Rae: Baby We Made It

• Amari Noelle: GOTTA KNOW

• REMI: I Tried

• Paradise & Sweata: Predictable (Remix)

• Brenna Whitaker: Purple Rain

• Tay Iwar: Say My Name

• Kuzi Cee: Shot In the Dark

• Nic Dean: Sirens

• Khalil, Snooze God & Delia Li: So What

• Naomi Sharon: Better Days

• Flwr Chyld: Wrapped Around

• Ambré: Laugh Later, Cry Now (feat. CARI)

• Tasha: Spring (feat. Jamila Woods & L’Rain)

• The Womack Sisters: Chauffeur

• October London: Tik Tok Shop

• Lu’: ESCAPE / Back Road Blues’

• Qendresa: Rain in July / Be the One

• Dreamer Isioma & The Celestials!: Life Isn’t Fair

• Phil.: make it right / luv you all night

• Mega Simone: Is This Empathy

• Elujay: Bomo

• 95ANTNY: SLiDE

• Cedric Brazle: mine.

• Denisa Julia: CHANGES

• JacQuar 937: TTM

• SiMaya: when i’m mad

• Coline Creuzot: Should’ve Thought About It

• Jon Lampley, Lawrence & Louis Cato: Dock of the Bay

• Eloise: How Lucky

• NIKEE MUZE: care less

• okay coleman!: Let Me Go

• James Blake: Trying Times (A COLORS Show)

• Dionne Warwick & John Legend: Where Is Your Heart

• Che Ecru: 1:11

• Chezile: Mr. Man (feat. Dominique Da Silva)

• Carter Ace: phase 3.1*

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This week’s five R&B songs range from the confessional to the confrontational. Chris Brown drops to his knees over a blues-soaked groove with Leon Thomas, Joyce Wrice surrenders to something she doesn’t fully trust, and Chxrry and Mariah the Scientist trade venom and war paint over Believve’s tinted-window production. Mýa links with Too $hort for a synth-heavy late-night flirtation ahead of her first album in eight years, and The-Dream—freshly anointed one of America’s greatest living songwriters—returns to the thing he’s always done best: steal somebody’s girl and laugh about it.

Chris Brown, “Fallin’” feat. Leon Thomas

Tank’s background vocals land first, low and churchy, humming underneath as though an organ got left droning in a church basement. The bassline follows, a thick pulse that Antonio Moses and Roccstar built around what amounts to a late-night confession booth, and Brown leans all the way in. His 12th album, BROWN, drops this Friday, and “Fallin’” is the final single before it arrives, but the song feels unencumbered, already loose. The music video steals, oops, borrows its warm-toned cinematography and suited-up aesthetic from Sinners. Brown occupies that second category here with zero irony. He pleads on his knees, and I mean he is begging: “Tryna plant my feet on the floor/Can’t believe how I’m fallin’.” His melisma curls around the chorus as though he’s gripping a doorframe, trying not to slide further.

Leon Thomas takes the verse that shifts the song from a plea into something heavier. Brown is spiraling; Thomas walks through the wreckage with his eyes open. A gorgeous double meaning is buried in “Fell in love when you land here/Didn’t even know you had wings”: she arrived as grace, and she also might fly away. He goes to “I loved you until the casket/I just wish we could get past it/Burnin’ bridges ‘til our paths meet again,” and those three lines reshape the entire song. Brown can’t find his footing. Thomas already sees where the freefall ends and has accepted it. With writing partner Clifton Haralson, they’ve put together the kind of blues-soaked R&B duet that used to anchor whole eras of radio, a song about two men fluent in loss who still show up to the session to sing about it. It’s a step in the right direction, but let’s not get carried away. Will that be enough for a 27-track upcoming bloated album?

Joyce Wrice, “Crack the Code”

Four years after Overgrown and its KAYTRANADA-blessed standout “Iced Tea” put her name in rotation, and a handful of guest features later (Jordan Ward, Mahalia, Jaz Karis), Joyce Wrice hasn’t rushed toward a sophomore album. Since dropping singles through her own imprint via BMG, “Break Me In” in January ran hotter, Amerie-era percussion and a frank demand for physical release: “I need you to break me in/Don’t make me wait.” On “Crack the Code,” produced again by Malik Ninety Five, the heat has lowered to a simmer. Wrice described the song as written from the perspective of her own guarded instincts meeting the one who makes guarding yourself nearly impossible, “exciting, but there’s tension underneath it all.” That tug lives in the phrasing. “The way ya killing me softly, so gently/Oh, it got me weak, I don’t understand” sounds a little spooked by how good surrender actually is. Wrice hovers just above the beat, and the pull between wanting to fold and wanting to bolt is the whole engine.

Chxrry, “Bottles & Lights” feat. Mariah the Scientist

A Nextel chirp opens the track, a direct line, no middleman, and Believve’s production glides in behind it with tinted-window patience. Chxrry became the first woman XO Records ever signed. Her debut album U, Me & My Ego arrives later this spring, and “Bottles & Lights” is the single that clarifies what kind of record she wants to make: one where getting your heart smashed and going out with your girls aren’t separate moods but the same night. She opens venomously:

“You was eating me for dinner back in the Maldives
Thought I was the one when you had me down on my knees
Met my family in December, thought I would get a ring
Whole time you was fuckin’ these bitches in Sandy Springs.”

Mariah the Scientist picks up the thread from the other side of that same betrayal, her tone running at a lower temperature than Chxrry’s, bruised and slow-burning where Chxrry was sharp. “Said I want a winner, but not the kind that would cheat/Not the kind bringing bitches back up to the Four Seasons.” She names the hotel, the behavior, the type, and flips the gaze outward: “If y’all got so much to say then why y’all ain’t been stop me?” It’s a dare aimed at gossip commenters and concerned DMs alike. Between them, Chxrry and Mariah built a song that moves from wound to war paint in three minutes, and the recurring mantra, “real bitches back in style,” stings more for how unbothered they both sound delivering it. They already got dressed and left.

Mýa, “Just a Little Bit” feat. Too $hort

The intro plays out as a 2 a.m. phone call that both parties hoped for. Mýa picks up: “It’s 2am, now you wanna call somebody back?” Too $hort, casual as a Cadillac idle: “I ain’t never too busy for you.” Grown-folk flirtation with no pretense of coyness and zero interest in playing it cool. Mýa hasn’t put out a studio album in eight years; Retrospect, her tenth, lands May 15 on Planet 9, the independent label she founded long before artist ownership became an industry talking point. She toured with Brandy and Monica last year on The Boy Is Mine Tour, celebrated Fear of Flying’s 25th anniversary with a vinyl reissue and a BET Awards performance of “Case of the Ex” that went viral, and was named by Billboard one of the Top Female Artists of the 21st Century.

LaMar Edwards’s production on “Just a Little Bit” is rooted in the late-’80s Minneapolis funk that anchors the album, synths pulsing with that Rick James-adjacent heat that Mýa has called “a bridge between the past and the future.” The drums stay crisp and the bass runs warm enough to sit in your ribs. She hits the pre-chorus (“Heartbreakers break hearts/Love makers make life/But you’ll never feel real love, unless you’re willin’ to try”) and sings it the way you deliver advice you figured out decades ago and haven’t had to revisit. Too $hort’s verse is a full-tilt cameo; he’s in the Cadillac with vogues and wires, top down, talking about “Put this thang on your mind/Make you drop it to the floor.” Classic $hort Dog. Mýa has always had a gift for making features sound as if they wandered into her living room and decided to stay, and by the bridge she’s hosting a party for two: “We can get this started/Baby we can have our own party.” She’s not asking.

The-Dream, “Bring That Body”

Four words into the lead single from LoveHate 2, The-Dream reopens a book he first cracked in 2007: “Previously on Love/Hate.” His debut album landed in 2007, when ringtone rap and watered-down R&B hybrids dominated the radio, and he and Tricky Stewart answered by writing hits that bent pop into alien shapes: Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body.” As a solo artist, The-Dream always kept the stranger, dirtier versions of those ideas for himself (we know), and Love/Hate was the proof, an album about desire that never cleaned up after itself. Nineteen years later, LoveHate 2 marks his first commercial release through a major label since 2013’s IV Play, arriving via his Dreamboy Records partnership with Republic. The New York Times just named him one of the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters, a designation that was earned largely through other people’s hit records. He could come back sober and reflective. He chooses to come back macking.

Stewart co-produced both “Bring That Body” and its spiritual ancestor “I Luv Your Girl,” and the blueprint hasn’t budged: locate the girl whose man ain’t shit and pitch an alternative with zero subtlety. “Heard he didn’t love you/Tell me where to kiss it, tell me how to fix it/Call it hatin’, but he ain’t shit” has The-Dream at full cheerful ruthlessness, delivering a home-wrecking bid dressed in falsetto silk. In the second verse, he drops the pretense: “I ain’t judgin’/I’m just a messenger here to undress you/Maybe I shouldn’t address you like that.” That last line, the flicker of self-awareness that he immediately ignores, is funnier than any written punchline. The bridge goes fully unhinged:

She belong to you, my nigga, we gon’ see
We’re just friends/But I got keys
Let myself in, then I’m on ski’s
Like, “‘Wee.’”

I haven’t heard a grown man giggle through an infidelity metaphor with this much joy since the original Love/Hate. “I want to make a record about where love is now,” he told the press. “Relationships became cheapened. People used to fight for their love.” He went and made a song about stealing somebody’s girl and laughing about it on the way out.

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Durand Bernarr: BERNARR.

• Jarrod Lawson: Just Let It

• Taj Mahal & Phantom Blues Band: Time

• Oteil Burbridge & Lamar Williams Jr.: The Offering

• The Nth Power: Never Alone

• duendita: existential thottie

• Traetwothree & OG Parker: Sorry, I’m Not Sorry

• Mellissa: Diamond Baby (EP)

• India Shawn: Subject to Change (EP)

• Jahson Paynter: is anybody home! (EP)

• Tiara Thomas: Make It Make Sense (EP)

• Essosa: Crush! (EP)

• Canti: Citrus (EP)

• Maya Law & Freya Ray: Tall Tales (EP)

• Kehlani: Kehlani (Uncut Edition)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Alina Baraz: Take Care of You

• Jon Onabowu: The Emergence

• Bryson Tiller: IT’S OK

• Chenayder: Wonder

• Calvin Richardson: Radio Rodeo

• Mack Keane: Cherry Red (A COLORS Show)

• Charlie Bereal: When You’re Around

• Rio Sterling: Die On Me

• Lucy Park: BLUE SASHIKO

• Dayo Bello: Stand Still

• Bobby V: Both Ways

• Cory Henry & Rafael Labate: Dance (Remix)

• Lex Aura: Gravity

• KAYAM: Deja Vu

• Kid Travis: Diamonds On Your Neck

• Moio: Just a Man

• Odessa A’zion: Maybe I’m Not What You Need

• GAWD: GTA

• Ama: So…

• Kelsey Lu: Better Than That

• Talia Goddess: WE COME AGAIN

• Shann Aberdeen: State of Flow

• ARYIEL: No More

• Jeff Bernat: Whatever Goes

• Pan Tèrra: Quit My Job

• Zenesoul: Heart on Fire

• MAKALM: Choose

• Sarah Defne Gray: That Girl.

• Saint Demarcus: Lifeline

• Echo Huang: YOUR GIRL

• MOIO: Just a Man

• Tyree Thomas: Safe Place

• Aiyana-Lee: Pretty Picture

• Claire Brooks: LIKE LOVERS DO

• James Berkeley: back again

• Maz B: Running Out

• Isaiah Kaleo & ROME: lead me on

• Tama Gucci: My Body Is Your Wonderland

• Jaz Elise: Move Mountain

• Anna Margo: Brainrot

• Kavi Synatra: Calling for You

• BJ Swayed: Downtown

• Ariel J.: Forever

• Tyler Watts: Number One (#1)

• Mike Teezy & Kierra Sheard: TIME4U

• Jessica Tori: Curious

• Pan Tèrra: Quit My Job

• ace hashimoto & kenya fujita: TOP NOTCH (Japanese Version)

• Jessie Reyez & Muni Long: AIN’T U TIRED

• The-Dream: Bring That Body

• Felix Ames: Crack a Smile

• Jamal Roberts: Perfect for Me

• James Savage: Higher Power

• Phoenix James: Company

• CTLN: Headspace

• Anjali Asha & Khrysis: Big Deal

• Patrick Paige II: Let Me Down Easy

• Roberta Flack: I’d Like to Be Baby to You (Live at Montreux, 1990)

• Zae France: Said Summ (feat. K Camp)

• Roderick Porter: Roll the Dice

• Elmiene: Honour (feat. Baby Rose)

• Junetober: Like You Need It

• FIG: Day One

• S!MONE: The Worst Part

• H33RA: SHOOK

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Kehlani dropped her self-titled fifth album on her 31st birthday this week, and the deep cut “Ooh,” co-written by Keri Hilson and Tank, is one of the best things on it. Durand Bernarr, fresh off his Grammy win for BLOOM, released “AM I OKAY?!” and traded every costume and punchline for a question he keeps asking without ever getting an answer. Jai’Len Josey, the songwriter who co-wrote Ari Lennox’s “Pressure,” closed her own debut album, Serial Romantic, with the only track she produced by herself. Isaiah Falls abandoned the Florida bass-culture collision that made him and went full slow jam. And Dani Offline, the Oakland poet-producer who studied comparative literature at UC Berkeley, dropped “Angel,” a love song that borrows its imagery from the Book of Revelation.

Kehlani, “Oooh”

Keri Hilson and Tank wrote on this, and the melodic phrasing curls the way mid-2000s R&B used to, when a slow jam could ride one syllable for a full four bars. “Oooh” arrives deep into Kehlani, the self-titled fifth album she dropped on her 31st birthday, well past the Brandy duet and the Lil Wayne feature and the Missy Elliott link-up. All those collaborations could swallow a lesser singer, but “Oooh” clears the room: Kehlani, Antonio Dixon and Khris Riddick-Tynes’s guitar-threaded production, and a lyric built entirely around a single word substituting for every act she wants performed. “Open up that window/‘Cause I feel so ooh/I don’t care about the neighbors/Let ‘em hear us, ooh,” she sings, swapping the explicit for the suggestive and landing somewhere dirtier than either. Kehlani told Vibe she wanted this record to prove that good R&B is genius and deserves respect without modification. On “Oooh,” the talking point evaporates and the proof starts humming in your molars. — Osei Addae

Durand Bernarr, “AM I OKAY?!”

Durand Bernarr has built his career on helping you forget that you are watching a performance. He pays tribute to The Proud Family in the Tiny Desk series, he opened up his Erykah Badu-backed mixtape called 8ight: The Stepson of Erykah Badu, and he gives shout-outs to Rick James and Kirk Franklin in interviews; whenever he performs or talks about performing, he always uses theatricality at full throttle. “AM I OKAY?!” takes the air out of the house. The second single from Durand’s self-titled fourth album. BERNARR. (named after his father, Bernarr Ferebee Senior), the opening line does not resemble a punchline.

“For a small piece of your time, I’ll pay a fee
Just to sit here on this couch and bare my soul.”

Jahi Sundance and Donnie Scantz’s production hums low and warm underneath him, never rushing toward resolution. Bernarr has searched high and low yet found nothing. The choruses ask the same question over and over eight times with not one response to be had, eventually walking the line from being defiant to saying, “Might just figure it out, wanna figure it out/Could you figure it out with me?” Yes, Miguel (who also did backgrounds) and Sevyn Streeter were among the songwriters on the track and their influence comes from the balance of swagger and collapse; two writers who have spent years developing that distance between confidence and pleading. Bernarr received the Grammy award for Best Progressive R&B Album at time of this release; “AM I OKAY?!” has a vibe of a morning after the awards show. — Jamila W.

Jai’Len Josey, “I Believe (Selfish)”

Tricky Stewart executive-produced Serial Romantic, and The-Dream, Leon Thomas, and Noah Ehler were producers on its 1st 12 tracks. Jai’Len Josey sat with herself alone on the 13th and produced it herself as a statement, like the lyrics: “I could give you the moon/I could even bring the stars down, too, but how silly would I be if I had none left for me?” There is purpose behind extending this line; through stacking the giving, Josey can make the turn hit. She was raised in Atlanta, went to Tri-Cities High School—the same performing arts high school that has provided talent to Atlanta’s Music and Stage/Film industry for many decades—and played the role of Pearl in *The SpongeBob Musical* on Broadway before returning to songwriting. She co-penned Ari Lennox’s gold-selling single “Pressure,” telling SHIFTER that she knocked out the demo in 30 minutes after Lennox called her at 2 in the morning with Jermaine Dupri on turntables and Bryan-Michael Cox sitting at the piano. She can write fast for other artists; “I Believe (Selfish)” is what happens when she has sat with her own material long enough to mean it. Originally, the title “Selfish” was changed to reflect how the original box of each person was no longer the complete love they’ve given to others; it had become an ever-evolving outpouring of love that should now return (with the understanding) to each individual. — Imani Raven

Isaiah Falls, “Back in My Arms”

The percussion element of “Back in My Arms” does not exist. This tune is produced solely with layered keyboard chords to support an acoustic richness, achieved through the collaborative efforts of Benson Bazilme, Gabriel Blizman, and Isaiah Falls himself. The singing also includes an element of falsetto. Every instrument (including the vocals) creates ambient sound; therefore, listeners may miss the fact that the lyrics incorporate a plea. Having grown up in Orlando, Florida, where he participated in church choirs and listened to trunk, waist-rattling hip-hop music (his father played drums, while his mother sang), Isaiah’s single, “FLORIDA BABY,” accumulated 27 million streams on Spotify during the 2024 period through the assistance of TikTok users sharing the song on that platform by creating a musical based on the hybrid between the culture of hip-hop and the sensual nature of R&B created from the same area. The composition of “Back In My Arms” does not showcase these two genres at all. “We deserve another chance/Faith can’t be taught” is repeated so that it becomes somewhat ambiguous until a member of the faith-based background determines that the lyric does make sense except that the lyrics do apply only to faith-based writers. These last two statements indicate the meaning of the song “Back In My Arms” is conveyed by the faith of someone who prays. — Tabia N. Mullings

Dani Offline, “Angel”

Dani Offline derived her stage name from an Instagram handle, which was rejected in 2020, where her previous page was removed due to a deletion (the last name offline). Dani Offline grew up with and without access to the internet, which enabled her to have access to how a computer can create content, but this desire was present after her departure from Birmingham, AL to pursue an education at UC Berkeley, through a graduate program that studied comparative literature, which is where Dani Offline became increasingly familiarized with jazz via listening to NPR as well as through her parents buying compact discs (that were chosen based upon hot women being pictured on them) who would participate in this act. “Angel” is Dani’s first single from her debut LP (Lover’s Discourse, named after Roland Barthes’s text that describes how lovers have borrowed from different cultures their methods by which they create love), which begins with a theological concept opposed to erotic notions:

“My man, my man calls me an angel
He says, he says I’m divine in disguise
Reality’s chasing me so I got to be careful
‘Cause he can’t, he can’t see my seven eyes.”

The 7 eyes of the heavenly beings, as detailed in the Book of Revelation, i.e., Seraphim of God, are 7 heavenly beings—seraphim—who surround God, and each seraph has an infinite number of eyes surrounding them. Dani said during an interview with that she thinks of herself primarily as a writer, and that the way she writes her songs is by writing out the verse first, before composing the music. The lyric arrived before the chords, and the melody Offline, Omari Jazz Addae, and Will Henley-Dias shaped underneath it drifts the way weather forms over a fixed point, jazz-soul that swells while the words hold still. The whole song pivots on one couplet: “I wanna be cool when I’m next to you, but I’m hot to the touch/I wanna be sweet when you think of me, something soft you can hold.” Love as a thermal problem. — Brandon O’Sullivan

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Kehlani: Kehlani

• Lolo Zouaï: Reverie

• Gareth Donkin: Extraordinary

• Jai’Len Josey: Serial Romantic

• Angélique Kidjo: HOPE!!

• Eboni Riley: Beautiful Tragedy

• April + VISTA: Traditional Noise

• Liam Bailey: Shadow Town

• Esa Williams: Dala What We Must

• Norah Jane & MOR.LOV: Godspeed

• VINSON: Raw Honey

• Tom Funk: What’s It Gonna Be?

• Adam Hawley: Electric

• Dianne Reeves: Star Child

• Jordan Rakei: Between Us (EP)

• Yuna: The Valour Hour (EP)

• Miyah: Miyah (EP)

• ADÉ: Always Love (EP)

• Joya Mooi: All the Things (EP)

• Molly Johnson: Long Time Running (EP)

• Bel Cobain: Kizzy (EP)

• LEÁ THE LEOX: FatalAttraction (EP)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Prince: With This Tear

• Omarion: The One

• Tank & the Bangas: No Invite

• Jamilah Barry: All My Love

• Girlfriend & Jaymin: All U Need

• FOLA: Fine $hit

• Limage: Dig Me

• Candice Le: Catch a Flight

• Adrian Marcel: Run It Back (feat. Sonny B.)

• BENNI: STAYED UP

• Wax Motif, Maeta: You Forget (feat. Maeta)

• Luh Kel: Grinding

• I Am Roze: Where the Wind Blows

• Paradise: Predictable

• Brianna Castro: rolling stone

• Drea Dominique: Lue Viton

• Renee Harmoni: Single for Life

• Otis Kane: Heaven

• Misha: Ordinary Low (feat. Jessica Jolia)

• Infinity Song: One Foot Out

• Gabrielle Lovelace: No Pay

• Bri Babineaux: Grace

• Kennedy Ryon: Favorite

• Genia: Doomsday

• THEHONESTGUY: SUGAR WATER

• Bella Alubo: Abo Le (How are you)

• TA Thomas: I Found You

• FEYI: Have You Ever

• Viuta: Eyes Are Everything

• OVI WOOD: 365

• Byron Juane: I Hate Luving U

• cinquemani: Cosmic Connection

• Janine: Reset

• Aaron Taylor: Reach Heaven

• Adanna Duru: I’m Every Woman

• Zeddy Will & Janelle Monáe: Party at the Beach

• Q Parker & Jai Vaughn: Get Better

• Sophia Galaté: Please Don’t Talk to Me (R&B ONLY SESSIONS)

• Breez Kennedy: Taste

• NOTEP: Radio

• Sipprell: Conversation

• KELS: Daddy’s Not the One

• Tyree Thomas: Most Days

• nomi.: sweet talk

• spaceluvrrr: TYM

• PAGEFOURR: Something Different

• Domenic Haynes: C’EST LA VIE

• Anaïs Cardot: Second Hand

• Vitua: Eyes Are Everything

• cikho: Fell Again / Stranger What’s Your Name?

• Taylor Williams: For the First Time

• fika & Eddy Luna: Cyandide

• Stefan Mahendra: Home Sweet Home

• 8RO8 & Karri: Sarah

• twiin.: all

• Malaya: Figure it out

• Saburnia: April Shower

• SALOMEA: sandcastle

• Keenan TreVon: She Goes By Denver

• Mikhalé Jones: Morals (feat. Kashept)

• NEVRMIND: Eyes on You

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This week we’ve got 6LACK handing the second verse of a contrition record to a 2 Chainz who has no interest in apologizing for anything; Queen Naija turning a real proposal into a ballad on the day it happens; a decade-away Teedra Moses returning with PJ Morton and an eviction notice for bad conversation; KIRBY accruing what writing “FourFiveSeconds” actually cost her; and Natanya, a year into her SZA-reposted Spotify surge, declining to ask for the minimum.

6LACK, “Sunday Again” feat. 2 Chainz

For the last decade, Atlanta singer 6LACK has essentially been the genre’s in-house laureate of late-night regret records (honestly, it is a sturdy niche). From East Atlanta Love Letter onward, almost the whole catalog runs on the guy calling at a bad hour to apologize. On “Sunday Again” he brings company. It’s his second single from Love Is the New Gangsta, after “Bird Flu,” and Childish Major, Jesse Tyler, Justin Cho, and Trey Lander built him a bedroom-warm, slightly worn late-morning track. He opens with a line that is an apology in advance. But 2 Chainz then enters with none of 6LACK’s penance available to him.

“You say it’s Sunday morning, I say it’s Saturday night
Because I still ain’t sleepin’.”

6LACK wants Sunday back as a reset, but 2 Chainz is extending Saturday. He’s eating shrimp and grits at noon with somebody he is in no hurry to apologize to. And the line he drops (honestly, one of the most 2 Chainz lines he has ever written), “If sex is a weapon, they gon’ get me,” has zero interest in rewriting himself. 6LACK wrote a contrition record and handed the second verse to the friend who was going to puncture the whole premise. Love Is the New Gangsta, as an album title, is the kind of contradiction this song starts to test. — Imani Raven

Queen Naija, “Ring”

For the better part of eight years, Queen Naija and Clarence White have been the internet’s longest-running referendum on whether a man should propose. The speculation never stopped. She divorced YouTuber Chris Sails in 2017, started a joint channel with Clarence a year later, had a son with him in 2020, and has fielded every variant of the when-is-he-going-to-propose question from a fanbase that watched her raise two kids and grow into an R&B career in plain sight. “Ring,” the Theevoni and Troy Taylor-produced ballad she dropped the day she made the engagement official, is a journal entry sung back in real time.

“I won’t forget the night you made my dream come true
It was just me and you in our New York hotel room.”

She is narrating something that occurred last week, and the microphone is where she gets to admit it. Clarence’s entrance lands next.

“With tears in your eyes you professed your love
You said that you always knew I was the one
You told me you’re sorry it took you so long.”

Her response settles the question she has been asked from every comments section under every photo she has ever posted with him: “What matters to me is you did on your own.” — Murffey Zavier

Teedra Moses, “Single”

Teedra Moses has not released an album of new material since Obama’s second term. Her 2004 debut Complex Simplicity is a proper cult classic, the record R&B connoisseurs hand you as a test. If you understand what a slept-on singer-songwriter can do with the major-label machinery off her back, you pass. She signed to Rick Ross’s Maybach Music Group in 2011, released Cognac & Conversation through Raphael Saadiq’s orbit in 2015, and then kept her name alive through mixtapes, guest features, and KAYTRANADA’s 2018 remix of “Be Your Girl” that briefly introduced her to a streaming-native audience that had not done the homework. Announced as the first release from her fifth studio album, “Single” arrives with PJ Morton producing and co-writing. His piano-forward solo work (gospel-grown, filler-averse) lines up exactly with a Moses song about why she would rather be alone than mildly entertained. Her central claim is a counter-move against every man who has ever asked, and she lets it sit before the beat fully settles. She wants what she has always wanted, which is stimulation over small talk. Six phrases, each its own line, spell out the demand. — Kendra Vale

KIRBY, “Lose Myself”

Kirby Lauryen Dockery’s last name connects her to the Dockery Plantation in Mississippi, where her enslaved ancestors worked cotton on the same land where Charley Patton and Howlin’ Wolf invented the Delta blues (all of them underpaid by the same country). She has built her adult career around that lineage while writing hits for other people. Her name is on Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney’s “FourFiveSeconds,” on Beyoncé’s “Die With You,” on Ariana Grande’s “Break Your Heart Right Back.” She voiced the Beyoncé stand-in Ni’jah on Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’s Swarm. Last August she released her own debut, Miss Black America, and “Lose Myself,” produced by Jeff City, is its newest single, a receipt for what the pop-songwriter arrangement cost her while the blues sat in her bloodline the whole time. She opens with a hymnal cadence that cues up before the beat does, counting every piece she has staked on her ambition, “My selfish ambition My self my sense and my religion/I would’ve sold my soul But that I didn’t even own,” then the second verse moves home: “And my family ain’t speaking/Same folks that used to call me every weekend.” — Tai Lawson

Natanya, “DON’T ASK!”

Natanya Popoola is having the twelve months every North West London singer-producer in her cohort wishes they had. SZA reposted her after finding “On Ur Time,” the song where Natanya name-drops Solana by her government, and Tyler, The Creator and Doechii followed (her Spotify numbers have more than doubled since). She closed 2025 with a two-part EP, Feline’s Return, that ran jazz harmony through indie-rock guitars and came out sounding like something Aaliyah might have co-signed. “DON’T ASK!” is her first new 2026 release, co-produced with longtime collaborator Oscar Scheller, and the whole song is about not asking anymore. She lays out the rule over drums that knock without hurrying (“You really don’t ask, you really don’t get/You really don’t guess or you can get stressed.”).

Speaking to The FADER days before release, she described the song as the first time she had written from a place that was not trying to make a guy like her: “It’s his turn to come to me this time.” You can hear the shift in the “I’ll give it to you”s she keeps repeating. They arrive without coaxing in them, the offer made from the other side of a decision already settled. “Can I take it downtown right now?” she ad-libs, asking with the confidence of someone who already has her answer. — Lillian Sharpe

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Yaya Bey: Fidelity

• Adrian Younge: Younge

• rjtheweirdo: At Least She’s Beautiful

• cortex: For What It’s Worth

• BombayMami: Peaceful Attitude

• MarcLo: 11 Days

• pastels & Jessica Domingo: Blue Fantasy

• Marc Broussard: Chance Worth Taking

• lovetempo: There Is a Light

• Dan Penn: Smoke Filled Room

• Beau Diako, Ben Esser & emawk: klei (EP)

• Sidney Gilliam: NASCENCE OF THE NU BOOK I (EP)

• Finn Askew: BLUEBOY (EP)

• Naji: The Realist (EP)

• MAYIA WARREN: Take Me Back

• Zach Zoya & High Klassified: Misstape 2 (EP)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Nao Yoshioka: Shadow (feat. Bilal)

• Jenevieve, Freddie Gibbs & SALIMATA: Flight Risqué

• Inayah: Outside

• Annie Tracy: Catching Feelings (feat. Leon Thomas) [Remix]

• Madison Ryann Ward & Bianca Silver: At Your Side

• Desmond Parson & Laia: Me and You Can Do

• ace hashimoto: TOP NOTCH (feat. 3ee)

• Lakecia Benjamin & Tarriona ‘Tank’ Ball: We Dream

• Blue Lab Beats & Jamila Woods: Slow Heart / Fire Up (with SANITY & Blackout)

• HILLARI: How Does It Feel

• K, Le Maestro & Rae Khalil: BOUNCE OUT

• Nemchel: Avanse

• ((( O ))): Evolve

• F3miii: SPLINTER

• Sofia Ly: Block Party

• Africaine: Burn

• KAYAM & ARCHIVED: Spend It

• Annalise Azadian: Switching Sides

• EIVIND: How Hard I Tried (feat. Mike Terrell)

• Konyikeh: Blackthorne

• MALIA: Getaway Driver

• NNAVY: Give U My Love

• Lex Aura: Conniving

• CVIRO & GXNXVS: Body (feat. July 7)

• Chrissi: HEARTLESS DARLIN’!

• Jessie Reyez: N.Y.F.F

• MXKA: Fantasmas

• PawPaw Rod: Lights Down Low (feat. Sherwyn)

• Marques Anthony: Twin

• BINA.: Zombies

• SAFE: 5AM

• Tiana Blake: Smoke

• Flozigg: ICFAI

• Noxz & Berhana: Everybody Knows

• Jalen Ngonda: Hang It On the Shelf

• Devon Gilfillian: IRL (feat. Cory Wong)

• Chris Patrick: Run It Back (feat. Mack Keane)

• duendita: beach

• Alexia Jayy: Rent Free (feat. Eric Gales)

• Keith Sweat, King George, Calvin Richardson, Cupid & Ron Chip Anthony: Still Got That Good Love

• Stokley: Needs Love

• Mike Clark Jr: Straddle Me

• JEDSOUL: RERUN

• RYBE: Jerry Springer

• LoSmoothe: In This Lifetime

• Austin Rogers: The Beginning

• Justin Garner: A Girl’s Girl

• Nani Goins: Keep It to Ourselves

• Marie Dalhstrom: Alive (feat. Jords)

• Dorian Electra: Scarborough Fair

• Tora-i: Girl

• M!les Ave: R&B Night

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Five new R&B records from artists who have decided they’re done waiting on someone else to figure it out. Kehlani drops a self-titled album on her birthday in two weeks and spends her latest single telling her partner to save the interrogation for somebody else. Kelela makes her first proper release since 2023’s Raven and the first thing you notice is that it has no drums. Momo Boyd steps off the Infinity Song tour bus and onto her own marquee with a debut solo EP whose closing cut is a serial-heartbreaker anthem delivered entirely in the cadence of yikes. Kenyon Dixon, two Grammy nominations deep and cosigned by Anita Baker, teaches a masterclass on how to make a sex-coach song without tipping into parody. And Saint Harison, the Southampton singer-songwriter who built his career on honest heartbreak, puts out a track whose honest part turns out to be the exhaustion.

They mostly landed the same day this week, and the best of them already have that thing where you keep cueing the track up before the last one finishes.

Kehlani, “Back and Forth” feat. Missy Elliott

On a REVOLT red carpet at the Grammys earlier this year, Kehlani brought up a Missy Elliott interview she’d been thinking about, the one where Missy said labels stopped hiring her to executive-produce R&B albums because the industry didn’t want too much singing anymore. The anecdote stung. Missy’s whole production career (Supa Dupa Fly, Aaliyah’s One in a Million, half the Missy-Timbaland axis that made late-‘90s R&B strange and weightless) was built on pushing R&B singers into wilder, more ambitious territory with their voices, and now here was the business telling her what she was best at was no longer on the shopping list. Putting Missy on “Back and Forth” reads as a correction to that, a deliberate invitation back into the room, not a guest spot engineered to juice a press cycle.

Khris Riddick-Tynes and the Stereotypes build a beat that glides the way early-2000s R&B glided, all rounded low end and unhurried hi-hats, the sound Aaliyah made her signature and that Kehlani has been circling her entire career. She spells that lineage out in the spoken skit that closes “Back and Forth,” where her partner peppers her with Where you goin’? With who? And you wearing that? Misdemeanor shrugs off every question before landing on the line that anchors the track:

“All that back—, back and forth got me feeling like Aaliyah.”

Claiming that lineage in 2026 is a bigger flex than it looks. Kehlani’s fifth studio album, self-titled and dropping April 24 on her 31st birthday, is executive-produced by the same Khris Riddick-Tynes who helped her Grammy-winning “Folded” cross 800 million streams last year. Missy opens the record with When I say new Kehlani, you know it’s some hot shit, and nothing that follows contradicts her. Kehlani sings “Back and Forth” calmly, like she already walked out of the argument twenty minutes earlier and is now texting her friends from the car. — LeMarcus

Kelela, “Idea 1”

There are no drums on “Idea 1,” which is the first thing you notice and the last thing you stop thinking about. Kelela wrote it while reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and you can feel the book’s paranoia in its bones. This is not the club-adjacent Kelela of Raven or the ambient drift of last year’s In the Blue Light. Oscar Scheller’s arrangement rests on distorted guitars and drones, closer to shoegaze than to any R&B she’s ever made, and Kelela has described the song as being about how it feels to be alive now, a particular kind of burden she’s said Black women know intimately.

Knowing that turns lyrics that could scan as relationship wreckage into something wider. Bearing your cross/It’s your loss, now I’m jaded/Know it ain’t right/Don’t you look away reads on its surface as a woman confronting a checked-out partner, but the repeated Are you alive? opens out, toward the question of whether anyone is paying attention to what’s happening around them. She co-wrote it with her best friend, the painter Janiva Ellis, and the collaboration pulls her away from melody-first writing toward something built out of accumulated image-fragments. Cloud and the crater/Scorch every acre arrives in short-breath couplets, each one another piece of evidence, until the closing image (“So we decay [somehow we stayed alone]”).

Kelela has never sounded this exposed. The shoegaze textures leave her nowhere to retreat, and she doesn’t try to find somewhere. — Imani Raven

Momo Boyd, “Oops”

If you know Momo Boyd’s name at all, it’s probably from “Good Flirts,” the Baby Keem number with Kendrick Lamar where her hook turned a simmering slow-burn into one of this year’s stickiest R&B moments. Before that, she put in a decade as the youngest sibling in Infinity Song, the family band that JAŸ-Z signed to Roc Nation in 2016 after seeing them busk in Central Park. Her debut solo EP Miss Michigan dropped two days ago, and most of it leans alt-rock and folk; The FADER compared her to Dido and Dolores O’Riordan. “Oops” is the outlier, a bouncy R&B number produced by Antonio Dixon, Ashton Norful, and Khris Riddick-Tynes that sounds nothing like the other six tracks.

And the contrast is part of the joke. “Oops” plays as a serial-heartbreaker anthem from a singer whose other material is full of melancholy guitar and grown-up heartbreak-processing, and Boyd commits to the bit completely. She opens each verse with Yikes, followed by a tiny uh-oh from the background, and spends the rest of the cut offering non-apologies for things she clearly isn’t sorry about. I think I’m in love again, she coos, then admits in the next breath that she said the same about a different guy a week ago. She tosses off the title line as a shrug, a faux-confession that won’t break a sweat:

“Don’t try selling me no sentiments
It is what it is, and I’m over it.”

Boyd explained to Rolling Stone that she writes from wherever she is at the time, and “Oops” catches her in a mood entirely different from the longing on “Cold Hands” or the country-folk twang of “American Love Song.” The girl who stood on a Central Park bandstand harmonizing with her siblings for a decade has developed a mean streak. She uses it on the EP’s closing number to tell a guy the affection is not, in fact, mutual. — L. Ari James

Kenyon Dixon, “Talk You Through It”

Two Grammy nominations deep for Best Traditional R&B Performance, with a joint LP alongside Terrace Martin rooted in South LA jazz and soul, Kenyon Dixon has been building the kind of quiet, credentialed career that doesn’t generate headlines but racks up cosigns. Anita Baker herself tweeted that he was proof R&B was alive and well, a high compliment from the woman whose entire catalog defined the genre for a generation. Dixon has written for Justin Timberlake and handled vocal production for Coco Jones, and that studio fluency shows up all over his own work.

The first single from his upcoming LP Ego Ruins Everything is a bedroom number with a specific conceit. Dixon narrates the act in real time on “Talk You Through It,” coaching his partner through it in a low, polite tone. Frank Rose’s beat clears space for him with a padded bassline and drums that barely shift, letting Dixon’s vocal be the entire environment. He half-whispers lay back, relax, let me be your guide without mugging or winking, and when he voices in sync and release they land as actual check-ins, not bravado.

Plenty of R&B men have made a career out of the sex-coach number and tipped into corny territory doing it. Dixon sounds like he’s actually been in the room with another person before. His lyric writing here is weirdly attentive to the mechanics of what’s happening, with lines about temperature rising, about giving his partner permission to hit her limit, about through it, through it as literal coaching, not a lyrical flourish. That attention is the exact quality Anita Baker was clocking when she cosigned him. — Phil

Saint Harison, “Stuck”

As a kid in Southampton, Saint Harison heard Adele’s “Chasing Pavements” in the lobby of a women’s shelter where he’d gone with his mother and siblings after leaving an abusive household. He has said in interviews that he dates his life as a songwriter to that memory. The biographical detail matters for “Stuck,” which is about a different kind of entrapment, the inability to leave someone who’s already left you. Harison carries it with a tired voice that knows the difference between needing to escape a situation and choosing to stay frozen inside one. Jazmine Sullivan reposted one of his early covers and triggered a chain of cosigns from Justin Bieber, SZA, Elton John, and Kehlani. He has shared with Rolling Stone that love, in his view, cannot save anyone, and “Stuck” sits inside that realization without trying to turn it into advice.

Pulled from Ghosted, an eight-song EP due May 29, “Stuck” is constructed on a contradiction Harison never bothers to resolve:

“No matter what I do I’m stuck
Between I hate you and need your love.”

Akeel Henry, D’Mile, and Ilsey Juber strip the arrangement down to a guitar figure and a low haze. The room has the lights off. Harison sings I miss you good, miss you bad, miss you nasty and you believe all three at once. The desire and the resentment and the physical memory all arrive in the same breath, tangled in a way he can’t untangle. He rolls himself a morning blunt and asks for a hit of ignorance, and neither one helps. Every British R&B vocalist with a range this big draws an Adele comparison eventually. But Harison approaches “Stuck” as someone who ran out of dramatic energy three arguments ago; now reading the damage report to himself from under the covers. — Tai Lawson

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Isaia Huron: Mr. Lovebomb

• Wesley Joseph: Forever Ends Someday

• Jacob Banks: Limerence

• Mamas Gun: DIG!

• Tiwayo: Outsider

• Parlor Greens: Emeralds

• Tink: Fuck, Marry, Kill

• Kumail: Mudbrown

• Buddy: Simmie Sims III

• Chicago Soul Jazz Collective: No Wind & No Rain

• Les Imprimés: Fading Forward

• Momo Boyd: Miss Michigan (EP)

• Ali Caldwell: Episode One (EP)

• Destin Conrad: wHIMSY!

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Other Songs to Check Out

• Blxst & Big Bad 1900: Day After Day (feat. Lori Perry)

• Davion Farris: Good Girl

• Casper Sage: Change Your Mind

• TYLER LEWIS: til’ death do us part

• Eboni Riley: Through the Motions (Interlude)

• IYAMAH: off grid

• Kenny Sharp & DALONA: Limbo

• Jazlyn Martin: Goodbye

• Niko Ramos: Away

• Gabriel & CUBE: FLOWERS

• Brandy Haze: If You See Me Out In Public Then It Might Be A.I.

• PJ Morton: Mercy

• Alice: 3AM

• Thee Sacred Souls: Any Old Fool

• TÖME & Alpha P: CC

• Lolo Zouaï & disiz: Coquelicot

• REMI: Let’s Talk

• Avara: levitate

• SNCR & Zae France: Love Seat

• Nic Dean: Loving Me Hurts You

• Brenna Whitaker: Praying for Time

• Qiuntellii: Shotgun

• Felix Ames: Fell Short, Spun Round

• Naomi Sharon & Marten Lou: Miss That (Marten Lou Remix)

• Dua Saleh: Cállate

• Osé: Bother Me (feat. Victony)

• 54 Ultra: Turnaround / I’m Hooked

• James Savage: 100 Years

• Junetober: Would You

• Reuben Aziz: promise land

• thatboykwame: LET ME BE!

• Claudi-Mariee: Ransom

• Debbie: House of Cards (feat. Victor Ray)

• Skye Newman: Woman I Am

• Joseph Solomon: Unbroken Heart

• Denise Julia: 2GOOD4U

• Chuka & The Destroyer: Endure

• Jahson Paynter: tangerine!

• Nate Curry: Doomsday (feat. ClayDough & Hokage Simon)

• Jaylon Ashaun: Note to Self (Rough Draft)

• Carla Prata: Like I Do

• Dayor: No Morning After

• Tyree Thomas: On Time

• Nectar Woode: Naturally

• Kaleb Mitchell: SUPERHERO

• SIPHO.: THE FEELING

• 7AM: Let It Be

• Sparklmami: no te vayas

• Perri Jones: Out of Touch

• Sammy Atlas: Serpent

• Erykah Officer: Hate 2 Say

• Kayla Blackmon, Kingdom & Krysh: PURE LEAF

• Camdyn: Obsessed with You

• Diamond Cafe: No Wonder

• Chris Brown: Obvious

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This week’s picks are all about people who know what they want and aren’t being cute about it. Mary J. Blige is two singles deep into her latest run with producer Camper, and “Want Love” is her at peak don’t-waste-my-time energy—calm, certain, not negotiating. Johnny Venus, the EarthGang rapper building a solo R&B catalog, goes the opposite direction on “I Want You Back,” a groveling, guitar-laced plea written for him by Baby Tate that might be the most desperate love song of the spring. LAYA turns a rideshare into a booty call metaphor on the sly, bouncy “LUber,” as this Staten Island kid raised on Destiny’s Child and 702. PJ Morton, fresh off his sixth Grammy and a new distribution deal, strips everything to the studs on “Mutual,” a reassurance song so patient it barely feels written. And India Shawn reunites with D’Mile for “Rain On Me,” a spoil-me anthem where the luxury and the desire bleed into each other until they’re the same thing.

Mary J. Blige, “Want Love”

Less than two months after dropping “More Than a Lover” on Valentine’s Day, Mary J. Blige is back with Camper, her longest-running production partner, for another single about being in love and refusing to settle for less. Blige and Camper have been locking in together since 2017’s “Thick of It,” and this latest stretch has the pair cooking on autopilot, the good kind, where the chemistry is muscle memory. “Want Love” sits in a warm, patient groove, and Blige rides it with the sureness of someone who has already lived through enough bad love to spot the real thing from across a room. She’s not chasing anybody, as she lays that out early:

“I’m too grown to play them kid games
‘Cause when it’s all said and done, I got me
I’m too focused.”

Blige wants committed, adult partnership, the kind where both parties are reading the same page and neither one flinches when it gets real. She’s offering herself as someone worth the effort (“I’m a good time on a rainy day, summertime, or a winter day”), but she’s not bargaining. If the other person’s happiness is wrapped in heartbreak, she’ll walk. While her voice is not what it once was, the nine-time Grammy winner has spent three decades singing about love in every possible condition (wrecked, mended, furious, tender, etc.) and “Want Love” lands in a place that’s temperate and uncompromising, a woman who has stopped negotiating with people who aren’t indispensable. — Terryl Jameson

Johnny Venus, “I Want You Back”

Baby Tate wrote this one for Johnny Venus, and it fits him congenitally. Venus is half of EarthGang, the Atlanta duo signed to Dreamville whose records have always bent toward funk, Southern psychedelia, and big conceptual swings. His solo material, starting with the Shooter EP and the 6LACK-featuring “So Beautiful,” drops almost all of that armor in favor of bare, risky R&B sung by a rapper who might actually cry. “I Want You Back” is a begging song. She caught him, packed his bags, and put them at the door, and now he’s on his knees fully aware that dignity left the building. The second verse ratchets up the hurt until it buckles under its own weight (“I look at our pictures and cry tears like funerals/I don’t know what to do no more/I feel like I used up all my sorrys.”). Dom Sanders’s production keeps the guitar warm and the drums easygoing, which only makes the desperation louder. Venus has said he wanted his solo work to show “the rough edges I have, the tenderness I protect.” On “I Want You Back,” the protecting part is over. — Imani Raven

LAYA, “LUber”

The conceit is an Uber, or a booty call donned up in rideshare language. LAYA, the Staten Island singer who spent the early pandemic years teaching herself videography and graphic design while building a catalog on Warner Records with the debut EP “R&B fans” slept in 2022, structures the whole song around pickups, ETAs, and GPS coordinates, and the metaphor is slippery enough to work on two levels without collapsing under its own cuteness. “When you’re ready to breeze, and you’ve had a few drinks, and your cab is buggin’, don’t budge it/When you’re feelin’ low-key, and the crib is too bleak, and you hit that button, I’m comin’.” The verses heap internal rhymes in threes and fours, packed tight, with a cadence pulled straight from the late-90s girl group playbook she grew up on (Destiny’s Child, 702, Aaliyah, all cited by name). She then flips from seductive to possessive. She already knows where you are, she doesn’t need the app to confirm it. “Can you wait all night long just to be with me?” sounds like a question, but LAYA sings it like she already has the answer. The production, from Chad Paul, Dante Carter, and Quincy Riley, bounces between a percussion-forward groove and a softer cushion on the pre-chorus, funky and minimal, with room for LAYA’s stacked harmonies to fill the gaps. — Jamila W.

PJ Morton, “Mutual”

A few weeks after winning his sixth Grammy and announcing a new distribution deal between Morton Records and SRG-ILS, PJ Morton put out a song about the simplest, rarest feeling in the world: two people falling at the same speed. “Mutual” doesn’t have a clever angle or a narrative twist. Morton senses the other person’s hesitation, names it gently, and offers reassurance—“You don’t have to be afraid/Whatever you’re feeling, I’m feeling the same way.” He sings it in a clear, mid-register voice without overselling a plosive, letting “mutual, baby” build its own warmth through sheer patience. Morton is the son of a bishop, the longtime keyboardist for Maroon 5, and the first Black composer to write an original song for a Disney theme park ride, but none of that extra context is necessary to hear what “Mutual” does. It’s a love song for the moment right before two people stop hedging and admit they’re antecedently together. — Phil

India Shawn, “Rain On Me”

India Shawn has been working with D’Mile for years now. The Oscar and Grammy-winning producer handled most of her 2022 debut Before We Go (Deeper) and her 2025 singles “Kill Switch,” Lucky Daye-featuring “Cotton Candy Blvd,” and the Outlaw-inspired “Gone.” Their partnership keeps yielding songs where Shawn sits completely at ease inside her own desire, and “Rain On Me” is the most direct version of that instinct. She wants to be spoiled, and she says so without apology: “Just keep loving me with a purpose/Spoil me ‘cause you know I’m worth it.” The Shawn who once wrote for Chris Brown and Monica and Keri Hilson behind the scenes, years of devising other people’s internal language, shows up here in the economy of the verses. “Keep me looking sharp like switched blade/Hand all on my thigh while we switch lanes” burns through two images in a single couplet, each one physical and precise. “Tropical water/This the kinda torment I could get used to” pushes the luxury and the intimacy into the same breath, indulgence and affection fused. Spencer Stewart co-produces alongside D’Mile, and together they give the track a breezy, assured feel, with just enough give in the beat for Shawn to lean into her phrasing. — Kendra Vale

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Thundercat: Distracted

• Omah Lay: Clarity of Mind

• Market East: French Street

• JNBO: JNBO & Friends

• Lekan: For All the Right Reasons, Vol. 1

• Sean Leon & God’s ALGORITHM: GOD’S ALGORITHM_PATCH_001

• Lubiana: Terre Rouge (Mother Earth)

• TheARTI$T: DND (EP)

• Kwncy: St Lucie Drive (EP)

• Michael Francix & IX WULF: A.L.T.T.A (EP)

• Sunny Miles: G2 (EP)

• Ms. Thandi: Soft Like Fire (EP)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Tank: Turtleneck

• 2BYG: Be Mine

• Jacob Banks: Little Me

• Guordan Banks: Hard Day’s Night

• Allyn: Whatever You Say

• Quail P: Wouldn’t Try Again

• rjtheweirdo: At Least She’s Beautiful

• Dave Hollister: Thought You Knew

• Zae France & R&B ONLY: RAX (R&B ONLY SESSIONS)

• OLA: EXCHANGE

• Sonny Tennet: Cut In Half

• Estelle: Live, Love, Learn

• Arianna Marie: know dat (feat. Abby Jasmine)

• Sal Ly: Off Days

• Bōlají: break it down

• Devon Gilfillian: IRL

• Blue Lab Beats: Find Your Way (feat. Essosa) / Sunset and Memories (feat. Kaidi Akinnibi)

• Lex Aura: Starfire

• Sekou: Dangerous Lover

• Guordan Banks: Hard Day’s Night

• CHOSZN: The One That Got Away

• REMI: Your Loss

• MarcLo: Haze

• Chxrry: Hall of Fame

• Puma Blue: (Fool) / Sweet Belief / Fester

• Brik.Liam: Whiiiplash!

• Ragz Originale: Live at Round Chapel (Maxi-Single)

• ADÉ & The Amours: still in LOVE

• Tama Gucci: Lights Camera Action

• Manny Norté: Can We Make It Real?

• Taleen: Pure

• Bobby V.: Go Girl

• Marvin Gaye & Blonde Maze: Distant Lover (Blonde Maze Remix)

• S!MONE: Do It

• Jarrod Lawson: If We Pretend

• LALA: Winners (feat. Marnz Malone)

• KAMAUU & Coastyn: USTILLDERE

• Zeke Pujols: Remind Me You Exist

• Pat Williams: LANDMARKS (feat. Eric Ryan)

• Josh Tenor: I Like What I Like

• Bel Cobain: Change

• Yo Trane: Do You Miss Me ?

• Devin Donnell: SNOWBALL

• Gemaine: Stuck With Me

• DeCarlo: Paid My Dues

• Tyler Watts: Check On Me

• Echo Huang: YOKOYAMA

• Akina Eman: Gravity

• RM47, MAAD & Releigh: S.E.X.

• Norah’s World: shake it up

• Larissa Lambert: I Love You Out Loud

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Three debut albums dropped this past Friday, and each one carries real weight. Elmiene’s sounds for someone, dedicated to his late father, arrives on Def Jam after years of EPs that earned him a BRIT Rising Star nod and a Raphael Saadiq studio invitation. Noah Guy’s MEMORIA, in blue lands as a ten-track reckoning with grief and growth from a Philly film-school dropout who self-produced the whole thing in Los Angeles. And rum.gold’s Is There Anybody Home?, a two-disc concept record split between childhood and adulthood, tries to answer one question: what in his past broke his capacity to keep a relationship alive. Alongside those three records, Jenevieve follows up her sold-out CRYSALIS world tour with a collaboration with Jordan Ward that pins the specific, familiar discomfort of being stood up by someone you’d cleared your whole day for. And Isaia Huron, fresh off staging his debut album as a three-act play, delivers a loose single about the arithmetic of loving someone who handles devotion as a credit line. Every track this week runs the same math from a different angle: what did I put in, what did I get back, and when did the answer stop adding up?

Elmiene, “Light by the Window” feat. Raphael Saadiq

Elmiene’s debut album sounds for someone arrived today on Def Jam, dedicated to his late father, and that dedication reframes even the gentlest track here as an act of reckoning. The British-Sudanese singer, born in Frankfurt and raised in Oxford, studied poetry in university before pivoting to music after a D’Angelo cover went viral in 2021. He earned a BRIT Rising Star nomination, performed alongside Stevie Wonder at BST Hyde Park, and drew co-signs from Missy Elliott and Questlove, all before putting out a proper LP. “Light by the Window” is the clearest distillation of what all those years of EPs were circling: a man stuck in a room he locked himself into, unable to leave, unable to be alone. The bridge concedes even further: “Detrimental to my vision/Without my glasses and you’re far away with no precision.” His own perception has failed him, and he knows it. He can’t trust what he sees from where he’s planted himself. And then, “I doubt that if I leave this room it will be any different,” which isn’t hope but resignation dressed in self-awareness, delivered without pressing the note into a plea. Saadiq told him in the studio once, “You’re one of them ones.” On “Light by the Window,” you hear why he said it. — Marjani Fields

Jenevieve, “Waiting Room” feat. Jordan Ward

Everyone has sat in a chair checking their phone one too many times, knowing the person they’re waiting for isn’t coming but staying anyway because leaving would mean admitting what just happened. That quiet ego damage, the indignity of being stood up by someone you’d cleared your schedule for, is what Jenevieve and Jordan Ward pin to the wall on “Waiting Room.” The Los Angeles singer dropped this fresh off a sold-out European run for her CRYSALIS tour, and it continues that record’s commitment to saying sharp things softly. Producers Tommy Parker and Elijah Gabor lay down a midtempo groove with enough warmth in the low end to trick you into thinking the track is comfortable, but it isn’t. “Was I too good for you?” Jenevieve asks, and the line scans differently than standard romantic disappointment because she’s moved past hurt into cost-benefit analysis, pricing the loss. Ward flips the perspective. He cleared his calendar (“Damn, I cleared it all”), got stood up, and now he’s sulking alone at a bar behind a random star he followed for no reason. His Issa Rae reference, “Now you makin’ me feel insecure like Issa Rae,” is funny to snap the track out of any drift toward abstraction. The visual, directed by Yanchi, pulls from The Pharcyde’s reverse-shot “Drop” video, which dovetails with Ward’s own BACKWARD album themes. — Jamila W.

Noah Guy, “Green Vows”

Noah Guy dropped out of film school, couch-surfed through his first year in Los Angeles, and self-produced every track he released along the way. The Philly-born singer calls his sound “crunchy soul,” and on “Green Vows,” from his debut album MEMORIA, in blue (also out today), you can hear what he means: there’s grit in the vocal grain, dirt left in the bass, and no impulse to sand anything smooth. He opens blunt (“You brought me to the fire/You dampened my desire”), and that pair of lines covers the entire emotional territory. Someone he trusted took something green and growing (vows, money, innocence, all three folded into one word) and set it on fire. The pre-chorus amounts the damage in real time: “While you’re burning up all my green vows, burning all my sin now/You turned up with violence, making me feel something better off than nothing.” Guy’s Philly roots run deep (he spent months crate-digging through the city’s record shops, studying Jim Croce and Motown), and MEMORIA, in blue moves through grief, growth, and acceptance across ten tracks in a brisk twenty-six minutes. — Danica Ford

rum.gold, “Friend of a Friend”

Delonte Drumgold grew up in D.C. playing jazz trumpet, listening to Chet Baker and Usher’s Confessions in the same afternoon, and absorbing the go-go music that rattled out of every car window. He started making tracks in Brooklyn under the name Anon because he didn’t believe his voice was worth hearing. Seven years and three albums later, rum.gold’s Is There Anybody Home?, a two-disc concept record about childhood trauma colliding with adult heartbreak (including his own divorce), arrives today on Independent Co. “Friend of a Friend,” from the album’s first half, doesn’t narrate the end of a relationship so much as measure how far backward it’s traveled. “I never wanted it to end this way/With you and I right back to where we began,” he sings. — Jhanel

Isaia Huron, “This Girl Wants Everything”

Before Isaia Huron sang a note on a record, he was a drummer in his father’s church in Greenville, South Carolina, where his mother directed the choir and music was closer to obligation than ambition. He moved to Nashville, worked as a touring drummer, and started dropping EPs in 2020 that got early co-signs from 6lack and Drake. His 2025 debut CONCUBANIA, a fictional-but-autobiographical breakup album staged as a three-act play, established him as someone willing to build entire worlds around the messiest parts of being in love. “This Girl Wants Everything” is a loose single that shows Huron working a simpler problem, and working it honestly. The premise is old, a man pouring everything into a woman who treats his devotion as a deposit. The second verse grants her perspective without softening his: she’s beautiful in every lifetime, she handles attention with ease, and she figured out long ago how to get what she wants from anyone. He produced it himself, and the arrangement stays minimal enough to let the words carry the weight. — Jill Wannasa

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• RAYE: This Music May Contain Hope.

• Noah Guy: MEMORIA, in blue

• Elmiene: Sounds for Someone

• Tom Misch: Full Circle

• Victory: Confessions of a Lonely Girl

• chromonicci: Days of You.

• rum.gold: Is There Anybody Home?

• IAMNOBODI: Duality & Devotion

• Selwyn Birchwood: Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues

• bnnyhunna: PSALM FUNK

• RnBoi: My Eyes Only - Flashback

• RUSSELL!: FLOWERS

• Joshua Showtime Williams: This Is Me

• Eliza Neals: Thunder in the House

• Mz Dels: With Intention

• Justine Skye: Candy (EP)

• Jessie Reyez: $TILL PAID (EP)

• Bellah: State of Emergency (EP)

• Olivia Escuyos: Yours Truly (EP)

• BODHI: Be My Guest (EP)

• Jordan Ariel: UNSERIOUS (EP)

• Kennedy Ryon: Can I Evolve? (EP)

• Juls: Jigi Jigi Vol. 2 (EP)

• Jocelyn Brown: Live in Amsterdam

Other Songs to Check Out

• Jessie Ware: Automatic

• Eric Bellinger: Cry In Front of You

• Jungle: Carry On

• André Mego & : Heart of the Matter

• Davion Farris: Good Girl

• August Charles: Fight for You

• Robyn Florence & DAVIES: So Bad

• KAIRO: HALO

• Mychelle: Personal Attack

• Homer: The Tall Green (feat. Kendra McKinley)

• MILES.: Castle On the Moon

• JuJu Rogers & Jamila Woods: Elohim

• Khalea Lynee: Don’t Tell Me No

• Mayah Dyson: Hold Me Down

• Levina: Back In My Body

• BaggE: Devil In Disguise

• Maya Jade: Why Why (feat. Dilly Cooner)

• Mega Simone: Breathing

• Dreamer Isioma: Smile

• MALIA: Touch

• Tamera: Sinner

• Etta Bond & Raf Riley: Only Human

• Kaelin Ellis, Madison McFerrin & Sweata: Hello.Morning

• CANDIACE & Tamar Braxton: If Only... (Remix)

• Mariah Carey: Volare / Nothing Is Impossible (Live from the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games)

• B5: ETA

• H3rizon: WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! (from the Netflix Series Star Search)

• Jordan Rakei & Nubya Garcia: Monsters

• Brianna Castro: don’t take it personal

• ROSEYE: Fallen Angels

• Devon Culture: DND

• Zenesoul: Better Off Alone

• Stefan Mahendra: Better Man

• Genia: BABY IMA STAR

• Luna Elle & Foggieraw: AMPM (Remix)

• Eloise: My Man & Me

• Chikoruss: So Scandalous

• Yuna: wasteland

• BLKWTR & Jalisa Rey: Waves

• Tami Neilson: Are You Sure

• Wax Motif & Ty Dolla $ign: Bad & U Know It

• KYANTII: Five

• Essosa: He’s Not All That

• MIRIAH: IRRESPONSIBLE

• Jacob Banks & NESTA: Love Like This (Flip)

• mike: north star

• Nic Hanson: Persist, Proceed

• Binta: Siren

• Nic Dean: Three Am

• Neema Nekesa & Blue Lab Beats: Tomorrow

• Ne-Yo: Up Out & Gone

• Aaron Page: Waiting Room

• Eloise: My Man & E

• Honey Bxby & Queen Naija: Shame (feat. Bunna B)

• Jeff Bernat: Worth the Wait

• Gareth Donkin: Running Away

• Phoenix James: Hold On

• Devin Tracy: Fantasy

• Troy Javelona: DARLING

• Tommy Saint: relocate

• Flyy Armani & JLLY: drunk & faded.

• LATE NIGHT RICKY & SAFE: My Friends

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This week’s batch arrived all at once, as if the entire R&B release calendar conspired to drop on the first day of spring. Miles Caton, fresh off an Oscars performance and a $360 million movie, released a small, devastating acoustic confession about knowing you’re the problem and not fixing it. Coco Jones, coming off a Super Bowl gig, a Grammy-nominated debut album, and an engagement to Donovan Mitchell, dropped a love song so unguarded it almost doesn’t sound like the same woman who spent all of 2025 proving she belonged. FLO, the British trio who just earned the first Grammy nomination for a UK R&B group in twenty years, turned a selfie into a manifesto. Tank and the Bangas, Grammy winners out of New Orleans, recruited Lucky Daye for a duet that works like a slow pull across a room. And 6LACK, returning after a long silence, opened his new album campaign by admitting something most singers would rather keep to themselves: that the person he’d been lying to wasn’t just his partner—it was himself.

Five songs, five confessions of varying sizes, all worth your time.

Miles Caton, “Don’t Hate Me”

A year ago, Miles Caton was a 20-year-old Brooklyn kid who learned guitar in two months to play a preacher’s son possessed by the blues in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. The film banked over $360 million and put his baritone on an Oscars stage, flanked by Buddy Guy and Raphael Saadiq. That kind of coronation tends to swallow a young singer whole, to turn every subsequent release into an appendix of the thing that made them famous. “Don’t Hate Me,” produced by JT Daly, refuses the appendix. Caton drops the period-piece grandeur entirely and shows up with an acoustic pop-R&B confession about being the wrong person at the right time.

The premise is blunt. He knows the woman he’s with deserves better, and he can’t promise he’ll ever close the gap. “You want a promise, but I’m just a maybe/Your worst is twice the best that I can do” is an admission most 21-year-olds lack the vocabulary for, let alone the nerve to sing plainly over a clean guitar arrangement. Caton doesn’t dress it up with melisma or bury it under ad-libs. He parks himself in the discomfort and stays. The pre-chorus is where it really cuts.

“Old enough to know you’re good for me
And I’m young enough to never look back.”

Caton never once asks for sympathy, and that saves the song. He concedes every point his partner could raise and then asks only not to be hated for the wreckage. The bridge lays it flat: “Why are we even tryin’ to pretend?/Goodbye never really means the end.” He’s already rehearsed the breakup but can’t pull the trigger, locked in the gap between knowing and doing. A year removed from playing a character whose voice could pierce the boundary between the living and the dead, Caton admits he can’t even pierce his own indecision. That honesty, from a 21-year-old this newly famous, is harder to manufacture than any guitar part he learned for a movie. — Imani Raven

Coco Jones, “LUVAGIRL”

Coco Jones sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the Super Bowl last month. Her Grammy-nominated debut album cracked the Top 20 on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. She got engaged to Donovan Mitchell. The woman has been stacking proof of her legitimacy for a solid year, which makes “LUVAGIRL” such a left turn—her first single since Why Not More? ditches the proving ground entirely. She’s not here to convince anyone of anything. She’s here to be giddy about being in love, and the absence of armor is the whole point.

Shae Jacobs’ production lays a bed of regal horns and a rubber-band funk bassline that bounces without ever rushing, and Jones sprawls across it like she has all the time in the world. The opening verse sheds her old persona in real time: “I used to run in them streets/I did what I pleased/But you put a bad girl back to sleep/Woke up a new me.” There’s no mourning for the previous version, no dramatic pivot. She just moved on, and the casualness of it carries more confidence than any declaration would. By the second verse, she’s planning forever over satin sheets on a Wednesday, and it doesn’t sound like settling. It sounds like she’s bragging. — Jamila W.

FLO, “Leak It”

A potential pop crossover breakout. “Leak It” opens with a conversation that doubles as a thesis statement. “How can I not leak it?” Stella asks. “I look so good, you look so good. Maybe we should all leak it together.” FLO (Stella, Jorja, and Renée), the British trio whose debut Access All Areas earned a Grammy nomination last year, are done pretending vanity needs a justification. Their first new single starts from a gloriously petty premise. Post a fire selfie. Let the fallout sort itself. “This one’s gonna teach my ex a lesson/This one’s gonna get my boyfriend’s attention/This one’s just for me, myself and I” parcels out the exact same photo to three different audiences with three different motives, each one selfish in its own satisfying way.

The Boutin-and-Bunetta production clatters and thumps with choreography-ready percussion that 2000s girl groups would have killed for (The Pussycat Dolls, in particular), and the trio trades verses like relay sprinters: Renée’s breathless opener, Stella’s mirror-gazing swagger, Jorja’s cool-blooded “stay clogging up my DMs.” If there’s a limit to “Leak It,” it’s that the song is all surface by design. The trio described it as unlocking “a core memory of being a young girl, listening to girl group music and feeling empowered,” and that nostalgia trip is transparent in the construction. It’s a fun record built to move units and bodies, and it knows it. FLO are talented enough that you wish they’d smuggle in something messier—but sometimes a group of women posting thirst traps for sport and writing anthems about it is exactly enough. — Ameenah Laquita

Tank and the Bangas, “Move” feat. Lucky Daye

Tank and the Bangas won their first Grammy last year for The Heart, The Mind, The Soul. Now comes The Last Balloon, the final chapter of a trilogy that began with Red Balloon and Green Balloon, and “Move” is its first single. Featuring Lucky Daye, the track strips the New Orleans band’s usual genre-hopping restlessness down to a single physical request: come closer. Tarriona “Tank” Ball and Daye let the longing fill the rest. The first verse sounds like someone talking in their sleep, half-conscious and grabbing at whoever’s beside them (“Flowers in my garden/Bring toys to my room/Kids to jump, they robe it/Don’t you leave too soon.”). The domestic and the sensual keep bleeding into each other, and Tank doesn’t bother pulling them apart. She’s talking about wanting someone while the laundry piles up and the kids are in the next room, and neither cancels the other out. When Daye enters, the temperature shifts. “Imma water your power flower/I’m your chance at thunder showers/Tryna say it’s final hour” has a sweetness to it but also a clock ticking underneath; he’s not being smooth, he’s being urgent. And “tension leaving me so sweet and sour” is one of those lines that gets better the more you sit with it, the way it catches that particular feeling of being right next to somebody who still feels far away. — Jill Wannasa

6LACK, “Bird Flu”

Most R&B singers bury their worst confession in a bridge, somewhere the casual listener won’t catch it. Ricardo Valentine puts his in the first verse. “What goes around comes around, applies to me too/I know I hurt you, baby, but I lied to me too,” he sings on “Bird Flu,” the lead single from Love Is The New Gangsta, his forthcoming album on LVRN/Interscope. That second line is where the song lives. Hurting someone else is an old story. Admitting you were also running a con on yourself takes the floor out from under the apology.

6LACK has always favored a monotone stigma, but here he’s rapping. The lines about procrastination and blacking out “at the time I needed help” don’t scan as moody posturing; they scan as a man naming specific failures without giving himself an out. “Resentment, self-inflicted from the things I never said/The story grew some legs, then it really got ahead.” That’s what happens when you stay quiet long enough that the silence writes its own version of events, and everyone else fills in the blanks for you. The “bird flu” conceit folds cleanly into this. He’s sick from his own carelessness, contagious to the people closest to him, and only now bothering to take the temperature. By verse two, the cost sharpens. “An open ear can make a stranger feel like she’s somebody to me/Why I did it wouldn’t make no sense to nobody but me” is as close to a direct answer as 6LACK has ever given for the emotional infidelity that runs through so many of his songs, and he delivers it without dumbing it down. — Tori Hammond

Read the Album Reviews from This Past Week

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• Alex Isley: When the City Sleeps

• Ego Ella May: Good Intentions

• Terrace Martin: Perspective

• MT Jones: Joy

• S. Fidelity: I Guess I’ll Never Learn

• T.K. Soul: Mind of an Urban Legend

• Selah Sue & The Gallands: Movin’

• Mark Adams: This Is Neo-Soul

• Mali Wilson: Retro In Real Time

• Nubiyan Twist: Chasing Shadows

• Sharon Marley: Firebird

• Champagne Bubblebath: Mixtape: Volume One

• Norman Brown: Authentically Norman

• Son Little: Cityfolk

• Ye Ali: Private Suite 6

• Witch Prophet: Words Are Spells, Thoughts Are Magic

• Buttered: Tiny Deck

• NateTaylorr: sensitive gangsta V2

• Keri Hilson: We Need to Talk: Redemption (EP)

• Mary Ann Alexander: Love or a Lesson (EP)

• TyFontaine: A L T (EP)

• ZENA: TEMESGEN (EP)

• Kealeboga: A Love That Made Me Hate U (EP)

• GIOVANNA: Heaven is Here: PAIN (EP)

• Insightful: RABBIT (Deluxe)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Dionne Warwick & Cynthia Erivo: Ocean in the Desert

• Durand Bernarr & James Fauntleroy: Wild Ride

• Arin Ray & Paperboy Fabe: Both of Us

• Devin Morrison & CUBE: KAZUYA

• Mack Keane Bloodshot

• threetwenty: Such Is Life

• Yaya Bey: Egyptian Musk (feat. NESTA)

• Jorja Smith: Price of It All

• Elmiene: Saviour

• Tink: Overrated

• Vedo: Little Things (V-Mix)

• Kelsey Lu: Running to Pain

• Ebony Riley: Honest

• Justin Garner: Feels

• N’shai Iman: Okay!

• April + VISTA: Standing In Piece

• Khal!l: The Danger

• Thutmose: PUZZLE PIECE

• Lee Lewis: Your Love (What I’m Dying From)

• Twelve’len, Walshy Fire & Ash-B: How Deep It Go

• Markus & The Outskrt: We’re Losing Recipes

• Marvin Gaye: Soon I’ll Be Loving You Again (Salaam Remi Remix)

• Liam Bailey: A Perfect Release

• EAST WEST HONEY, Lyric Jones & Wake the Wild: Spend the Night

• KELS: 6ft Under

• WESLEYFRANKLIN: Racing

• Rebel Rae: Worth It

• Tia Gordon: should i give it up

• Pino, Fern. & kyleaux: I Don’t Wanna Lose (Palagi)

• Miraa May & Sons of Sonix: Good Advice

• Goldiie Lux: Be

• Lex Aura: Always

• Suzi: All My Love

• Claire Brooks: HEELCATCHER

• duendita: super sad!

• PawPaw Rod: Bettin on Me

• Indigo Mak: Closure

• Jastin Martin: flow state

• greek: PATIENCE

• D’Mott: I Do

• Zacari: JINX

• Goldiie Lux: Be

• Che Ecru: Imagine

• Nao Yoshioka & Braxton Cook: You Got to Feel It (feat. Bnnyhunna)

• Montell Fish: Love You Right (feat. Clara La San)

• PaBrymo: My Type (feat. Eric IV)

• Stalk Ashley: On the Boulevard

• Finn Askew: Distance

• Jahson Paynter: draggin’ my feet!

• Latanya Alberto: Humble

• CAIRO!: Love or Sum Shit

• spaceluvrrr: 500 DEGREE$

• Adria Kain: So Bad

• papa mbye: SOME OTHER TIME

• EightyEight: COINCIDENCE

• Beau Diako, Ben Esser & enawk: river you are

• Arlissa: NOW!!

• Dylan Williams: Out My Way

• Ania Hoo: Make Me Up

• Good Girl & Fana Hues: Heart Like Mine

• Parris Goebel & Destin Conrad: DONT BREAK MY HEART BABY REMIX

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Glenn Lewis, “Past Tense”

He’s back! A decade can hollow out a career or sharpen the person behind it. Glenn Lewis, the Toronto vocalist whose 2002 debut World Outside My Window peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 and earned a co-sign from Stevie Wonder himself, has been functionally silent since 2013’s Moment of Truth. Two albums shelved by Epic in the interim, a Grammy nomination for his duet with Amel Larrieux on Stanley Clarke’s record, and then nothing. “Past Tense” arrives through his own Reimagery Inc. imprint, and the independence suits him. Lewis is talking to a woman who knows her man isn’t returning.

“First, everything is cool
Then he ghosting you
Saying he lost track of time
And he missing you.”

Lewis skips sympathy and goes straight to his case, pitching himself as the alternative, but the sharpest move is how plainly he names the cycle: she keeps waiting for a man whose affection expired months ago, and the waiting itself has become the relationship. “At this point, you playing yourself/Now it’s on you” cuts through the tenderness of his vocal, which remains startlingly close to the one that had Wonder singing “Don’t You Forget It” back to him at a Los Angeles radio station in 2002. Written with Juwayon Clarke and produced by Seige Monstracity, “Past Tense” refuses to crowd its own argument. Lewis’s father, Glenn Ricketts, fronted Crack ov Dawn, a mid-‘70s Columbia Records band, and there’s a patience here inherited from that generation. A voice, given sufficient room, can do the persuading by itself. — Jamila W.

Thundercat, “ThunderWave” feat. WILLOW

Six years between albums is unusual for someone as prolific in collaboration as Thundercat, who spent the gap lending his bass and his weirdo charisma to records by A$AP Rocky, Silk Sonic, Gorillaz, KAYTRANADA, and Justice. Distracted, his fifth studio album due in two weeks, was built primarily with pop super-producer Greg Kurstin, a pairing that could easily sand down Thundercat’s oddball instincts. “ThunderWave” suggests the opposite happened. Kurstin’s production backs off entirely, leaving room for water sounds and flange-drunk bass while Thundercat and WILLOW braid their falsettos together into late-period Doobie Brothers territory, specifically the Michael McDonald years when the harmonies got so thick they swallowed the song whole. Both singers are begging the same person, or maybe each other, to hold on. WILLOW grounds it by matching his vulnerability note for note rather than playing the cool counterpart. Thundercat described the collaboration by calling her “the weeping, the whimsy, the whispy, the wizard,” and there’s real affection in how their voices tangle here, neither one leading, both a little lost. — Imani Raven

Alex Isley, “Westside”

Her major label debut, When the City Sleeps, drops next Friday on Free Lunch Records and Warner, and Alex Isley spent the rollout naming Los Angeles as the album’s main character. She told Instagram the city is “the setting of all my dreams, my triumphs, my heartbreaks.” “Westside” takes that claim and scales it down to a single person with a couple hundred dollars left, running the same dead days Monday through Sunday, trying to figure out where they can lay their head safe.

Alex has never tried to dodge the Isley family name or the weight it carries in American music. She built her own catalog through a steady run of independent EPs and a breakout NPR Tiny Desk performance last summer, and the Grammy-nominated singer’s voice here carries the whole arrangement without leaning on production to fill space. “One stop short of paradise” is what she calls the Westside, and the honesty of that phrase sticks. Home offers familiarity enough to breathe, not perfection. “It’s worth the trip, yeah, it might take some time/But the light is green now, take it as your sign.” Isley sings those lines with the calm of someone who made the drive years ago and is circling back to collect whoever got left behind. — Jill Wannasa

Leven Kali, “Starlet”

“What you think ‘bout love?/What you think ‘bout lust?” Leven Kali asks both questions flat, no buildup, over a chant-like “ay-ya-ya” pattern that gives the song a pulse before any instrument commits to a groove. Four-time Grammy-nominated for his contributions to Beyoncé’s Renaissance and Cowboy Carter, the Dutch-born, Los Angeles-raised singer and multi-instrumentalist co-wrote “Bodyguard” from the latter. Those credentials make LK99, his Def Jam debut album feel overdue. He’s been building toward a solo statement since the Low Tide and HIGHTIDE mixtapes, working with Syd, Smino, and Topaz Jones along the way, collecting co-signs from Quincy Jones and George Clinton. “Starlet” burns through its subject in under three minutes. After all the heat, what Kali wants is symmetry. To be perceived as clearly as he perceives. That need has nothing to do with lust and everything to do with recognition, which he’s spent years earning from other people’s projects while his own sat waiting. — Kendra Vale

Casper Sage, “i’m dying to feel alive again”

Oklahoma-born and Nashville-based, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Casper Sage has been releasing EPs through Warner Records since his 2022 self-titled debut, and “i’m dying to feel alive again,” the lead single from his forthcoming PATINA EP due in April, marks the first time his writing has sounded less like processing and more like pleading. Sage wrote about emotional isolation on his SAGEhaven EP, which circled the same loneliness, the tug between wanting people close and suspecting solitude is safer. This time, the details tighten. “Went searching for relief and found regret” lands without any cushion. He pins the exact image that won’t leave. “Of you cheesing when you knew you found connection.” That grin, mid-realization, is what he can’t shake and can’t replicate. “How come I won’t let nobody be there for me?” he asks twice, and follows each time with “How come I feel lighter when you’re leaning on me?” Two questions that answer each other without him having to say so. Sage, who penned a Black History Month essay for Atwood Magazine about carving space as a Black artist in Nashville’s country-coded music scene, carries that same stubbornness into his lyrics. Complicated feelings don’t get flattened here. — Tai Lawson

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums Released This Week to Check Out

No, we’re not adding that Poodoo album.

• James Blake: Trying Times

• Eric Roberson: Beautifully All Over the Place (Streaming Release)

• Leven Kali: LK99

• Olive Jones: For Mary

• Self Proclaimed Narcissist: Self Proclaimed Narcissist

• Larrenwong: Love Games

• MF Robots: III (Part One)

• Lo Steele, Charlie Hunter & Marcus Finnie: Only a Drop

• Kärma: The Deep End (EP)

• Miranda Rae: Soul Food (EP)

• sky: songs we used to hate! (EP)

• Ebubé: A Mile In My Mind (EP)

• Charlotte Colace: No Way But Through (EP)

• Jiire Smith: Diamond in a Process (EP)

• Marlon Funaki: Half Moon (EP)

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Jordan Adetunji: Who Is It

• Jacquees: Physical (feat. Tink)

• Thee Marloes: Under the Silver Mon

• Noxz & Sipprell: Dreaming Wide Awake

• Nemchel: Makeup Room

• Mrcl & The Pocket Queen: Who Knew?

• Olivia Escuyos: Need Your Love (feat. Lowkey)

• Isaiah Kaleo & Vesta: touch me, tease me

• Neya: All for Me

• Josiah Bassey: The Dress

• Parlor Greens: Emeralds

• Dua Saleh: I Do, I Do

• Keoni Usi: zye

• Olympia Vitalis: Daze

• LoSmoothe: Fool for Love

• Whyz: Try (feat. Xiamara Jennings)

• thatboykwame: SPECIAL WAY (feat. Stevan)

• Conner Reeves & Joss Stone: SLOW LIGHTNING

• Lekan: Safety

• Cholita: No Second Chance

• Huakeem: you don’t care

• praise.: spicy rigatoni. (feat. Lizzy Cameron)

• CUBE: Mr. Right

• Angela Renee: Run To (feat. Jadakiss & Resa)

• Owen Saward: Don’t Let Me Down

• Kuzi Cee: Rain

• Luh Kel: I Want You

• JRDN: Can’t Go On

• Aaron Childs: Getchu Down

• Juls: You Know I’m Down (feat. Tyler Daley)

• Lily Massie: Cycles (feat. Byron Juane)

• Shaggy: Looking Lovely (feat. Robin Thicke)

• Buddy: House Jam (feat. Faucet)

• Arkose: Don’t Matter / Girl Let’s Groove

• Jacob Banks: Claim to Fame

• Maverick Sabre: 8 Stages

• Amadi Blue: Lotus

• Tom Misch: Days of Us (feat. Kaidi Akinnibi)

• MarcLo: ONS

• GAWD: Lie to Me

• Aaron Taylor: Changing Weather

• Keenan TreVon: 3 Days

• Brayla: Control (feat. Paul Grant)

• Kayam: Crashing Out

• Cocoa Sarai: Chakra

• Gen Bello: So Fine

• Qui: H.O.M.B.

• chromonucci: FAVORITE. (feat. SAFA)

• Nic Dean: Lights Low

• Dee Gatti: Seasons

• Baby J: The Fix

• REMI: Your Loss

• 4Fargo: Relieve You (feat. Jastin Martin)

• ARDN: High Demand

• BRI.: Mr. Say So

• Iris Aeria: Throw It Away

• ALANN: NVR KNW

• Matté: 24:9

• Chelan: ALONE IN ALL THIS MESS

• cinquemani: Something Runs Through Me

• Anna Moore: Soft Sunset

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Ayra Starr, “Where Do We Go”

Between her Glastonbury debut last summer, a Grammy nomination for “Gimme Dat,” and “Rush” crossing 500 million Spotify plays, Ayra Starr spent 2025 stacking accomplishments that most Afrobeats artists twice her age haven’t touched. She’s 22, signed to Don Jazzy’s Mavin Records with an exclusive Republic pipeline to the American market, and she opens 2026 with a question she can’t get a straight answer to. “Where Do We Go” splits its weight between swagger and disappointment. The first verse parks the Mercedes, keeps the visits secret from friends, stays after hours. Ayra barks the pre-chorus like she’s running point on a dare: “Spin the block, can I give this a try?” But that confidence drops clean off by the time she hits “You lead me on, then I follow you blind.” ILYA’s production holds the beat stiff and danceable, snapping along while the lyrics admit that this situationship has been circling the same block for months. Starr doesn’t beg, just clocks the situation and moves. The second verse flips pronouns, “I come and see you Park the Mercedes,” and that switch pins the blame to both sides equally. Nobody’s parking permanently, but nobody’s said goodbye either. — Ameenah Laquita

Omarion, “Fantasy”

The Boys 4 Life Tour launches tonight (at the time of this writing) in Louisville with B2K and Bow Wow co-headlining 28 cities, and the timing of “Fantasy” landing the same week tells you everything about the commercial math behind this single. Omarion slots it into the press cycle while the reunion has his name in every entertainment outlet printing nostalgia stories about the Scream Tour II era, Y2K fashion, and whether Lil Fizz has earned forgiveness yet. Shrewd scheduling. The song itself borrows heavily enough from Keyshia Cole that social media has already clocked the interpolation. The hook is Omarion doing what Omarion has always done: mid-tempo sex records with expensive car references and choreography-ready ( “Got the Maybach going bouncy/Have you getting nasty in the back seat”).

The man can still sing, and his phrasing stays loose where a lesser vocalist would stiffen up trying to compete with his own twenty-year catalog. He squeezes “masters in sexology” into a line without stumbling over the syllable count, which is a minor achievement on its own. But “Fantasy” also asks very little of itself. The writing coasts on mood alone, piling alignment-and-assignment bars that feel written for an Instagram caption more than a full listen. For a 41-year-old man launching a new solo album called O2, a track this comfortable doesn’t tell you much about where he plans to go next. It tells you where he’s always been. — Jamila W.

Ama, “Need It Bad” feat. Brent Faiyaz

After a quiet two-year stretch away from Interscope, Ama (formerly Ama Lou) signed to her friend Brent Faiyaz’s ISO Supremacy label last year. The friendship dates to 2019. The London-born singer, who’d already drawn co-signs from Drake and Virgil Abloh before she’d released a full project, relocated to the States, and this single, produced by Mannyvelli and Spizledoe, marks her most direct bid for radio-adjacent R&B since the label switch.

Faiyaz takes the first verse and does exactly what you’d expect: unhurried, murmuring about spending the night and making breakfast, his voice floating just behind the beat. He’s perfected this register so thoroughly that it barely registers as a performance anymore. He just occupies the frequency. Ama’s verse, arriving second, cracks the song open. “I’m skeptical, what you want with me, boy?” reroutes a song that had been drifting toward another late-night surrender. She agrees to the terms, “Don’t let nobody know and I’ll let you roll by,” but she names the conditions first. Where Faiyaz’s half glides on assumption, Ama’s half demands a receipt. “Fuck me with the lights on till I can’t see/What I want, it’s morning/I didn’t expect to still be moaning” concedes the physical reality without surrendering the upper hand. The two voices don’t blend so much as they negotiate, and the song is better for keeping the gap visible. — Jill Wannasa

Nia Smith, “Tough” feat. Destin Conrad

A Brixton singer whose debut single “Give Up the Fear” turned heads last year and a Destin Conrad feature credit would’ve been enough context for most new-release round-ups to paste together a blurb. But “Tough” deserves a closer look because it does something unusual with its central complaint: it asks a man to stop being brave. The lyrics address a partner whose pride runs so deep that vulnerability gets buried under composure. “Saying you’re okay, I know that lie/I know that you stay faithful to your pride” lands early in the first verse, and Smith’s alto, warm and gently skeptical, doesn’t plead so much as take inventory. She can see the tension, she knows he won’t name it, and she’s asking him to try. Conrad’s verse complicates things by flipping the confession: “I know I’m the worst, I don’t make sense And loving me is so complicated.” Conrad turns out to be the messy one admitting he might be the reason the other person had to build the wall in the first place. That reversal gives the song two arguments happening at once, one asking a man to soften and the other admitting he might have good reason to stay guarded. — Kendra Vale

Jalen Ngonda, “Doctrine of Love”

Most Daptone artists won’t admit they wrote a song just to get out of the studio, but Jalen Ngonda told Consequence of Sound exactly that. He’d been listening to a lot of James Brown, and “Doctrine of Love” came from that restlessness. He also admitted “doctrine” might’ve been the wrong word. He probably meant “doctorate.” But they’d already recorded it, so the title stuck. That kind of honesty about his own process feels rare from a 20-something Daptone signee whose entire aesthetic depends on treating 1964 Detroit like a holy site. It plays like a graduation ceremony for romantic veterans. “You had to pay the price, make the sacrifice” measures the cost of staying in love, and the “step right up, come and get your proper’s” call-and-response section lifts directly from tent-revival stagecraft.

Ngonda’s voice, a falsetto that can rasp and belt in the same phrase, carries the conceit without winking at it, bearing down on every note. The verses list qualifications: ecstasy with misery, ups and downs, lonely walls and late-night DJ calls. The Washington, D.C.-raised, London-based singer recorded this with Daptone producers Vince Chiarito and Michael Buckley at sessions split between Brooklyn and Riverside, California, the same team behind his 2023 debut Come Around and Love Me. That album’s breakout single “If You Don’t Want My Love” crossed 253 million streams, and this second record, due June 5, expands into 1950s New Orleans R&B and girl-group pop alongside the early-‘70s soul foundation. “Doctrine of Love” doesn’t try to modernize the form. It earns its conviction by taking the oldest subject on earth—love that costs you something—and dressing it in a James Brown suit without ever pretending the suit is ironic. — Tai Lawson

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums Released This Week to Check Out

• Gnarls Barkley: Atlanta

• Daniela Andrade: Oda

• ELIZA: The Darkening Green

• Pimmie: Don’t Come Home

• Rashad: I Was Told There’d Be Gold

• Giddy Gang & Viyo: After All

• Malted Milk: Time Out

• Arima Ederra: A Rush to Nowehere

• DJ DMG & October London: Midnight in Houston

• Swavy: FOR THE GIRLIES

• waterbaby: Memory Be a Blade

• Alvin Garrett: Talk to Her Like This

• Rick Braun: Rick Braun Plays Chuck Mangione

• GeeJay: Who Have I Become?

• Brian Jackson: EP Two

• Ty Dolla $ign: Girl Music Vol. 1 (EP)

• Jeremih: N.O.M.A (EP)

• Karun & Bigfootinyourface: Eternal (EP)

• Alicia Creti: MINDFIELDS (EP)

• A.R.T: Blank Canvas (EP)

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Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Jorja Smith: Blue Lights (Havoc Remix)

• Omarion: Fantasy

• Storm Ford: F.O.O.L

• Gabriela Rosario: Party

• Gio Genesis: Loveless (Maxi-Single)

• Joy Postell: With Yew

• Olivia Escuyos: No Revenge

• Ama Louise: Inside Out

• んoon: OTODO

• Bobby V.: International Love

• Jeremih & Kevin Gates: Stroke U Up

• Mack Keane: Frontin’ (Spotify Singles)

• Isaia Huron: Desire (Spotify Singles)

• Sam Akpro & TYSON: Wayside

• Lei Dominique: Over Again

• Heartbreak Alumni: THEY

• DRAM: THE WAY

• Isaiah Falls: TABOO

• DaniLeigh: G.O.D.

• Deliverie: Settle

• Lost Girl: Romeo

• Is0kenny: Play Bout You

• Joya Mooi & Lady Donli: Only Water

• We the Band: 911

• OSA: Mona Lisa Who?

• Richard Saunders: Peace of Mind

• AYLØ, Le Mav & Naya Akanji: Second Thoughts

• Viuta: She Worships Saturn

• MyGuyMars & Lorea: SAFE WITH YOU

• Inayah: Choose (Acoustic)

• Delishia J: Kryptonize

• Andrea Valle: Passionate

• Wesley Joseph: Pluto Baby

• Adanna Duru: Nothing to Say

• T.K. Soul: Just in Case (feat. Sir Charles Jones)

• Tym: Is the Light Still On

• BombayMami: Gulabi Mantra

• Jalisa Rey & LONGLIVECZAR: Good Time (Rap Version)

• MILIANO: FRYING ME UP

• Jonathan Plevyak: Are You My Lady

• Sonny Miles: As Long as I’m With You

• Lex Aura: 1942

• Chocc: Codi

• Mako Girls: Chasing a Dream

• Angelique Kidjo: Fall On Me (feat. PJ Morton)

• Njerae: Ingia Ndani

• Tay Iwar: Sweet Persuasion

• Wax Motif & Jozzy: What U Want

• Avara: Winston Street

• MALIA: Masquerade

• THEHONESTGUY: NEVER BE THE SAME (feat. Lizzie Berchie)

• Ye Ali: Come Through (feat. 11:11)

• JOIE GREY: VIOLET interval (Maxi-Single)

• Jupiter Grey: The Arcade

• Quincy Isaiah: Walk Away

• Jasmine Kiara: Attached

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Jesse Powell, JP

“You,” which was on his 1996 debut, was re-included on 1998’s ‘Bout It, and after that it became a huge hit, reaching No. 2 on the U.S. R&B chart (No. 10 pop). From the previous album there were songs that became topics too, like “I Wasn’t With It” with a Pete Rock remix, but Jesse Powell’s real strength probably comes down to ballads like “You.” This third album, JP, is made so that from slow to mid-tempo you can really take in his singing.

Anyway, the hit of “You” probably gave him huge confidence. The power of his singing is a little different than before. Starting with “It’ll Take The World,” produced by Curtis “Fitz” Williams, he sings big and throws it out. “If I,” produced by Damon Thomas, is Babyface-ish in its style, a triplet ballad that makes you think of Boyz II Men. It has a build toward the second half that you could call group-made, and this kind of song really suits Jesse.

“I’m Leaving” is a developed form of that kind of shape. The lyric credits list five names like Trina & Tamara and Nicole Wray, and while Jesse takes one step back, he gets tangled up with a female vocal riding a 2000 Watts-style sound. This is good. Even within the album’s construction, it becomes a good-feeling change-up.

There’s also “I Didn’t Realize,” produced by Shep Crawford, where Jesse does all the vocals and layers them up like a choir, and on Tim & Bob’s “I’d Rather Be Alone” and “Can’t Take It,” the latter where you can hear a bizarre guitar sound, is interesting. Fred Jerkins’s “After We Make Love” is about at the passing mark, but.

Starting with the straight-ahead ballad “Go Upstairs,” the remaining songs also have good ones. Even so, as an album it ends up sounding a bit one-note. Basically every track is produced with Jesse’s voice set as the main thing, and that confident, dignified singing can look like “pushing too hard” in spots. If there had been one more change-up like “I’m Leaving,” the impression would have changed. It also stands out that the name of his ally Carl Roland disappears from the producer credits. Well, there are a few songs that look like they could transform like “You,” so maybe this is fine as-is, or something.

Now. Thanks for waiting. It’s “Something in the Past.” A cover of a minor hit that Detroit’s One Way put out in 1980. With a live backing band behind him, he sings it all the way through over about six and a half minutes. This, this, this slightly drunken-seeming emotional feel, it’s a bit lacking this time. — Kendra Vale

Public Announcement, Don’t Hold Back

After leaving A&M, it sounds like they also put down roots at Interscope for a while, but in the end they settled at RCA and this is their second record, put together and finished. There were member changes from the time of the previous album, All Work No Play, which was certified gold, and Ace Watkins joins the group in place of Euclid Gray.

The 13 tracks that open with a dance number like a clearer, easier-to-understand version of the rhythm of Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women” are basically built around a nasty style that pushes forward without hesitation the line of “Body Bumpin’.” The best sample of that is probably the first single “Mamacita,” which also has an extremely good reputation in the mainstream. Following “Mamacita” is probably “Rithickulous,” where, like how the Commodores called an erotic woman’s body “Brick House” in the ‘70s, this time they call it “Rithickulous,” coming at you with direct, even more than “Thong Song.”

The Chicago-bred production provided by Trayvon Potts and Mike Dunn might feel a bit too clean, but it’s all well worked-out, and overflowing with the song’s own appeal, a great finish. “Long Long Summer (We Can),” where the pounce feeling pulls back and a clean beat gets covered with cool harmony, and repertoire like “Papi” (on “Papi,” amazingly, it’s produced by house heavyweight Maurice Joshua) aren’t bad either, and the quality average of the dance numbers is clearly above the previous album.

On the other hand, the ballad group that they sing carefully and soulfully is also stacked with good tracks, and on “U Tryin’ to Ride” Dino from H-Town overlaps, and on “Man Ain’t Supposed to Cry,” that man’s singing method creeps in from the middle, so there are some doubts about their originality, but it’s not at a level that makes you feel annoyed. Also, the two tracks “When I See You” and “Lose a Love,” run by the leader Earl Robinson, are both beyond complaint. Whether it’s the former, starting softly with spoken words, or the latter, where the back-and-forth between lead and chorus gradually heats up, for group fans, you could say they’re not something to miss. Especially “Lose a Love” is crazy.

Even if there aren’t flashy guests and as a product it might look a bit plain compared to the previous album, the weight of the work itself is considerable. — Jill Wannasa

Jaheim, Ghetto Love

The stance is probably similar to LV. The album title is Ghetto Love, and from that fleeting gaze that shines in a way that goes against his brazen-looking face, it’s like a prickly, street-direct romanticism seeps out. This guy, who was spotted by Kay Gee and ended up debuting, is a soul dude who, stripping away vanity, slams his feelings into songs through storytelling, and as a singer he’s on Teddy Pendergrass’s lineage. He also shows interesting things in hip-hop-like current approaches, but the center of gravity of the album is on the group of tracks that straightforwardly push an old-school taste, and in fact the quality of those is outstanding.

The first single “Could It Be,” which has slowly climbed the charts, is the representative, but honestly there are plenty of tracks on here that can match it. Like how “Could It Be” seems to quote Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.’s “Nothing Can Stop Me,” there are other tracks too where the old flavor of the sample laid in the back amplifies how striking the song itself feels. But in the second half, big ballads that don’t rely on the power of samples show up one after another, and as you go along you gradually lose your calm. “Remarkable,” with Terry Dexter, and the Stax-like “Ready, Willing & Able” by Banks & Hampton are powerful beyond measure. This will definitely grab attention. — Imani Raven

Gladys Knight, At Last

Gladys’s previous album in 1998 was a gospel work, and this time is her first secular vocal album in about six years. Since 1994’s Just for You, it’s “finally!” Even so, this time too, with gospel and also country (ballads), in a way that fits Gladys as a “national singer” whose previous booklet had a photo with President Clinton and his wife, it’s a work for everyone (lol).

But. This record, which gets colorful with the current R&B midtempo “If I Were Your Woman II” (said to be a sequel to a ‘70s hit from her Pips era, though it’s a different song) and a Bill Withers song re-baked perfectly by Jamey Jaz in “Grandma’s Hands,” is too good to just file away as “the conscience of a veteran singer” or something. Most of the songs are ballads, led by “Do You Really Want to Know (What Makes Me Fall in Love),” handled by Randy Jackson, but Gladys’s “crying-bushi” shows its real value in ballads.

Especially in the middle stretch, the continuous attack of “Love Hurts,” written by Babyface and produced by Jon-John where you can hear Toni Estes’s beautiful voice, “I Wanna Be Loved,” written by Gordon Chambers and produced by Shep Crawford with a duet with Jamie Foxx, and “Greatest Love of All,” also Shep-produced with the choir burning, brings tears. The mellow “Something Blue” and “Rose Bouquet,” which she was involved in producing herself, also fight hard. And then, the Japan-only bonus track “At Last,” where Benjamin Wright did supporting production/arrangement, this is a moving gem where the chorus by Louis Price (!) and others builds the atmosphere. Singing is everything. Wonderful. — Deja L.

Ledisi, Soulsinger

Ages ago, I remember commenting, “An incredible talent from Oakland. A Jill Scott who can really sing?” and yeah, it really might be the first time in a while I’ve felt “this is incredible” from an unknown artist like this. She’s probably done a huge number of gigs, and Ms. Ledisi’s incredible vocals that know when to be hard and when to be soft, and the jazzy R&B world built by Sandra “Sun” Manning (probably her older sister) on keyboards and programming, satisfy almost all of the requirements I want from vocal black music.

The original songs are too complete, and the precision of the backing band called Anibade, including musicians from the Windham Hill side, peeks at times with an Erykah Badu to D’Angelo-type arrangement sense, while aiming at a more aggressive “earthy urbanism.” Yeah, she’s also a singer who perfectly clears up my frustration that I felt even with Jill, even with Erykah, and even with Amel, like, “I wish they could sing just a little more.” Otherwise you couldn’t give yourself a title as confident as “Soulsinger.” Since she apparently has connections with D’Wayne Wiggins and others, she’ll probably appeal to Tony! Toni! Toné! fans too, and she should captivate everyone from the picky people who like Sandra St. Victor to more recent listeners who fall for Macy Gray. Of course, Chaka Khan fans must hear this one. — Keziah Amara Reid

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Bruno Mars, “Why You Wanna Fight?”

Ten years between solo albums is a long silence for someone who never stopped touring or guesting, and The Romantic, which landed this week, sounds like Bruno Mars spent every one of those years rehearsing an apology. He co-produced “Why You Wanna Fight?” with D’Mile, and the two keep the arrangement lean enough that Mars’s voice has to carry the entire weight. He admits he was wrong within the first verse, then spends the rest of the song trying to convert his apology into a physical invitation. “Wouldn’t you rather make love tonight?” could scan as deflection, a man trying to shortcut the hard talk by steering toward the bedroom. But Mars sells the second verse’s promise to call her mother and plead with all her friends as genuine panic, not strategy. He’s offering to humiliate himself in front of her people because staying mad at each other costs more than his pride. By the bridge, when he’s down to just two words, the begging has been stripped of its choreography. Whether that lands as romantic or suffocating probably depends on who you’ve been in the argument. — Imani Raven

GENA, “Douwannabwitastar!?”

A Detroit drummer who toured with the Ray Brown Trio and produced for Common and Erykah Badu teaming up with a Dallas singer-rapper whose solo records refuse to sit still sounds like a recipe for something careful and studied. Karriem Riggins and Liv.e, recording together as GENA, scrapped that instinct entirely. Their debut album The Pleasure Is Yours, released this week on Lex Records, moves in short bursts, most of its sixteen songs wrapping up before you’ve caught your breath. “Douwannabwitastar!?” fits that pace but packs more teeth than its bratty title suggests. Liv.e rattles off conditions for entry. She refuses the bumper-sticker girlfriend role, won’t play superwoman, and couldn’t care less about a man’s money if his fingers are useless and his pitch is hollow. Riggins backs her with horn lines that push the tempo forward without ever settling into a comfortable groove, keeping everything slightly off-balance. The question in the title sounds playful, but Liv.e is running a credit check. She’s asking if a man can match her speed, her schedule, her standards, and she already suspects the answer is no. — Jamila W.

Elmiene, “Honour”

Most songs about wanting respect from a partner begin from a position of earned confidence, someone who got mistreated and now demands better. “Honour,” a an incredible outing from British-Sudanese singer Elmiene’s upcoming debut album sounds for someone (out March 27 on Def Jam), enters from the opposite end. He spent 2025 collecting co-signs from Questlove and Missy Elliott, a BRIT Award nomination, and a BET Awards performance, all before turning in the record. “I’ve always been the one to doubt myself/Convinced I don’t deserve a ‘someone else’” kicks off the song with an admission that he walked into this relationship already expecting to fail. The plea for honour reads differently when the person asking doesn’t believe he deserves it yet. He wants her to keep believing in him while he figures out how to believe in himself, and he’s honest enough to admit that love makes him fold first in every disagreement. He could have tucked a bravado verse in there to recover some ground, the way most male R&B singers would. He just keeps asking. — Kendra Vale

Saint Harison, “Glass Houses”

Everybody knows the proverb, but Saint Harison, a Southampton singer whose viral COLORS session put him on American radar in 2023, uses it here to talk himself down from revenge. “Glass Houses” is the lead single from his May EP ghosted, produced by Akeel Henry, D’Mile, and Daoud. He lied about a breakup, told people they just grew apart when the truth was uglier, and now he’s caught between wanting to expose his ex and knowing the retaliation would shatter his own walls. He sings, “Blood on my fingers/On all of my bracelets and rings/My only reminder/Why me and you ain’t nothing more than friends.” You’d notice that every time you washed your hands. Harison grew up in a difficult household in Southampton and started writing during stays at a women’s centre with his mother. A person who lived through that knows what retaliation actually costs. He could match his ex’s damage, and he spells out that temptation across the bridge, listing the retaliatory moves he’s choosing not to make. He puts the stone down. — Jill Wannasa

GoGo Morrow, “La La Lies”

For years, GoGo Morrow stood a few feet behind Lady Gaga and sang harmonies for arenas full of people who didn’t know her name. She performed alongside Kanye West, too. Her new EP SET, executive produced by Grammy winner Harmony Samuels, is the first project where she’s the only voice that matters, and “La La Lies” makes the strongest case for why that took too long. Morrow, a Philadelphia native who came up at the city’s Creative and Performing Arts High School, sings every bar from a place of total certainty about the man wasting her time. She clocked him from the start, she tells us, and his big talk about big stacks converts to “blah la la” the second she checks his receipts against his promises.

“You ain’t talking bout my heart
You ain’t talking bout a ring
You ain’t nuttin but a thing to me.”

She’s tired of his lies, found the total unacceptable, and issued the invoice. “Run them pockets” stops being a figure of speech when she means it literally. — Tai Lawson

R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out

• Bruno Mars: The Romantic

• GENA: The Pleasure Is Yours

• Michelle David & The True-Tones: Soul Woman

• Lindsey Webster: Music In Me

• Vahn Black: I Am a Woman Again

• BRTHWRK: 1.blurry (EP)

• GoGo Morrow: SET (EP)

• Luck: It Wasn’t Luck: The R&B Files (EP)

• olayinka ehi: Thank You for Listening (EP)

• Myshaan: My Love (EP)

• Lex Aura: No More Lies. (EP)

• Braye: Love Stray (EP)

• STUTS & Julia Wu: With U (EP)

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Gnarls Barkley: Pictures

• Naomi Sharon: Miss That

• Genia: Downfall

• Baves O: September Rush (feat. M.anifest)

• Alexia Jayy: (You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman

• Chelsea Jordan: Picky Choosy

• Lee Vasi: Worthy

• TheARTI$t: Shut It Down

• Mýa & 21 Savage: ASAP (Remix)

• Larrenwong: Worth Your Time

• Skye Newman: Walk

• Karen Bernod: Believe

• KYANTII: Riddles

• Moliy & bees & honey: PARTYGYAL

• OVI WOOD: Need to Know

• Amaeya: Let Me Remind You

• Devon Gilfillian: Hold On (Hourglass)

• Kid Travis: Hang Up My Jersey

• spaceluvrrr: HAND$

• Blossom, Queen Millz & Shapes: Decline

• cortex: Days Are Over

• Nic Dean: Between Us

• Jerome Thomas, Makzo & Lucid Green: Absence

• HoneyLuv: Don’t Stop (feat. Muni Long)

• Otis Kane: Let Me Love You

• Nali: Maybe (feat. Coi Leray)

• Jay Safari: Temptations

• Carla Genus: Hold Up

• Brianna Castro: 4 U

• I Am Roze: Love Will Find You

• Kid Travis: Hang Up My Jersey

• Dreezy: Worth My Time

• Jazlyn Martin: Follow Your Direction

• Miranda Rae: Moonlight (feat. Durand Bernarr)

• Amal Zenab: groove theory (feat. MoRuf & BASI VIBE)

• Nectar Woode: Lights Off

• Lolo Zouaï: Desert Rose pt. 2 (A COLORS Show)

• SIPHO., Ayeisha Raquel & nikhil: COLD WEATHER

• Namasenda: Miami Crest

• Jesse Gold: When You Know

• The Erikson Project & Enzo Franchi: Jamais vraiment

• Marie Dalhstrom: Frostbite

• Olivia Escuyos: Ride

• The Womack: You Went Away Too Long

• Gareth Donkin: Never Gonna Break Your Heart

• Daniela Andrade: Steer

• Tom Misch: Slow Tonight

• Nia Wyn: Two Steps Back

• rum.gold: Asleep at the Wheel

• Bnnyhunna: The Heart Part 2 (feat. 3DDY)

• Mary Ann Alexander: Better Than This

• Devin Donnell: fiftyfive

• nomi.: badman

• Dono: Fair Exchange

• EAN: Lay It On Me

• Jay R: Underneath It All

• Kevin Spears: New Waves

• Nana Fofie: Where It Hurts

• Blaxian: GETCHONAME

• spaceluvrrr: HAND$

• chromonicci: STUPIDLOVE.

• RUSSELL!: JULIANNA

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Ty Dolla $ign, “Miss U 2” feat. Leon Thomas

Girl Music Vol. 1, the six-song project Ty Dolla $ign has due March 6, started as a conversation at a dinner in New York. The DJ was spinning records that made the table agree: somebody needed to bring back the kind of R&B women actually want to hear while getting ready, while out, while thinking about somebody they shouldn’t be texting. “Miss U 2,” produced by Keyz and flipping an Aaron Hall sample that Sue-perman also recently touched for “Gimme a Hug,” is the first offering, and it slots Ty and his EZMNY signee Leon Thomas into the easiest version of themselves.

Ty is spending. Balenciaga, Chanel, Miu Miu, Hermès, a Baumatic ring, a Platinum Amex with charges climbing. Every line of affection is a receipt. He’ll go to war about this woman, he says, and then he specifies what the war looks like. Wedding rings on every finger, no wedding any time soon. He wants the commitment gesture without the commitment, and neither he nor Thomas seems bothered by the gap. Thomas, whose voice has sharpened since his own Grammy-winning run, picks up the second verse and name-dropping vintage Jeffrey, KAOBA, Camzoo—betting that brand-name fluency proves the relationship is real. The snap beat underneath stays spare enough for both of them to coast. Nobody is trying to fix anything or sort anything out. They miss her, she misses them, and somebody’s going shopping. For a project pitched to women, the first single asks almost nothing of them back. — Tai Lawson

Jorja Smith, “Don’t Leave”

Ten years ago, an eighteen-year-old Jorja Smith recorded this around the same time she made “Blue Lights” in 2015, and sat on it ever since. Last month she dusted off three unfinished demos on SoundCloud under the name “Demo Dump ‘16,” and fans voted “Don’t Leave” as the one they wanted completed. Smith, who has spent ten years releasing music independently through her own FAMM imprint, obliged. She got her nails done with her friend Ulla in Penge before uploading “Blue Lights” with no strategy and no label, just excitement. That same amateur nerve runs through “Don’t Leave,” which still carries the unsteadiness of a teenager working through something she’d only half-processed.

The song is addressed to a child. A twelve-year-old whose mother is absent, whose home reminds her daily she was a mistake, whose bag is packed and ready. Smith lays out the girl’s situation with care. Mum’s with a client, so her presence is vacant. The production, handled by New Machine, holds low and close—any louder and the kid might bolt. Her friends ignore every warning sign. — Ameenah Laquita

“You’ve been planning this climax for years
I’m gonna ruin it, so dry your tears
Turn right back around and face your fears.”

kwn, “Hopeless Romantic”

For most of last year, kwn built her name on songs about control. Who has it, who wants it, who folds first. with all due respect, her debut EP on RCA, ran on swagger and nerve. “Do What I Say” barked instructions, “Back of the Club” kept things sweaty and transactional, and “Worst Behaviour,” her duet with Kehlani that fueled months of will-they-won’t-they gossip. The East London singer sold out her UK tour on the strength of being the woman in the room least likely to get sentimental. “Hopeless Romantic” scraps all of that in three minutes. Joel Compass, who has worked with Snoh Aalegra and Jorja Smith, shaped the beat, and kwn wants matching slippers and kitchen dancing while dinner burns, sex on the stairs because the bedroom is too far away, grey in their hair—all of it aimed at falling in love with her best friend and keeping the honeymoon phase from ever ending. — Terryl Jameson

Jai’Len Josey, “Housewife”

Before she was on Def Jam, Jai’Len Josey originated the role of Pearl in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, which is a wild sentence to precede what follows. The Atlanta-raised, platinum-selling songwriter has penned songs for other artists while steadily building her own catalog since 2023’s Southern Delicacy, and she’s now gearing up for Serial Romantic, her debut album on Def Jam, executive produced by five-time Grammy winner Tricky Stewart. “Housewife” is the final single before it drops. The premise tilts provocative on purpose. Josey is hanging up the Hennessy, the hoes, and the six-inch pleasers, trading all of it for a honeymoon in Bali, all expenses paid. She used to be outside every season; now she’s Lois Lane to her man’s Superman. She’ll submit, a word she deploys deliberately, but only because he earned it. Then the verse tightens. “She’s too damn young, I know that’s what you’re thinking,” she pre-empts an imagined audience, “but he’s treating me right, so I’ll play my part.” Josey has said the song is about reclaiming domestication on a woman’s own terms, using submission as something given voluntarily rather than extracted. — Kendra Vale

Yaya Bey, “Blue”

Bare and cracked-open, “Blue” came out of rock bottom. Yaya Bey had just finished touring behind do it afraid, her 2025 album, and realized she’d been suppressing grief she hadn’t let herself name — the death of her father, Grand Daddy I.U. of the Juice Crew, the loss of her home, the splintering of the communities she’d oriented her life around. “I realized I had to make a big shift mentally and emotionally or I was gonna drown,” she said. The song is the first single from Fidelity, her seventh album, due in April—Bey having a conversation with a younger version of herself in the mirror.

“Say what you mean, mean what you say/It’s a new day, there’s no running away from yourself,” she opens, then catalogs the evidence. You’re getting old. A few grays. You ain’t no baby no more, and there’s no excuses left. The production, which Bey says reminded her of early-2000s pop-R&B, “something red-haired Kelly Rowland would sing over,” carries a warmth that cuts against the bluntness of what she’s actually saying. She tells herself to cry about it, to stop being shy about it, to accept that her sadness is visible. “It’s written all over your face, baby, you look blue.” And then the second verse closes the last exit. Your lover can’t fix it. Time comes back and hands it right to you. Bey has called fidelity—staying joyful when everything insists otherwise—the ultimate Black skill. “Blue” is her practicing it in real time, sweetening the melody enough that you might not notice she’s stopped pretending. — Imani Raven

R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out

• Moonchild: Waves

• Choker: Heaven Ain’t Sold

• 3ee: MORELUV

• 5an: Ethereal (EP)

• Misha & BeMyFiasco: Aura Gold (EP)

• Nnena: Love...Aftermath (EP)

• Pale Jay: Celestial Suite Flips

• Brent Faiyaz: Icon (Director’s Cut)

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Ego Ella May: Don’t Take My Lover Away

• Kem: One Love

• Noah Guy: Higher

• Devin Morrison: Amor (feat. CUBE)

• Aiyana-Lee: Housebroken

• Olivia Escuyos: On Top

• Casper Sage: bits + pieces

• RnBoi: MON BÉBÉ (feat. Ayra Starr)

• NOVA WAV: NBG

• Zenesoul: Not Crying

• sagun & Floyd Fuji: Trouble (feat. Liv Miraldi) / Planet Ours

• Breez Kennedy: Cycles

• GiddyGang, Braxton Cook & Vuyo: Survivors Guilt

• Joy Postell: Easy

• Raelle: round, round

• Äyanna: Ordinary

• Jalisa Rey: Good Time

• Reuben Aziz: Circles

• ZENA: It’s You (Ante Neh) [feat. Meron T]

• RealestK: Angels

• Chezelle: Another Life (feat. Bryant Barnes)

• Myles Lloyd, GEMINI, Karencici & JUNNY: DMC

• Imani-J: Something Special

• marQ: What You Want

• Sylo: Way 2 Paradise

• Jordan Rakei & Tom McFarland: Easy to Love

• Essosa: Touch bby

• Kwaku Asante: Lights On

• Liam Bailey: Gold

• Roann: Safety

• Maya Jade: Could’ve Been

• Lah Pat: SHAKE

• Beau Diako, Ben Esser & emawk: Pretty Little Fears

• Self Proclaimed Narcissist: Save Her

• PawPaw Rod: I Wish

• Flyy Armani & JLLY: room 305.

• Maz B: Forgive Me

• Jermaine Reese Jr.: Call Me / 1Time

• Benny Sings: Real Person (feat. Elijah Fox)

• Bobby V. & Ray J: Toy