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

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In 2006, mainstream R&B was getting pulled in two directions at once, where the hip-hop center of gravity was getting heavier, and the older soul language was being recycled either as shortcuts or as a real set of values. These five albums sit in the middle of that tension. They’re not unified by one sound, but by a shared insistence that the singer still decides what the record is. Twenty years later, this set is a quiet counter-argument to the idea that the era was only trends and singles. The point of the series is to show how 2006 R&B kept its spine, even while the ground under it kept shifting.

Jaheim, Ghetto Classics

Shit, it really comes through, loud and clear, that he wishes he could’ve lived through the ‘70s–‘80s like Teddy Pendergrass or Luther Vandross. Along with Anthony Hamilton, Jaheim is the one whose soulful voice is being widely demanded right now. His singing on Nelly’s “My Place” was fully soul too, but ahead of this new album, on the Bink-produced collab with Jadakiss (“Everytime I Think About Her”) that got released first, he took the chorus part from Lost Generation’s “Sly, Slick and the Wicked,” and sang like he was deliberately putting on the act of a ’70s soul singer.

I thought, yeah, same as always, but only for a moment. When you actually open up the new album, right from the top with “The Chosen One,” he comes out over a track that straight-up lays Willie Hutch’s “I Choose You” under it, like an old-school singer walking in the door. Then you pass through “Everytime I Think About Her,” and on “Daddy Thing” he loops the intro of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “To Be True,” which, on the previous album, had been used for a different song. KayGee, his patron, handled it. This is clearly intentional, like a sure thing, and when it comes to picking the source material, a lot of it is chosen from artists whose vocal grain is really close to Jaheim’s. You can tell KayGee and the other producers are basically casting Jaheim as a ’70s soul singer.

Even “I Ain’t Never” by The Co-Stars borrows Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.’s “Stay With Me,” which had been used for something else back on his debut single. And on “Conversation,” made by the continuing team of Flaxtreet’s Eric Williams and others, there’s no credit, but the melody of The Dramatics’ “In the Rain” is used so blatantly. In every case, the original lead voices have that manly, raspy, worn texture, and it lines up with Jaheim’s voice too. Still, across three albums, his fixation on the word “ghetto” is just him honestly expressing the scene of “the neighborhood was run-down, but warm soul music was always overflowing there,” from the viewpoint of somebody raised in a modern ghetto. He’s not falling into pure nostalgia.

The Delfonics source that stirs up heat on “Fiend” also drags Styles P in, so the stage is the present-day ghetto, and the Scott Storch bluesy soul he built without leaning on a source on “Forgetful” also hit hard. Even so, the smooth dancer “Like a DJ” by Eddie F and the rest comes off crazy close to Luther, and the running time is only around 40 minutes, like an LP, so the old-schoolization is definitely moving forward. But I don’t think there are any R&B fans who would hate that. — Phil

Heather Headley, In My Mind

Do you remember? That stage-born singer who debuted on album in 2002. It wasn’t like there was a single “this is it” song, so it didn’t grab flashy attention, but the previous album was a high-quality work, got certified gold, and even picked up Grammy nominations in two categories. That position, quiet but solid, carries into this one too. I mean, right from the start with “In My Mind,” it’s produced by Shannon Sanders. He’s highly regarded for work like India.Arie, so it’s kind of a connoisseur pick, but it’s just incredible. It starts quietly with guitar arpeggios, gradually heats up as it heads toward the chorus, and then reins itself in on the A-melody. It follows the obvious form the right way, totally straightforward, but perfect.

Maybe it’s meant as expressing her Trinidad-born roots, because “How Many Ways” and “Rain,” with reggae acts participating, jump you out to a lively Caribbean. But besides that, it’s slow-to-mid material that puts her big, musical-star-level vocal power right up front. The dramatic Shep Crawford slow “Wait a Minute,” the “Back When It Was” that Lil Jon finishes in an oldies style instead of crunk, the neo-Philly-like “The Letter” by Heavyweights & Sauce & Ne-Yo that feels like Musiq Soulchild, the bright gospel “Change” by Warryn Campbell, and so on. It shifts styles while making sure you properly hear the singing, the main character. If you call yourself someone who loves singers, you should absolutely. — Jamila W.

Javier, Left of Center

The meaning of the title, “more left than center,” is tied to the fact that Javier is left-handed, and it’s supposed to represent his stance that his music isn’t only “straight” R&B. I’m not trying to be mean, but any R&B is, more or less, a mixture, and in most cases it takes in hip-hop methodology. There’s no such thing as “straight” R&B. Sorry to him, but those left-leaning elements are basically just the odd kick on “Wassup,” the Spanish guitar on “Dance for Me,” the choir-raising gospel on “The Answer Is Yes,” and the reggaeton mix that was treated as a secret track, “Dance for Me (Reggaeton Remix).” That’s completely within what “straight” R&B can handle. If anything, compared to his debut three years ago where everything was feeling-around-in-the-dark, this one has way more color as a trendy R&B record and it’s enjoyable.

Carvin & Ivan on “You’re the One,” “Is This Love,” and “Poetry,” Sauce and Ne-Yo’s compound production on “Dance for Me” and “Count On Me,” the returning Rhythm Syndicate on “The Answer Is Yes” and “Ways I’m Feeling U,” plus Michael Angelo Saulsberry on “Wassup,” and the ex-ATOJ team of Johnnie “Smurf” Smith & Frank Romano on “Once We Start,” are a genuinely appropriate and attractive producer lineup. Helped along by Anthony Hamilton’s overpowering guest spot on “Count On Me,” Javier’s soft vocal that doesn’t have any harshness gets pulled into new appeal, sometimes funky, sometimes bold, and you start to feel more depth in his artisthood too. — Renée Halloway

V, The Revelation Is Now Televised

V, aka Valvin Roane, is a singer/songwriter from the A Touch of Jazz (ATOJ) crew. Later I found out he used to show up on Christopher Williams’ first album and even wrote songs for Silk. In the ‘90s, his singles were a topic in Philly, and through James Poyser, a gospel buddy, he joined ATOJ. After that, he stacked up behind-the-scenes results on ATOJ-involved projects, including DJ Jazzy Jeff’s The Magnificent, and now he’s finally making his album debut.

This record mobilizes the current ATOJ elite like Pete Kuzma, and it’s basically a collection of sweet, mellow future-soul that connects to Raheem DeVaughn and Eric Roberson, who were also around Jeff’s work. “Picture This,” and “Would You Be Mine,” which Carvin Haggins and others wrote, even bring Musiq to mind, including the smoothness of the singing. But like the MAW-produced “In Time” was, V has also decided to work in the house direction, and you can tell that’s obvious from how there’s a dancer like “Anotha Phase” on here. The album title and the pose on the jacket look like they’re conscious of Gil Scott-Heron, and there’s a kind of ‘70s new-soul introspection spread across the whole thing. Especially “Confess,” where he pours in a suspiciously smooth, Marvin Gaye-like heavy chorus, is outstanding. “Born Again,” where Jill Scott drops spoken-word, isn’t catchy or anything, but there’s a pure soul-ness packed in here that only an ATOJ crew that doesn’t bow down to commercialism can do. — Esther Blake

Shanice, Every Woman Dreams

A massive hit can sometimes become an artist’s shackles. Shanice, if you count from her CM jingle era, has over 30 years in the game, and she must’ve been troubled by the ghost of “I Love Your Smile.” That adorable song fixed her image in place, and I think it ended up narrowing the width of what she could express. The LaFace transfer album where “When I Close My Eyes” hit, with its crisp dancing feel, was a good turning point in the sense that it broke that fixed image. This time, coming out on her own label, she pushes that line even further, and you can feel a more aggressive attitude toward current sound, like how she tries crunk on “So Sexy.”

“Get Up,” which brings Sheila E. in on percussion, is also nothing like what you’d picture from the guest name, and it has a high hip-hop percentage. It’s also interesting that, including those two up-tempo songs, Shanice herself plus alpha is making most of the first half of the album. There are songs where the sound is one more step away, like “Every Woman Dreams,” where a Prince-like way of singing unexpectedly fits, but she completely covers that with the force of her singing, with a five-octave range. Starting with Mike City’s smooth mid-groove “That’s Why I Love You,” the second half, where there are more organic-leaning tracks by Shamie Shas, is also really good. The Minnie Riperton cover “Loving You” gets properly listened to, with a sticky, Shanice-like vocal that hangs on. — Tai Lawson

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Victoria Monet, “Let Me”

Calling somebody “athletic” for dodging their own feelings is a specific kind of flirtation. Victoria Monét drops it early on “Let Me,” her first solo release since winning three Grammys for Jaguar II in 2024 (along with releasing a deluxe), and it tells you where the rest of the song is headed. She’s amused. Monét spent the better part of a decade penning hits for Ariana Grande (“thank u, next,” “7 rings”), Fifth Harmony, and BLACKPINK before stepping to the front of the stage herself, and the patience that career required shows up in the pacing here. Camper helms the production alongside Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman, Branden “B Mack” Rowell, and Cashmere Brown, and everything hums warm and unhurried.

Monét pitches herself to a reluctant partner as a wintercoat, a ride-or-die, a steady presence. She does this with the clarity of a woman who built a career handing other people their biggest moments and now refuses to beg for permission to have her own. She carries herself as someone who knows what she’s offering and has decided the ball is in somebody else’s court. In the closing minutes she borrows from Destiny’s Child’s “Cater 2 U,” ad-libbing “baby, just let me cater to you” with the looseness of a woman singing in the car alone. She’s also joining Bruno Mars on his international Romantic Tour this summer. Monét has gotten sharp about when and how to make an entrance on her own terms. — Jamila W.

Alex Isley, “Sweetest Lullabye”

“For me, ‘Sweetest Lullabye’ is about making the bitter a little more sweet, and the lining a little more silver,” Alex Isley told Rated R&B this week, announcing her major label debut When the City Sleeps for March 20 through Free Lunch Records and Warner Records. D’Mile handled the production. The album follows her 2025 EP When and a Tiny Desk set last summer that put ears on someone the Isley Brothers’ bloodline had been quietly preparing for a decade. Growing up in that household meant she never had to prove she belonged near a microphone. She did have to prove she could do something with the proximity other than coast on the surname.

Isley sings over a guitar loop so bare it could pass for a voicemail someone forgot to hang up, asking a fading lover to make the goodbye worth remembering. That phrasing from her interview matches the tune itself, which never raises its voice and never lets go of the ache underneath. When she sings “if you’re gonna love then leave, I need one more melody,” she’s bartering. Give me one more good night and I’ll let you walk. “Sweetest Lullabye” disguises a breakup song as a bedtime request. “Kiss me twice, then let go. If I cry, I don’t know.” She sets up an exit and asks only that it be soft enough to sleep through. For an Isley, the voice has always been the inheritance. What Alex earns here is the restraint to keep it low and still make you feel it in your teeth. — Brandon O’Sullivan

Brent Faiyaz, “Other Side”

Brent Faiyaz scrapped Icon the night before its original September 2025 release. He texted his team, pulled the plug, trashed the original lead track and its video, and started over. What finally arrived, executive-produced by Raphael Saadiq, carries ten tracks and the fingerprints of Benny Blanco, Chad Hugo, Dpat, and culture vulture Tommy Richman. “Other Side,” with Blanco and Itai Schwartz behind the boards and Mike Dean on the master, sits fifth on the tracklist and may outlast the rest. Very Michael Jackson-ish as we’re working on the current Lineage season.

Faiyaz has spent years cataloguing the ways men fumble devotion. He withholds, he second-guesses, he confesses and then takes it back. On “Other Side,” he does something different. He’s already in the relationship and trying to stay. “I move and breathe to make sure you feel special bein’ mine,” he offers, which is a plain and startling thing for him to say. A proto-disco arrangement pushes his falsetto toward an ‘80s register, airy and wide, and the bridge tilts into dream logic. He circles back to the same claim, that he saw her the other night, in his sleep, somewhere she wouldn’t believe. For a singer who made his name on cool detachment, directness holds weight. Faiyaz dropped an album called Icon and then buried the most open-hearted cut at track five, where only the people who are paying attention will find it. — Phil

Jamie Foxx, “Somebody”

Two toothbrushes sharing the same sink. Coffee mugs lined up like they’re still in a relationship their owners quit. A name in a phone that’s heavy to scroll past. Jamie Foxx built “Somebody” out of apartment debris, the small objects an ex leaves behind that nobody thinks to box up until it’s too late. He co-wrote and co-produced it with Jermaine Carter, Wade Albert Branch III, and Sam Pounds. It’s his first proper record in over a decade. His last album, Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses, is eleven years old. Since then he’s hosted game shows, voiced Pixar characters, survived a near-fatal health scare in 2023, turned that scare into a Netflix special, and surfaced last year on Snoop Dogg’s gospel album Altar Call with a solo turn on “Grandma’s Hands.” Foxx sings to the ceiling, which is a detail so specific it works, and asks if healing has a phone number because his is stuck on his ex’s line. His vocal has aged into something grainier and less eager to impress than the guy who recorded “Unpredictable” twenty years ago. He was honored with the Ultimate Icon Award at last year’s BET Awards alongside Mariah Carey and Snoop Dogg. Although the vocal mixing leaves much to be desired, “Somebody” belongs to a man who knows he’s earned the flowers and is too busy staring at his phone to enjoy them. The song fits the morning after more than any celebration, when the party’s over and you’re washing dishes alone. — Terryl Jameson

Baby Rose, “Friends Again” feat. Leon Thomas

Everybody who has slept with a close friend and then had to sit across from them at brunch knows the question “Friends Again” is asking. Baby Rose and Leon Thomas recorded it for her Secretly Canadian release, with Tommy Brenneck and Eric Hagstrom steering the session. The two just won the Grammy for Best R&B Album for their work together on his 2024 record Mutt, which gives this particular duet a charge that goes beyond the lyrics. They already proved they can make an album. Now they’re singing about whether the personal cost of collaboration can be walked back. Rose’s contralto sits low in the mix, smoky and unwilling to rush. When she opens with “Dream, been dreamin’ all day, trying to be mature,” you can hear the effort the maturity is costing her. She wants more and knows it’s going to ruin the friendship. Thomas floats in warmer, less certain. He tried to bury the rose, he says, but it sprouted in his heart anyway. His metaphor is unsubtle and it works because neither singer is trying to be clever. They’re just standing in the wreckage of a decision they can’t undo, singing at each other in real time. — Kendra Vale

R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out

• Jill Scott: To Whom This May Concern

• Brent Faiyaz: Icon

• Tiana Major9: November Scorpio

• LeVelle: All in Love

• The Olympians: In Search of a Revival

• alayna: Set Her Free

• Victor Ray: I AM. MIXTAPE

• Lilly Aviana: Is It Love

• Donny Benét: II Basso

• Momoko Gill: Momoko

• Zo! & Tall Black Guy: Expansions

• Amindi: me rn (EP)

• Ariel: Amatoria (EP)

• Blxckie: 4LUV2 (EP)

• Dominic Scott & Ghazi Gamali: Sincerely Yours (EP)

• Emmy Meli: All About Love (EP)

• Kenny Sharp: Speakeasy (EP)

• LALA: Roses Are Blue (EP)

• Raheem DeVaughn: Quiet Storm Lover Tome Un (EP)

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Mary J. Blige: More Than a Lover

• James Blake: I Had a Dream She Took My Hand

• Leven Kali: Remedy

• Justine Skye: Thong

• Shaylin B & Ye Ali: Zodiac Sippin

• rjtheweirdo: Tricks Are for Kids

• Tink: Gang Shit (feat. G Herbo)

• Inayah: Choose

• Shaé Universe: D’Angelo’s Joint

• Adrian Younge: Portschute

• Eric Roberson: Sweeter Than You (feat. Avery*Sunshine)

• HILLARI: I’m Still (A COLORS Show)

• Modha: Good News (feat. Allysha Joy)

• FLO: Mamacitas

• Keoni Usi: Ella 4:33

• Ris: FIGURE IT OUT (feat. WESTSIDE BOOGIE)

• MALAYA & OBI ALI: BARK

• Olivia Escuyos: Wasted

• Gio Genesis: Lovely (Maxi-Single)

• Nic Dean: Supermodel

• ELIZA: Major

• Solomon Headen & Niko X: Closer

• Tia Gordon: Love

• Brenna Whitaker: Get Here

• Mönt Lee: Don’t Touch

• Kevin Garrett: No Way Out

• Dizzy Fae: Cupid’s Call

• Ebubé & Tyler Lewis: Coming Home

• Indigo Mak: Feel Me

• Tamera: Helpless

• April + VISTA: Grotto

• BODHI: Hold Me Down

• MALIA: Not a Love Song

• Gracie Ella & Benita: I.D.T.Y.L.M

• Hamo Dell: Love Letters

• Neema Nekesa: One More Time

• Marlon Funaki: Skin

• Storm Ford: Step Back (Acoustic)

• Parlor Greens: Drop Top

• Johnny Burgos & Tane: Worse or Better

• Mansur Brown: Your Heart

• Sam Pounds: You Belong to Me

• Kalisway: S.A.H (SIDE A_SIDE B)

• Ojerime: SAFE

• Mal London: Won’t Be the Same

• Pino: Under Your Spell

• TSoul: No One on This Earth Like You

• DUSTIN DAB BOWIE: MONSOON

• VScript: LOVER

• Qiuntellii: HATE2SEEIT

• Brianna Knight: Soft Place to Land (Maxi-Single)

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Mack Keane, “Ordinary Feelings”

There’s a moment in the pre-chorus where the song nearly buckles under its own uncertainty. Keane has been sitting in a low, unbothered verse about seeing someone and getting too anxious to stay still, and then he blurts, “I think we fell in love/But I don’t really think we’ve got enough.” The word “think” doing double duty there, first as hope and then as doubt, and he delivers the whole thing rushed, a little winded, the way you say something true before you can talk yourself out of it. The chorus only asks for one more day together. “No pressure,” he adds, which is a lie the melody contradicts. He repeats the request until it wears thin and starts to feel like a permanent condition. Keane is an L.A. singer raised in his father’s home studio, the grandson of Del-Fi Records founder Bob Keane. He studied at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute and spent years putting out EPs named after streets from his childhood. None of that prepares you for how small he’s willing to play here. The second verse gets even more painfully specific. “We’ve got too caught up in trying to fit inside our promise,” he sings, and then calls the feeling “sentimental” like he’s embarrassed by it. No qualifier, no save. Just the admission and the silence after it. — Phil

Sasha Keable, “Heal Something”

Between certain years, Sasha Keable nearly disappeared. She’d been co-signed early by Disclosure and DJ Zinc, had her name in UK R&B conversations by twenty, and then lost her management, lost her label, and spent years rebuilding alone. Since 2019, dropped the Intermission EP with Jorja Smith in 2021, and ran through four singles in 2024 alone, including "Take Your Time" with 6LACK and “Why,” which Beyoncé name-checked in a GQ interview. The Act Right EP landed in mid-2025, which is one of our favorite EPs of that year.

“Heal Something,” from her new project ACT II, carries zero residue from any of that. The beat bounces and Keable sits right on top of it, tossing out lines with a looseness that makes the hook lodge before you notice it sticking. “You got powers/Stay up late night after hours/I’ve been kissed by a flower/Tell the whole world about her.” Four quick images, no connective tissue, each one arriving and moving on before it can get precious. She treats the verse the same way, rattling through “Come back, come back, that’s what my heart says/Whenever you say that you can’t stay/It’s mayday, mayday, we need vacay, vacays” with the cadence of someone texting a friend, not recording a single. — Murffey Zavier

Charlotte Day Wilson, “If Only”

The live instrumentation carries almost nothing on it. A few spare piano chords, long silences between them, and Wilson alone in all that empty air, which means every quiet shift she makes hits bare. “Been so long, the feeling is gone, can’t/Wait to get it back,” she sings. She’s talking about a relationship that’s already over and she knows it, but the chorus keeps pleading anyway. “Heaven, if only you could hold me/And turn it all around/Tell me the time comes back.” She’s asking for time itself to reverse, which is a request nobody can grant, and the melody stays low and patient enough that the impossibility just quietly compounds. Wilson produced the track herself, returning to writing alone in her room after outside hands shaped her 2024 Grammy-nominated record. Fewer parts, fewer places to hide. — Jamila W.

Joji & Giveon, “Piece of You”

Two voices, two different altitudes. Joji floats high and thinned out, barely present, half-swallowed by the mix. Giveon drops in with a baritone that presses down and physically changes the air. They never adjust to meet each other, and the gap between them is the whole point. The chorus lays it out plain. “All the constellations, they no longer hold a piece of you/Now I can finally say that I stopped looking for that piece of you.” Joji sings it soft, almost affectless, like the relief hasn’t fully caught up to him yet.

Then Giveon’s verse tightens the focus and gets specific. “Three or four times, I’m not even sure/Can’t do love now without all the back and forth/Rain kept coming down, but I liked your pour/Sky’s so clear without you in your storm.” That’s four consecutive end rhymes delivered without any of them sounding forced, and the weather imagery does real work. The rain was the relationship, while the clearing was the absence. And “I liked your pour” is a strange, knotty admission tucked inside a breakup song. He liked the damage while it was happening. Giveon flips the title phrase at the end of his verse. “Now you’re looking for a piece of me/I can’t be peace for you now.” Kenneth Blume (formerly Kenny Beats), Sevn Thomas, Jahaan Sweet, NinetyFour, and Lily Kaplan produced the track for Joji’s fourth album, and they built something that drags its feet without collapsing. The whole thing slips past before you can grab hold of it. — Kendra Vale

Arlo Parks, “Heaven”

A friend was DJing a pop-up under the Sixth Street Viaduct in Los Angeles one night in November 2024, and Arlo Parks was in the crowd. The friend was Kelly Lee Owens. Caribou was involved. Parks has said the night stuck with her, and “Heaven” is what came out of it. The song runs on a techno bassline that never lets up and a drum pattern drawn from the Caribou and Jamie xx remixes of Radiohead’s The King of Limbs, filtered through keys Parks has credited to Duval Timothy and Sampha. It sits a long way from the fingerpicked songs on Collapsed in Sunbeams, her Mercury Prize-winning 2021 debut.

Instead of interior monologues, Parks inventories a night out in concrete fragments. “Bodies in the summer breeze/Concrete washing with metallic green/Let’s get involved.” Then later, swapping one detail for another. “Diet Coke and kitten heels/My friends spilling out into the streets/Let’s get involved.” Same structure, different contents, the repetition mimicking how a good night blurs into a series of flashing impressions. The song’s central question arrives midway through and barely announces itself. “Are you letting go, or do you just want time to freeze?/Well I think sometimes, it’s both.” That “both” is the whole record’s thesis crammed into a single syllable, and Parks tosses it off before the drums swallow it back up.

She said she danced more while making Ambiguous Desire, her upcoming third album due April 3 through Transgressive, and burned through nights at New York juke parties. “Heaven” pins that sensation to paper. Parks has written for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and opened for Billie Eilish and Harry Styles, and now she’s chanting “let’s get involved, let’s get involved” until the dawn breaks. — Tai Lawson

R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out

• Ella Mai: Do You Still Love Me?

• Joji: Piss in the Wind

• Puma Blue: Croak Dream

• Charlotte Day Wilson: Patchwork (EP)

• RAAHiiM: PRAY FOR ME

• Aquakultre: 1783

• Dina Ögon: Människobarn

• TIA RAY: NEW DAY

• Joelle James: iSCREAM Scoop 2 (EP)

• Kareen Lomax: ijan (EP)

• Jaymin: Sweet Nothings (EP)

• LaVoyce: Normal: How You Been? (EP)

• Luke Chiang: TYPHOON

• Gimba: She (EP)

• Kayla Brianna: Lover Girl (EP)

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Akexia Jayy: Feels Right

• KAMAUU: Shine (Like This)

• Shelailai: Pickup

• Ariel J & DJ Miss Milan: We Still Dance

• Ace Clark: Like I Luv You (feat. BJ the Chicago Kid)

• Olivia Escuyos: Tonight

• Dom Jones: The Blacker Berry

• N’shai Iman: Bait

• Victory: Just Friends

• MarcLo: Interest

• Nbdy: EMPTY PROMISES

• JEDSOUL: COME AROUND

• Babble Hume: Julia

• Zach Zoya, High Klassified & Gäelle: Precious

• Justin Radford: Pray With

• Tym: Make Things Right

• Galdive: 20 Weeks

• Avara: potion no. 4

• Bryant Barnes: Don’t Dream It’s Over

• Jamie Rose: Risky

• Kumail: Tear It Off (feat. Fly Anakin)

• Lex Aura: Consequences

• Eldana: Don’t Sell My Love

• Noa Lauryn, FENNE & Mitchelle Yard: Galaxy

• JAWAN.mp3: Truth

• Alicia Creti: No One’s Business

• Abby Jasmine: Below Zero

• Marques Houston: Her Side of the Bed

• William Singe: Cut Loose

• Naesia: 5 Stars

• Kem & Boney James: Give My Love (Boney James Joy & Pain Remix)

• Rashad: Back to Brazil

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Thundercat, “I Did This to Myself” feat. Lil Yachty

With Thundercat, he has always been the guy who’ll spend a whole album mooning over women who don’t want him back. Drunk, 2017’s funk-prog sprawl, had him crying about his ex on songs named after her. On “Dragonball Durag,” he tried to seduce someone by bragging about his anime merch. The role fits him. Virtuoso bass player, session guy for Kendrick and Flying Lotus, romantic disaster. On his third single from his long-awaited fifth album, Distracted, “I Did This to Myself recruits Lil Yachty, another guy who’s never quite fit the mold he was supposed to, and the two of them spend three minutes failing to understand why a woman won’t give them the time of day.

The beat stays bouncy and loose while everything around it curdles. Thundercat whines through the first half, already defeated before the date starts. “Girl, you look annoyed/Like you’ve already had enough.” Does he remind her of an ex? Is he paying too much? When Yachty takes over, Thundercat can’t stop muttering underneath him, asides like “Oh, you a weird chick, you like crystals and shit” and “But you gotta admit, she’s a bad bitch,” like a guy who knows he should shut up but can’t. Yachty cleared his whole schedule. She’s still acting busy. Her Instagram modeling isn’t even a real job. “Takin’ those pics in a bra shouldn’t jam your schedule. We made plans twice and it’s unsuccessful. I’m mad.” The grievances stack until he arrives somewhere the song can’t recover from. “‘Cause the more that I look in your face, you look like your dad/And it’s hard picturin’ him with a big ol’ ass.” The groove keeps going. Neither of them stops to wonder if maybe she’s annoyed because she’s stuck on a date with them. — Brandon O’Sullivan

Jordan Ward, “Themselves”

Here’s the situation: your girl just quit her job because you told her you’d take care of everything. Now she’s home, bored, spending money she doesn’t have, and you’re watching it happen from the road wondering why you ever opened your mouth. Jordan Ward has seen this play out. Maybe he’s lived it. Taken from his newly-released Backward, “Themselves” lays out the warning like a guy who’s been broke before and doesn’t plan on going back. “I been there, you don’t want that,” he sings. “Crashing out with no brake pad/It turned me to a fucking savage.” The instrumental glides along, smooth enough to play at a cookout, while Ward lectures over the top of it. “Don’t stop making your bread just because you know I got you. That’s how people play themselves.” He asks the same question over and over, “How many times you gon’ fuck that bag up?”, like he’s waiting for an answer he knows isn’t coming. The song could scan as condescending if it weren’t so clearly coming from somewhere real. Ward isn’t posturing. He’s pleading. “We’re stronger when we lay our own foundations,” he offers, and that’s about as tender as it gets. Turn your passion into a hustle. — Murffey Zavier

Mýa, “ASAP”

Mýa has been famous longer than some of her current listeners have been alive. “It’s All About Me” dropped in 1998. Lady Marmalade won a Grammy in 2002. She spent the next two decades releasing independent albums that barely troubled the charts, touring steadily, and maintaining the kind of career that doesn’t require constant visibility to sustain itself. She’s not chasing hits anymore, and a lot of her peers can learn from this. She’s just working. Here, she takes the responsible role in a relationship that’s gone silent. “We gotta have this conversation,” she opens. “The only problem is communicating/If we don’t do this then we might not make it.” Teaming up with MyGuyMars, the music stays polished and mid-tempo, the kind of adult R&B that used to dominate radio and now mostly exists on streaming playlists for people over thirty. Mýa lays out the facts: “So far apart in the same room/Eyes don’t lie, I know you feel it too.” She admits her own mistakes without making a show of it. “I know I was wrong bringing up the past/But how did you expect for me to react?” The song builds toward a conclusion everyone can see coming but nobody wants to say out loud. “We can’t keep running from our issues.” Either they have the conversation or they don’t. — Jamila W.

Terrace Martin, “Once I Say” feat. Blxst

I’ve been putting this one on around 11pm, when the apartment’s dim and nobody’s coming over but nobody’s going to sleep either. Terrace Martin has spent years making jazz palatable to hip-hop heads, threading saxophone through Kendrick records, producing for YG and Snoop, running sessions at his Inglewood studio with whoever happens to be in town. “Once I Say” strips all that ambition down to something simpler. A slinky beat, a hook that barely exists, and Blxst floating over the top like he’s half-asleep.

The lyrics wouldn’t fill a napkin. “And it sound like it look/If she glance if she took/Can’t you tell I keep it player/But don’t play it by the book.” Blxst mumbles something about glancing at his watch, checking if she’s ready to go. “Once I step, you step/I lead the way, lead the way.” That’s about as direct as it gets. The track runs on mood alone, on the warmth of Martin’s production and the way Blxst’s voice curls around syllables without committing to anything. It’s the kind of song that works best when you’re not really listening, when you just need something to fill the room without demanding your attention. Sometimes that’s enough. — Asa McKenzie

Tom Misch, “Sisters with Me”

Most songs about siblings are corny as hell. The sentimental piano, lyrics that sound like greeting cards, some line about blood being thicker than water. Tom Misch doesn’t entirely escape the trap on “Sisters with Me,” but he gets closer than most. The London producer usually keeps things cool. Beat tapes, guitar instrumentals, collaborations with jazz musicians and rappers who match his laid-back frequency. This is him trying something softer.

“The youngest of three,” he sings early on, placing himself in the birth order. “We evolve, and we see/The love life can bring/Its uncertainty.” The words stay simple and occasionally clunky, which somehow makes them land harder. “Cut from the same threads/Pinks, greens, and reds/No falling behind/No running ahead.” He’s writing about his sisters, about being steady for each other, about the kind of bond that doesn’t require explanation. “When the storm passes by/The sky turns to blue/I look to both sides/It’s you, me, and you.” The arrangement hangs back gentle and unhurried, strings floating in, letting the words carry the weight. The kind of song you’d play at a wedding reception, and I don’t mean that as an insult. — Phil

R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out

• Jordan Ward: Backward

• Terrace Martin: Passion

• Soulive: Flowers

• Rebel Rae: We Made Soul USA

• Sepalot: closer

• Angels of Libra & Nathan Johnston: Road to Mandalay

• PJ: Why Do Feelings Matter Anyway (EP)

• Zani: Reasons (EP)

• Deric: Mood Swings & Melodies III (EP)

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Sasha Keable: Tell Me What You Want

• Kelly Rowland: Complicated (feat. Method Man)

• EJ Jones & BigXthaPlug: Gas Station Love (Remix)

• Bellah: Typical (feat. Destin Conrad)

• August Charles: Father

• Gareth Donkin: Out Here

• Isaiah Kaleo: sweet tooth

• sky: commitment

• Ye Ali: Just a Kiss (feat. TheARTI$t)

• Pablo Carns: R&B

• Bobby V.: I’m the One

• Joya Mooi: Lookalike

• Lee Lewis: White Flag

• Debbie: The Rain Isn’t Over

• Tama Gucci: xexe

• rum.gold: Walking Dead

• Dionne Bromfield & Blue Lab Beats: Green Light

• Brandy Haze: Need Your Love

• Sam Pounds: Energy

• Hil St. Soul: Nasalifya

• Etta Bond, Raf Riley & D Double E: Attracted 2 U

• Amir Obe: TINTED

• Yuna: Believer

• Allyn: Come (Aana)

• cortex: Passport

• Dylan Sinclair: Squeeze

• Choker: Uneven

• Nic Dean: Vacant

• Pimmie: Bet

• Lelo: Dice Roll

• 3Breezy: Date Night

• Vedo: Fine Shyt (EB Remix) [feat. Eric Bellinger]

• Sentury: Forever Acoustic Mix

• Joshua Showtime Williams: Slow Jam

• cinquemani: Don’t You Know

• Mondayswithmax, Jeremih & DUSTIN DAB BOWIE: MY BODY

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Joyce Wrice, “Break Me In”

Malik Ninety Five and Mike Baretz built her a beat that knocks like Amerie’s debut era (“Why Don’t We Fall in Love” in particular), all breezy strings and drums that pop without crowding. Joyce Wrice waited years to step back out front. She spent them showing up on Jordan Ward tracks, Mahalia tracks, doing the JD Sports and Gap thing, keeping her name moving without leading with it. The Motive EP came out in 2022 with a KAYTRANADA production on “Iced Tea,” and then silence. Now she's back with her first solo lead since then, and she's not asking for anything. She’s telling. “When I touch myself, it’s not the same/I need you to break me in/Don’t make me wait.” She says what she wants and moves on. Wrice keeps her voice airy, floating on top of the production, but there's nothing soft about what she’s saying. She wants something specific from another body, something she can't give herself. The song runs under three minutes and she doesn't hedge or soften the request once. She told Rated R&B back when Overgrown dropped that she uses studio sessions to put her feelings into song form, taking what she writes in her journal and building it into music. “Break Me In” sounds like a page ripped straight out. — Kendra Vale

Cleo Sol, “Nothing Is Impossible With You”

The same month SAULT dropped Chapter 1, here comes Cleo Sol with a solo single. Her husband, Inflo, produced both. At this point the line between what belongs to the collective and what belongs to her keeps getting thinner, and maybe that’s the point. On “Nothing Is Impossible With You,” she strips the arrangement down to piano, live drums, and arrangements that only show up when they earn their spot. The sound shares DNA with SAULT’s meditative streak, but the focus here narrows to one voice asking for help. She names God directly in the lyrics, so there’s no ambiguity about the “you” in question. “I’ve got to get over my own doubt/And control the words out my own mouth/I put my faith in You/Nothing is impossible with You.” Her voice catches on certain syllables like she’s still working through the thought while she sings it. The production refuses to crowd her. This is her first solo material since “Fear When You Fly” in late 2024, and it lands in the same territory—spare, unhurried, pointing upward. Although the snippet sounds better than the actual recording, it’s well-needed for the times we’re in. — Phil

Leven Kali, “BREATHE!”

Scroll through the credits on Beyoncé’s Renaissance and Cowboy Carter and you’ll find Leven Kali’s name. He co-wrote “Bodyguard” on the album that won Album of the Year at the Grammys last year. He’s got four Grammy nominations from working in her orbit. Meanwhile, his own solo catalog went quiet (maybe) after the LK99: The Prelude, not too long ago, a six-track Def Jam project he put out after we thought we were getting a full-length album. He talked about how watching people listen to that Beyoncé album from front to back at parties inspired him to chase the same infectious energy in his own work. “BREATHE!” suggests he finally kept the best hook for himself: “Just breathe/Nothing left to do but go deep/Just breathe/Nothing left to prove, you got me/Let go, make the time move slow.” The funk groove keeps moving, which is reminiscent of Michael Jackson, while the lyrics tell you to stop. He sings about finishing something already started, calling a car, and closing his eyes. Where’s the new album, Kali? — Jamila W.

Moonchild, “Fear (Hey Friend)” feat. PJ Morton

You know the feeling when you’re about to do something that matters and suddenly your chest tightens. Your hands get cold. That thing you thought you’d outgrown shows up uninvited, settles in the room like it never left. Moonchild’s Amber Navran opens this song by greeting that feeling directly. “Hey friend/I was hoping not to see you again/But I'm old enough to know when I do/I’m on the right track.” The trio’s sixth album (Waves) drops in February, and they’re calling it their most personal work yet—grief, healing, resilience, moving with life instead of against it. They recorded it in person with collaborators after years of remote sessions, and you can hear that warmth in the track. PJ Morton slides in alongside their horn-and-synth arrangements without disrupting anything, just another voice in the room agreeing with what's being said. The band cited an old saying as inspiration: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” The song acknowledges the fear, nods at it, and keeps walking toward wherever it was already going. — Murffey Zavier

Devin Morrison, “Pump the Blood”

Devin Morrison grew up in Orlando, the son of David “Dah-Vi” Morrison, who played alongside his siblings in the ‘70s Chicago gospel outfit the Morrison Echoes. His grandmother made him take piano lessons. By his teens he was making hip-hop beats with his brothers. He studied music composition at Oakwood University in Alabama, sang in the Aeolians choir, and then moved to Tokyo to teach English. He got fired, then sold beats to Fitz Ambro$e and Budamunk to make rent. Eventually he landed in Los Angeles and put out Bussin’ in 2019 on Onra’ s NBN label, a debut album dipped in ‘90s gospel and R&B with features from Grammy-nominated group KING, Daz Dillinger, and Joyce Wrice. His father and his brother Lakks Mable sang on it too. He opened for Moonchild on tour. That’s the winding road that leads to “Pump the Blood,” a track he described simply: “I wrote this amidst the toil of complicated emotions and insufferable logic. Sometimes the heart gets curious and the mind gets annoyed." The song sits in that warm, slightly grainy pocket he’s been claiming since Bussin’, working through what happens when your head and your chest stop agreeing with each other. — Brandon O’Sullivan

R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out

• Ari Lennox: Vacancy

• DJ Harrison: ElectroSoul

• Camper: Campilation

• Skip Waiters: Insecure (EP)

• Phabo: Ratchet & Blues

• Katie Tupper: Greyhound

• Samm Henshaw: It Could Be Worse (Streaming Release)

• Titose: Did We Try Hard Enough? (EP)

• Dames Brown & Amp Fiddler: Take Me As I Am

• Ragz Originale: Keepsake

• YIN YIN: Yatta!

• Junetober: LOVERSHIP

• Nija: What I Didn’t Say

• IAMNOBODI: The Aftermath Principle

• Tray Millz: Boy Meets World

• Robyn Florence & DAVIES: Crush Culture (EP)

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Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Justin Garner: The Icing

• James Blake: Death of Love

• Durand Jones & The Indications: Let’s Take Our Time

• Jacob Banks: Love Like This

• Madison Ryann Ward & James Poyser: On & On

• King Sis: All Mine

• Gordon: Sweet

• Binta: Make Up

• PawPaw Rod: The Get Back

• KYANTII: Y Don’t You

• NateTaylorr & TheARTI$t: Go Again

• October London & Tonio Armani: Touch On Me (Remix)

• Misha, BeMyFiasco & cocabona: Back to Myself

• GiddyGang: After All (feat. Mac Ayres, Vuyo & Braxton Cook)

• Latanya Alberto: Almost There

• Cholita: Deja Vu

• Ben Esser, Beau Diako & emawk: Footwork

• Marques Anthony: Say Yes

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Jill Scott: “Don’t Play”

You want to tell someone they’re bad in bed, but you’re Jill Scott, so you have to make it sound like a song your auntie would play at the cookout. “Baby don’t play with it,” she warns, standing alone on the COLORS set in all black, hair look good, looking directly into the camera like she’s about to have a conversation you’re not ready for. No jackhammer thrusting. No closed eyes. She wants Afrobeats rhythms. She wants you to “please me hard, so hard like a K-Dot lyric, then sweet like my grandma’s yams with the marshmallows on top, pineapples and candied pecans.” That bar broke the internet for a weekend. People wanted the yam recipe. People started calculating whether a Kendrick collab could happen since Ab-Soul’s on her new album and Kendrick sampled “A Long Walk” back when he was still getting discovered. But the yams are doing something specific because she won’t say “touch me” and leave it there. She wants the texture, the sweetness after the heat, the whole holiday spread. She’s 52, her album is releasing on Valentine’s Day weekend, and came back with instructions. — Kendra Vale

Ella Mai: “100”

While sampling Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mustard sits across the blackjack table dealing cards. Ella Mai’s in sunglasses and fur, and her partner’s in on it—they’ve already rigged the game. When we get to the end of the video, they’ve cleaned house. That’s the whole song in thirty seconds of visual. There’s two people running a scheme together, walking out with more than they came in with. “Love ain’t never fifty/fifty, it’s whatever I got in me.” Then she starts doing math. Twenty for my eighty. Forty for your sixty. Different combinations, same sum. She recorded the album pregnant, finished it postpartum, told Capital XTRA she’s never been more sure of what she wants to say. The certainty shows up in the arithmetic; she’s stating facts. You short me, I cover. I short you, you cover. We leave with a hundred either way. — Jamila W.

Elmiene: “Reclusive”

At long last, we get an official debut album in two months. But the latest music video puts Elmiene in an elevator that won’t stop filling up. People shake his hand. People make small talk. He stands in the center looking like he wants to dissolve through the floor, and the camera stays on his face long enough that you start feeling the walls close in too. He wrote it after getting severely sick in December 2024, trying to see if the most boring moment of his life could carry a song. Fourteen days alone. Video games. Stepping on wet leaves outside and wondering why it’s always raining. “I ain’t even gonna lie, not a social butterfly, I keep to myself.” The chorus keeps cutting off mid-word—“I get so reclu—”—like he can’t finish the diagnosis or doesn’t want to. Biz Markie was the model by taking something ordinary, make it funny and honest and impossible to forget. Elmiene’s version is a guy in an elevator who can’t get out. — Keziah Amara Reid

Destin Conrad & Terrace Martin: “Nothing Is Real”

You date someone, watch them smile, notice their style, their vintage frames, and the Rollie on their wrist. Then you find out the frames were stolen and the watch was claimed, not bought, and the smile was practice. “I thought that you were special,” Conrad sings, “but like you, there’s plenty more. You’re sold a dream and overcharged, I should’ve never paid.” Terrace Martin’s saxophone wanders through the track like someone pacing a room at 2 a.m., and Vanisha Gould’s harmonies fill the spaces Conrad leaves empty. His jazz album (wHIMSY) hit number one on Apple Music’s Jazz Chart last year; this is the first taste of the deluxe, and it sounds like a man who’s stopped being angry and started being tired. “Don’t know if you’re living in a dream or waking up,” he repeats, because he genuinely doesn’t know anymore. Atlantis. Optical illusion. The spark that was never there. — Murffey Zavier

Tiana Major9: “Energy!” feat. Keyon Harrold

Tiana wrote this record in Kingston at J.L.L’s studio during what she calls a transitional time in her life. The lyrics fell into her lap, she says. PRGRSHN added production. Keyon Harrold sent trumpet lines from wherever Keyon Harrold sends trumpet lines from—the man ghosted Miles Davis’s horn in Miles Ahead and has session credits across a decade of everything. The song opens with a refusal: “Don’t ask me why my eyes are closed, just build a spliff, no micro-dose.” Someone’s stopping by. It’s always a vibe when they stop by. She likes how they talk to her, and feeling a little heated. Harrold’s trumpet stays at the edges, never pushing forward, because this isn’t his moment. It’s the moment before the moment. “I’m a frequent freak,” she admits in the outro, “and now you’re giving me them eyes.” — Tai Lawson

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Al Green: Perfect Day (feat. RAYE)

• Karyn White: You’re Gonna Want Me Back

• GENA: Lead It Up

• Saint Harison: Bad

• Charlotte Day Wilson & Saya Gray: Lean

• Ego Ella May: What You Waiting For

• Shaé Universe: Journey to the Sun (feat. Ariel J.)

• Nija: In Between (feat. Jordan Adetunji)

• James Bambu & Durand Bernarr: Antidote

• Gabby Simone: Complicated

• Hollyn: Aren’t We All (feat. Foggieraw)

• Khalil: Lost in My Bed

• Junetober: Call Me Baby

• Ariel: Ta Da!

• Secily: Let Me Go

• Noah Guy: Again

• S. Fidelity & Dawn Richard: Play

• Emmy Meli: Other Things

• GoGo Morrow: Hard to Love

• Ray Lozano: i still/two cups

• Ebubé: Mr. Postman

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Welcome to the weekly Soulpolitan feature, where we highlight a handful of new tracks catching our attention, along with others you should check out. These are songs we can’t stop playing, songs that speak to us in particular, and songs we think will speak to you, too. This week’s picks share a strange thread, where every hook promises something the verses can’t deliver. Bruno Mars is holding out on commitment, Jill Scott is holding onto resentment, Ari Lennox is holding her breath for reassurance that never comes, Jordan Ward keeps calling his mother a champion while listing all the ways he's made her life harder, and Moonchild has D Smoke insist nothing can touch him while describing everything that already has. Five songs about wanting, asking, and not quite getting there.

Bruno Mars: “I Just Might”

There’s something almost retro about a song built entirely on a conditional. Bruno Mars hasn’t put out a proper solo single since, what, 2016? The Silk Sonic stuff with Anderson .Paak was fun, and the live shows looked like a blast, but “I Just Might” is the first time in nearly a decade he’s sounded like he’s just trying to get somebody’s number at a party. The whole song hinges on whether this woman can dance as good as she looks. That’s it. That’s the premise. He’s not promising anything. He’s watching her from across the room, asking the DJ to play something that’ll test her, and holding his verdict until he sees what she’s got. “But what good is beauty if your booty can’t find the beat,” he sings, which is both shallow and honest in a way I kind of appreciate. The bridge tells her to break it all the way down, put some spirit in it, and if he likes what he sees she’s coming home with him. It’s a song built on maybes. The production is bright and syncopated, the kind of thing that would’ve killed on radio in 2012, and Bruno sounds loose, unbothered, like he’s having a good time not committing to anything. — Jamila W.

Jill Scott: “Pressha”

I’ve been listening to Jill Scott since Who Is Jill Scott? came out in 2000, when I was probably too young to understand half of what she was singing about but old enough to know it sounded like grown folks’ business. “Pressha” finds her in a familiar register—talking to a man who did her wrong—but the specifics are rough. He wanted her at night but couldn’t be seen with her during the day. “I wasn’t the aesthetic,” she sings, “I guess, I guess, I get it.” The repetition of “I guess” is devastating; she’s talking herself into understanding something she knows is bullshit. The song keeps circling back to “so much pressure to appear just like them,” and by the third time through you realize she’s not really singing about him anymore. She’s singing about the machinery that made him act that way, the same machinery that made her feel like she had to accept it. By the final verse, he’s got money and fame and she’s watching him smile for cameras, knowing her name is still in his head. She calls the whole thing pathetic. She means both of them. — Kendra Vale

Ari Lennox: “Twin Flame”

Domesticity is a strange flex in a love song. Ari Lennox has one of those voices that makes everything sound like a confession, even when she’s just listing errands. On “Twin Flame,” she’s cooking and cleaning and promising half her pension, which is a wild thing to say in the first verse. She keeps asking “do you feel the same?”—over and over, in the chorus, in the post-chorus, trailing off at the end—and it starts to sound less like a rhetorical question and more like genuine uncertainty. She calls the person her twin flame but phrases it as a question: “Are you my twin flame?” She admits he’s got her writing love songs, “Jason’s lyric,” which I applaud for the movie reference, and this is a better single-worthy track that would work wonders for radio. The production is sweet, her voice is controlled, nothing cracks, but the lyrics keep asking for reassurance that never arrives. — Murffey Zavier

Moonchild: “Up from Here” (feat. Robert Glasper & D Smoke)

The word “only” is doing a lot of work in this chorus. Moonchild have been one of those bands I’ve always meant to spend more time with—jazz trio out of LA, studied at USC, make the kind of smooth, harmony-rich R&B that gets played at wine bars and also, apparently, gets Stevie Wonder’s attention. “Up from Here” brings in D Smoke, the Compton rapper who won Rhythm + Flow back in 2019, and Robert Glasper on keys. The chorus is all uplift: “Nothing can touch me, it’s only up from here.” But D Smoke’s verse is where it gets interesting. He’s on his knees, tears collapsing against cement, looking up and laughing because he noticed he fell but landed on grass. He references the Ye and Sway interview, a busted tour van window in Oakland that got fixed by the next day, wanting to be bulletproof but settling for accepting fate. “Love lost, use pain to fuel old school cause / Use anger to begin my process/Endangered, but I still ain’t lost.” The chorus keeps saying “nothing can touch me” but the verses make it clear that plenty has touched him—he’s just decided to keep moving anyway. Glasper’s piano floats underneath, pretty and unobtrusive. The optimism sounds like something D Smoke is rehearsing, not something he’s arrived at. — Tai Lawson

Jordan Ward: “Champion Sound”

Calling your mother a champion is easy, but earning the right to say it is harder. Jordan Ward spent years as a backup dancer for Justin Bieber and Janet Jackson before signing to Interscope and releasing his debut album Forward in 2023, executive produced by Lido. “Champion Sound” is addressed to his mother, and it’s one of those songs where the hook says one thing and the verses say something rougher. “You’re a champion, a warrior,” he sings to her, but the rest of the song is him cataloging all the ways he’s made her job difficult. He was on stages while she was going through something alone. He was in Europe while she had pennies for his thoughts. He was in a cell he never told her about. He blew money, lacked self-control, almost cost them financial freedom by 25. Immigration trouble, lawyers, a cousin picking up bad habits, two weeks sober just to test himself. The pre-chorus asks “what do you hang on the wall?”—as in, what do you have to show for all this?—and the answer is never a trophy. It’s just him, trying again, still not in the clear. He keeps calling her a champion, but the song makes you wonder what she’s won. — Keziah Amara Reid

Other R&B Songs to Check Out

• Phabo & Kiana Ledé: Win or Lose

• Ezra: Come Get My Love (feat. ZaeFyeHunnit)

• Inea’J: Say It (feat. theMIND)

• ELIZA: Cheddar

• Jaymin: Wamu

• V. Cartier: Kryptonize

• DUSIN DAB BOWIE & Lucky Daye: Your Number

• Kenny Sharp: Old Lady

• Shaylin B: Options

• MIRIAH.: Superpowers (feat. TheARTI$t & theMIND)

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Elijah Blake, THE GEMINI

January 16 · RKeyTek Music/MNRK Records

In November, Blake threw a listening party in New York. Keyshia Cole came. Maeta came. Tone Stith came. The room heard nine tracks built around Blake’s Gemini sun sign—not as gimmick, but as organizing principle. The singles arrived in pairs that didn’t match: “Glass House” brooding and interior, “White Rum” looser and more social; “Shouldn’t Wanna Call” caught in indecision, “Work It Out” pushing toward resolution. Blake spent years as a ghost. He wrote for Usher, Rihanna, Rick Ross, Keyshia Cole herself. When he started keeping songs for himself, the split showed—he could sound like anyone, which made it harder to sound like himself. THE GEMINI leans into that tension instead of hiding from it. The duality is structural. Two moods coexisting, neither winning. His voice has always favored control over flash, placement over power. Nine tracks is short. The concept is tight. What happens when a chameleon finally picks a shape—or refuses to?

Girlfriend, Honey Water

January 16 · Encore Recordings

Kenya Edwards grew up in Mississippi singing in church, but nothing about Honey Water feels like it’s reaching for the rafters. The three singles she’s released—“Deep,” “Sticky Situation,” and “Bon Voyage” featuring Tierra Whack—all sit in her lower register, melodies moving in small intervals, production stripped down to the frame. She doesn’t belt. She doesn’t run. She lets silence do some of the work. The Whack feature is the wildcard. Whack’s energy runs chaotic and playful; Edwards’s runs patient and interior. Putting them on the same track suggests Edwards is willing to stretch the template without abandoning it. She’s been building toward this 10-track album for three years without major-label support, releasing through Encore Recordings, staying off the festival circuit, keeping the audience small and deliberate. Whether that approach can sustain a full project is the question Honey Water answers.

The James Hunter Six, Off the Fence

January 16 · Easy Eye Sound

James Hunter turned 62 last year. He’s been making records since the early 1990s, when most of the artists on this list were learning to walk. Off the Fence is his eleventh studio album and his first on Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound—a label that’s built its reputation on analog warmth and vintage soul, which means Hunter fits without having to change a thing. The lead single, “A Sure Thing,” pulls from Northern Soul: uptempo, horn-punctuated, Hunter’s voice sitting high and tense against the rhythm section, clipped phrasing that leaves no dead air between thoughts. A duet with Van Morrison, “Ain’t That a Trip,” appears on the 12-track set. Morrison is 79. Hunter is 62. Both singers have been loyal to the same mid-century sources for decades; hearing them together makes chronological sense even if it looks strange on paper next to the rest of this list. Hunter isn’t chasing relevance. He’s doubling down. The touring run with Bonnie Raitt this spring puts him in front of audiences who already know what they’re looking for. Sometimes the future of a genre is just someone who never stopped doing it right.

Camper, Campilation

January 23 · November Yellow/SLANG

Before we get into this, look at the feature list. Brandy. Alex Isley. Jill Scott. WanMor. Steve Wonder. Rose Gold. Tank. Ari Lennox. Syd. Ty Dolla $ign. Jeremih. Lucky Daye. Tone Stith. Darhyl Camper Jr. has spent 17 years building the relationships that made this possible. “I have all the R&B artists I love that’s my family on the album together,” Camper told Rated R&B in 2024. “Like what DJ Khaled did with hip-hop, but this is R&B.” His first placement came at 16 with “Hoodstar” on Bow Wow and Omarion’s Face Off. “Marvin & Chardonnay” with Big Sean and Kanye West gave him his first Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs number one at 20. The Grammy came in 2018 for executive producing H.E.R.’s self-titled breakout. Another nomination followed for co-writing and producing Coco Jones’s “ICU.” Four singles have dropped since 2024: “I Need It” with Tank and Syd, “War” with Ari Lennox and Jeremih, “Waiting On You” with Tone Stith, and “Oowee” with Jill Scott and Ty Dolla $ign. “Nothing comes from it,” he’s said of his hometown. “I’m very blessed to be one of those ones to come out of that.” Campilation is volume one. He’s already planning sequels.

DJ Harrison, ElectroSoul

January 23 · Stones Throw Records

A health scare in 2024 changed how DJ Harrison works. The Richmond multi-instrumentalist and Butcher Brown member had built his solo career on doing everything himself—keys, bass, drums, production, arrangement. ElectroSoulis his first collaborative solo record. Eighteen tracks. Pink Siifu. Yazmin Lacey. Fly Anakin. Yaya Bey. Kiefer. Angélica Garcia. Nigel Hall. Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Grebes. He still plays across the album. But the feature list is the point. More voices. More hands. More people in the room. Stones Throw has always favored producers who treat collaboration as composition, from Madlib’s endless guest lists to Knxwledge’s sample-as-conversation approach. Harrison’s health scare isn’t the album’s subject. It shaped the method. When your body reminds you it can stop, you stop hoarding the work. “Stay Ready” with Yaya Bey. “Seek God” with Fly Anakin. “Recycled” solo but surrounded. ElectroSoul sounds like a man learning to share the weight.

Ari Lennox, Vacancy

January 23 · Interscope Records

Ari left Dreamville in April 2025. The split was quiet—no public drama, just a parting of ways after six years and one album under the imprint. Actually, it was when she went on Instagram live, airing out her grievances. Vacancy is the first full statement since. Fifteen tracks. and Bryan-Michael Cox executive producing—the team that built hits for Usher, Mariah, Janet, Jagged Edge. They produced Lennox’s 2021 single “Pressure,” which marked a turn toward crisper lines than her earlier work allowed. The singles from Vacancy (“Vacancy,” “Under the Moon,” “Soft Girl Era,” “Twin Flame”) all carry that same tightness from her previous efforts. The album title and lead single fixate on isolation. The Dupri-Cox lane trades lolling for clarity, wandering for memorability. Whether that trade-off fits her depends on how much room she leaves herself when we get that album.

Jordan Ward, Backward

January 30 · ARTium Recordings/Interscope Records

Jordan Ward tore his ACL and meniscus before making this album. He’s talked about his approach as reverse engineering, starting from feeling, working back to structure. Build the house from the roof down. Lido executive-produced again, as he did on Ward’s debut Forward. The symmetry is obvious. The execution is patient. Seventeen tracks, including singles “Juicy” and “Smokin Potna” with Sailorr. Ward’s cited influences—Donny Hathaway, Joni Mitchell, Roberta Flack—all favor sustained phrases over fragments, voices that sit inside the song rather than on top of it. His phrasing lags behind the beat, pulling you in instead of pushing forward. The Apartment Tour kicks off in February, timing the album to small rooms where that kind of detail lands. Backward isn’t a recovery narrative. It sounds like someone who got permission to slow down and used it.

Ella Mai, Do You Still Love Me?

February 6 · 10 Summers/Interscope Records

The album drops the week before Valentine’s Day. Ella Mai called it “for the lovers, right in time for love day.” The positioning is strategy. Mustard executive produces—the partnership that built “Boo’d Up” and “Trip” continuing into its seventh year. Fourteen tracks. Singles “Little Things” and “Tell Her” preview the approach; “Tell Her” interpolates Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” openly enough to earn a sample credit. Mai’s vocal style hasn’t changed much since her 2018 debut: British accent softening the delivery, mid-tempo grooves that favor repetition over surprise, hooks that stay in narrow melodic range and burrow through repetition. The Did You Miss Me? Anniversary Tour ran through December—London, Amsterdam, Paris, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles—building live demand before the album arrives. The title asks a question. The music answers by restating itself until you believe it.

The Olympians, In Search of a Revival

February 13 · Daptone Records

The Olympians’ self-titled debut pulled from Curtis Mayfield and James Brown—uptempo, rhythm-forward, horns and strings in service of groove. In Search of a Revival shifts the palette. Toby Pazner composed, arranged, and produced all 12 tracks, drawing from vintage film scores and the Wrecking Crew sessions of the 1960s: strings arranged for drama, brass that punctuates rather than leads, tempos favoring tension over movement. Singles “Sirens of Jupiter” and “Sagittarius By Moonlight” preview that shift—darker, more deliberate, every part scored and placed rather than left to breathe. Pazner also manages and tours with Lee Fields, which gives him one foot in classic soul tradition. But In Search of a Revival isn’t reaching for the dancefloor. It’s building something closer to a conducted performance, every entrance cued, every exit scripted. Whether a 17-person ensemble can feel spontaneous inside that level of control is the tension the album lives inside. The title suggests the search matters more than the finding.

Tiana Major9, November Scorpio

February 13 · +1 Records

“Shook One” reimagines Mobb Deep. Not as flip or homage—as transposition. The menace of “Shook Ones Pt. II” turned inward, aggression redirected into introspection, Tiana Major9’s voice sitting where Prodigy’s used to go off. Debut studio album after a run of EPs. She left Motown for +1 Records—independent path, smaller machine. Eleven tracks. Features include “Always” with Yebba, “Alone,” “Money,” and the Mobb Deep revision. On “Always,” two singers who both favor restraint meet and pull back instead of competing. Major9 phrases behind the beat, lets the rhythm push past before she catches up. November Scorpio arrives as a debut album that doesn’t feel like one—the EPs laid enough groundwork that this reads as continuation rather than introduction. The question isn’t whether she can sustain a full project. It’s what she does now that she finally has the room.

alayna, Set Her Free

February 13 · Nettwerk

She wrote “Softly” at a writing camp in Bali with Emma Rosen and Oak Felder. The song honors the women who’ve held her through every season—as named presences, specific debts. That’s the mode Set Her Free operates in, conversational and personal. alayna is based in Rotorua, New Zealand—far from the industry centers that shape most R&B release calendars. Her 2023 debut Self Portrait of a Woman Unravelling announced a voice willing to sit inside production rather than above it, letting instrumentation carry emotional weight rather than competing with it. Set Her Free continues that approach across 13 tracks, executive produced by Ben Malone, with collaborators including Sebastian Kole, Oak Felder, Ryan Linvill, Chelsea Lena, The Orphanage, VRON, and Serban Cazan. Singles “Hold Me,” “Mother’s Mother,” and “But It’s Lonely” arrived through 2025—patient rollout, no rush. The album’s pacing suggests full playthrough rather than playlist extraction. She’s betting listeners will stay.

Jill Scott, To Whom This May Concern

February 13 · Human Re Sources/The Orchard

Ten years. That’s how long since Woman. Jill Scott released her fourth album in 2015 and then went quiet—touring, acting, living, but no new studio work. To Whom This May Concern breaks that silence with 19 tracks. The feature list spans generations with Ab-Soul, JID, Tierra Whack, and Too $hort. The production credits run even deeper: DJ Premier, Adam Blackstone, Om’Mas Keith, Camper, Andre Harris, Trombone Shorty, Seige Monstracity, Eric Wortham, DW Wright, VT Tolan. Lead single “Beautiful People” arrived with Om’Mas Keith production—warm, unhurried, Scott’s voice carrying weight the way it always has. Ten years between albums creates pressure whether you acknowledge it or not. Scott’s history suggests she won’t address it directly. The songs will answer. The collaborator list suggests a record reaching toward multiple audiences—Premier for the heads, Whack for the next generation, Too $hort for the Bay—without losing its focus. Whether all those voices cohere into one statement or pull in too many directions is the question February will answer.

Moonchild, Waves

February 20 · ONErpm

Amber Navran, Andris Mattson, and Max Bryk made Starfruit remotely during the pandemic—files sent back and forth, rooms that never overlapped, collaboration as logistics problem. Waves brings them back into the same space. First album recorded in person since 2019. First release under their new partnership with ONErpm. Fourteen tracks. Jill Scott and Rapsody on “Not Sorry,” Lalah Hathaway and Chris Dave on “For Yourself,” Astyn Turr on “Ride the Wave,” Erin Bentlage on “Strong.” Themes shift from the love songs that anchored earlier Moonchild records—Waves deals with grief, healing, growth, self-worth. Hathaway and Dave bring rhythm section density the trio doesn’t usually carry alone. Scott and Rapsody add lyrical weight. Moonchild’s sound has always favored soft dynamics, jazz voicings, accumulation over single moments. The Waves Tour kicks off March 5 in Houston. Whether being back in the same room changed anything or just confirmed what they already knew—that’s what the album will tell us.

GENA (Liv.e & Karriem Riggins), The Pleasure Is Yours

February 27 · Lex Records

Detroit Jazz Festival, 2024. Liv.e and Karriem Riggins played together. Then kept playing. The project became GENA—“God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” loosely inspired by Gina from Martin. Sixteen tracks. Singles “Circlez” and “HOWWEFLOW.” Isaiah Sharkey, James Francies, and Telemakus contributing. Riggins spent decades as a drummer for Common, Erykah Badu, and The Roots, then built a production career alongside Madlib and J Dilla. His approach favors live instrumentation, feel over grid, conversation between players. Liv.e—Dallas-born, Los Angeles-based—sings with slippery phrasing that resists predictable melody, bending around beats rather than landing on them. A London ICA show on January 30 precedes the album. They let the festival session keep going until it became something else. Riggins knows how to build space for a singer to move inside; Liv.e knows how to move unpredictably without losing the thread.

Bruno Mars, The Romantic

February 27 · Atlantic Records

Almost ten years since 24K Magic. The gap is the longest of his career, and he spent most of it everywhere except his own albums. The Silk Sonic project with Anderson .Paak delivered “Leave the Door Open” and four Grammys in 2021. A Las Vegas residency at Park MGM ran for years. A globe-spanning solo tour stretched through 2024. He opened LA’s Intuit Dome in August with Lady Gaga joining him onstage to debut “Die With a Smile,” which finished at number one on Billboard's year-end 2025 Hot 100. “APT.” with ROSÉ landed at number nine on the same chart and earned three Grammy nominations. Peter Gene Hernandez never left the conversation. He just stopped making solo albums while staying in it.

The Romantic changes that. Announced January 5, 2026 with a two-word tweet: “My album is done.” Title, cover, and date followed two days later. First single dropped this past Friday with a lot of mixed reactions, as expected. D’Mile now joins the creative process, following the success of working with him and Philip Lawrence, his longtime collaborator. No featured artists. The Romantic Tour—his first full headline run since the 24K Magic World Tour ended in 2018—launches April 10 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas and spans 38 stadium dates across North America and Europe. Anderson .Paak joins as DJ Pee .Wee on every stop. Victoria Monét, RAYE, and Leon Thomas rotate as openers.

Sixteen Grammys. Nine number-one singles. Over 150 million records sold. “Just the Way You Are” certified 21x platinum—the highest-certified single of all time. The machinery is enormous. The question is whether The Romantic tries to match it or ignores the scale entirely. But after hearing “I Just Might,” it does feel like a wash-rinse-repeat of the Silk Sonic formula. What he does with the anticipation will define whether the decade-long wait was worth it.

TBA: What We’re Watching

Amerie

Sixteen years between albums. Amerie’s last full-length, In Love & War, came out in 2009 (we will not acknowledge the two albums in 2018). In the gap: a book club, motherhood, a children’s book (You Will Do Great Things, 2023), a divorce announced June 2025. She’s also publishing her first novel this summer—This Is Not a Ghost Story, about a Black man who becomes the first verified ghost in Los Angeles, arriving via William Morrow. “Mine” arrived in March 2025—first solo single in seven years, co-written and produced with Troy Taylor. Taylor built his reputation on Boyz II Men, Trey Songz, Chris Brown; his production on 11:11 (Deluxe) earned three Grammy nominations in 2025. He’s been holding songs for Amerie for years. “Her voice has not changed,” he said during an Instagram Live session. “It’s classic. Mint condition classic.” They have 27 ideas in the folder; “Undeniable” was the first they recorded in full. Amerie’s early career was built on Rich Harrison productions that mixed go-go percussion with soul samples and made her a mid-2000s radio fixture. The Columbia years stalled. The indie years went quiet. Now she’s back in the studio with a producer who knows how to make classic sound current. A sixth album has been promised. But we can’t guarantee anything on here.

Arin Ray

His father drummed for New Edition. His aunt sang backup for Marvin Gaye. Arin Ray finished tenth on X Factor in 2012, mentored by Britney Spears, eliminated before the live shows hit their stride. Then five years writing for other people—Nicki Minaj, John Legend, Young Thug, Jeremih—before Interscope offered a solo deal. Platinum Fire dropped in 2018 with Ty Dolla $ign, DRAM, and YG featured. Phases II followed in 2019, including “Change” with Kehlani, a slow-burn ballad that became a fan favorite without ever charting high. Phases III extended the run. The Cincinnati singer’s voice leans toward the gentle and effortless, pillow talk phrasing, falsetto that sits where D’Angelo’s used to live. He’s touring through mid-January 2026 and hasn’t slowed on features—Terrace Martin, BJ the Chicago Kid, D Smoke have all pulled him onto tracks in the last two years. When the album hits, expect more of the bangers and ballads that made his name in the first place.

Cleo Sol

She rarely performs live, gives interviews, and announces projects in advance. When Heaven and Gold arrived in September 2023—both produced by her husband Inflo, both through Forever Living Originals—they surfaced days before release with minimal promotion. The SAULT collective (who earlier released another strong album two days ago), of which she’s the lead vocalist, operates the same way: eleven albums since 2019, most appearing without warning, several pulled from streaming after brief windows. Sol came up through West London’s music scene, contributed vocals to Little Simz’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, and built a following through SAULT before stepping into solo work. Rose in the Dark (2020), Mother (2021), then the double drop. Each album has dealt with intimacy, motherhood, faith, self-worth. None have been promoted in conventional ways. If new music lands in 2026, it will arrive suddenly, without preamble.

Dawn Richard

Ten solo albums if you count her pre-Danity Kane debut Been a While in 2005. Six since leaving Bad Boy and rebranding as DΔWN, then DAWN, then Dawn Richard again. The Heart trilogy—Goldenheart, Blackheart, Redemption—ran from 2013 to 2016, mixing alternative dance and electronic production with New Orleans bounce and Louisiana Creole identity. New Breed in 2019 and Second Line in 2021 continued the thread. Two collaborative albums with Spencer Zahn followed: Pigments in 2022 and Quiet in a World Full of Noise in 2024. The Merge Records signing in 2021 moved her from major-label structures to indie infrastructure. Her father, Frank Richard, led the funk/soul band Chocolate Milk. Hurricane Katrina displaced her family to Baltimore. In September 2024, she filed a lawsuit against Sean Combs for sexual abuse; in May 2025, she testified against him and described witnessing his abuse of Cassie Ventura. The new album, her first solo full-length since Second Line, continues the world-building she’s described as her mission. The groundwork is laid.

Ego Ella May

The sophomore album is scheduled for 2026, more than five years after Honey for Wounds established her as one of the most distinctive voices in British neo-soul. Born in Croydon, named for her Nigerian heritage and after Ella Fitzgerald, Ego Ella May taught herself guitar and production at 19 and built a catalog of EPs before the debut brought wider attention. “Table for One” landed on The New York Times’ list of notable new songs in 2018 and later appeared in the Sex Education soundtrack. “Give a Little” and “Alright” turned up in Insecure and Queen Sugar. She won Vocalist of the Year at the 2021 Jazz FM Awards and sold out her first headline show at Ronnie Scott’s in 2024. Two singles have surfaced from the new album so far. “What We Do,” co-produced with Wu-Lu, is a groove about longing for a partner while away on tour, and “We’re Not Free,” produced with Melo-Zed, carries echoes of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” in its social consciousness. “You’re not free ‘til everyone else is,” she sings, her voice floating over a tender arrangement. She was nominated for Best Jazz Act at the 2025 MOBO Awards and played Montreal Jazz Festival’s main stage. The new record remains unnamed, but it’s coming.

Erykah Badu & The Alchemist, Abi & Alan

TBA · Control Freaq Records / EMPIRE

The pairing has been mentioned in interviews, teased on social media, discussed as though it exists. Maybe it does. Badu’s last solo album, But You Caint Use My Phone, came out in 2015. The Alchemist has stayed prolific—production for Freddie Gibbs, Boldy James, Armand Hammer, Earl Sweatshirt—but always in hip-hop, never quite in the space Badu occupies. If Abi & Alan materializes, it would mark her first extended collaboration with a producer outside her usual circle, and his first sustained work with a vocalist whose approach resists the structures he typically builds. Until concrete details arrive, the album remains speculation shaped like anticipation. The names generate heat on their own. But names aren’t music. We’re still waiting to find out if this is real.

H.E.R.

Back of My Mind came out in 2021—debut studio album after years of EPs and compilations, 21 tracks, features from Chris Brown, Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Baby, DJ Khaled, Thundercat. It won Best R&B Album at the Grammys. Since then, it was scattered singles, brand partnerships, award show performances, and acting work. She played Squeak in the 2023 Color Purple film; a DreamWorks voice role in Forgotten Island is forthcoming. The music has slowed. Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson grew up in Vallejo, started playing instruments before she started school, signed to RCA at 14 under a veil of anonymity that held until 2019. The mystique has faded. What’s left is a musician who’s proven she can do almost anything—guitar, bass, drums, keys, vocals—and shown less interest in proving it on schedule. A 2026 album seems possible. Confirmation seems unlikely until it’s already out. “The thing is I’ve been forced to pay attention to these deadlines and all these,” H.E.R. told Zane Lowe in 2023. “I don’t care about this stuff anymore. I just want to make music. And when I feel like it’s ready, it’s going to be ready and you’ll get it.”

India Shawn

Three D’Mile singles in 2025: “Kill Switch” in June, featuring a video with Luke James; “Cotton Candy Blvd” with Lucky Daye in August; “Gone” in October, a neo-Western breakup track with surf guitars and whistling. All three produced by D’Mile. She toured with Free Nationals and Giveon through the fall. India Shawn’s debut, Before We Go (Deeper), landed in July 2022 after years writing for other people—Keri Hilson, Monica, El DeBarge early in her career; background vocals for Harry Styles’ Harry’s House; Anderson .Paak on “Movin’ On” for Insecure. The LA-born, Atlanta-raised singer built her reputation behind the scenes before stepping forward. Her voice sits in the James Fauntleroy lineage: conversational phrasing, melodies that don’t oversell, lyrics that sound spoken even when sung. The pace of 2025 singles suggests she’s not waiting between cycles. D’Mile has become her primary collaborator the way he became Lucky Daye’s—steady presence, shared language, trust built over sessions. If a new project lands this year, the partnership continues. The only question is timing.

Joyce Wrice

D’Mile executive-produced Overgrown, her 2021 debut, but will he be back for the second album? The San Diego singer with a Japanese mother and Black father, raised on Brandy, Mariah Carey, and Ms. Lauryn Hill, built an audience posting covers on YouTube and SoundCloud before the LP landed her on year-end lists and a tour opening for Lucky Daye. Freddie Gibbs, Masego, KAYTRANADA, and Westside Gunn all appeared on the record. The KAYTRANADA connection deepened on Motive, the 2022 EP where Wrice shifted toward dance-floor energy, and it earned her a Juno Award nomination alongside the producer the following year. She’s been everywhere but quiet since Overgrown. She provided the “Proud Family: Louder and Prouder” theme song, a feature on Blxst’s “Better Off Friends,” and a Tiny Desk performance that introduced her newer pop-influenced material to NPR’s audience. The second album, still untitled, has been in the works for years now, with D’Mile again steering the production and Wrice promising to build on the experimental direction she tested on Motive. No date yet except for her first single (January 23rd). The wait has stretched longer than anyone expected, but she’s never stopped working.

Kehlani

Speaking of Kehlani, “Folded” changed the math. The Oakland singer spent a decade flying and sometimes flailing through public attention—four studio albums, four mixtapes, five Grammy nominations—before landing her highest-charting hit with a song about romantic reconciliation that drew on 2000s R&B. It peaked at number seven on the Hot 100, earned her first solo Billboard number one on the Rhythmic Airplay chart, and collected two more Grammy nominations: Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance at the 2026 ceremony. The “Folded Homage Pack” brought fresh versions from Toni Braxton, Brandy, JoJo, Mario, Ne-Yo, and Tank. The COLORS performance, delivered in full leather against a burgundy backdrop, stripped the song down to voice and guitar and strings.

The next album, allegedly due this spring, will have more collaborations than any project she’s made before. Usher and Brandy are confirmed, while Ne-Yo, Tank, and Jermaine Dupri are possibilities. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Andre Harris, Khris Riddick-Tynes, Ryan Leslie, Pop Wansel, and Pharrell have all contributed. “There’s no features that feel like, ‘Oh, a label threw this together,’” she told Inked Magazine. Khris Riddick-Tynes is executive producing. She’s 30 now, surfing, hitting the gym, raising her daughter, and finally finding the balance between nostalgia and innovation that made “Folded” land the way it did. Don’t forget to listen to “Out the Window.”

Kelly Rowland

Twelve years since Talk a Good Game. The 2013 album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, produced “Kisses Down Low” and the confessional “Dirty Laundry,” and then—nothing. No fifth studio album. Features scattered across soundtracks and collaborations. Television work: The X Factor UK, The X Factor USA, The Voice Australia, and now The Voice UK in 2026. Film roles: Mea Culpa for Tyler Perry in 2024, the upcoming romantic comedy Relationship Goals with Method Man. The Brandy & Monica “Boy Is Mine Tour” from October to December 2025 put her back on stage as a support act alongside Muni Long and Jamal Roberts. “One thing that’s at the heart and foundation of who I am is R&B; Rhythm and Blues and Soul,” she said on the “Mama, I Made It” podcast in December. “You’re always gonna get R&B and real stories and authenticity. That’s the core of who I am.” The Destiny’s Child legacy still follows her—the trio reunited briefly to honor Janet Jackson in 2025—but the new album and world tour are positioned as her own. Forty-four years old, two sons, a career that’s outlasted the group that made her famous. The wait is almost over.

Leven Kali

The Dutch-born, Los Angeles-based singer co-wrote “Alien Superstar,” “Plastic Off the Sofa,” “Virgo’s Groove,” and “Summer Renaissance” on Beyoncé’s Renaissance, then came back for “Bodyguard” on Cowboy Carter. He’s worked with Drake, Teddy Swims, and Playboi Carti. His own records—Low Tide in 2019, HIGHTIDE in 2020, both with guests like Syd, Smino, Topaz Jones, and Ty Dolla $ign—put actual soul back into modern soul music without sounding retro or reverent in the way that implies caution. LK99: The Prelude, the six-track EP released in June 2025 via Def Jam, signals where the third album is headed: funk, rock, jazz, psychedelia, songs about desire and companionship and the frenzied apocalyptic state of the world. “The CIA already got your mind/Now when you open your eyes, all you see is AI,” he sings on “Blackrock,” layering social commentary over euphoric production. The full album, LK99, was originally teased months back, but hasn’t surfaced yet. “Grateful, and ready to eat in 2026,” he wrote on Instagram on New Year’s Day. “LK99 album otw.” The wait continues.

Lucky Daye

The question is direction. Algorithm, released June 2024, tested how far the sound could stretch—rock guitar, funk grooves, psychedelic arrangements—without snapping the R&B thread. D’Mile produced again. The pace since 2019 has been relentless: Painted, Table for Two, Candydrip, Algorithm. Four studio albums in five years, each one pushing further from the center. No 2026 project has been announced. But the pattern suggests he won’t stay quiet long. Daye came up through the Motown songwriting camp, cut his teeth writing for Boyz II Men and Ella Mai, waited until his thirties to release solo work. That patience hasn’t carried into his release schedule since. Algorithm felt like boundary testing—guitars louder than vocals, verses stretched into jams, hooks buried under texture. Does the next project push further out? Or does it consolidate, pull back toward tighter structure and faster-landing hooks? D’Mile will likely be involved either way. What they build next determines whether Algorithm was a detour or a new foundation.

Mýa

Mýa dropped “Face to Face” in May, performed “Case of the Ex” at the BET Awards in June as part of the 106 & Park 25th anniversary tribute, released the 80s funk throwback “Give It to You” the next day. Billboard named her one of the Top 100 Women Artists of the 21st Century in March. Fear of Flying got its first vinyl pressing in October for the album’s 25th anniversary. Planet 9, the independent label she founded in 2008, stays independent. Her last full studio album, T.K.O. (The Knockout), came out in 2018. What separates Mýa from her late-90s peers is the independence. She’s the only one who’s spent the last 15 years releasing music on her own terms, on her own schedule, without waiting for a major label to greenlight a comeback. The new album is in progress. No date confirmed. The timeline is hers. “I usually don’t look back because I’m always creating,” Mýa told an interviewer in August 2025. “At this point in my life, I make a lot of songs, but the universe itself doesn’t get it until like three years later because there’s so much business that has to take place before it can be released.”

Sasha Keable

Beyoncé named her one of her favorite artists of 2024 in an interview with GQ, which is the kind of co-sign that changes trajectories. The British-Colombian singer, raised on Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder and Mary J. Blige and the cumbia of her mother’s heritage, has been around since 2013—she co-wrote and featured on Disclosure’s “Voices,” opened for Katy B, toured with Disclosure across the UK—but the major breakthrough kept not arriving. She left her label situation, started over, and spent the late 2010s releasing EPs independently. “Killing Me,” her 2021 collaboration with Jorja Smith, brought renewed attention. Act Right, the seven-track EP released in August 2025, marks her most focused statement yet, with songs about betrayal and heartbreak and self-worth, featuring Leon Thomas and BEAM, produced by names like P2J and Charlie Pitts. She opened for Givēon on his fall tour and debuted “Tai Chi” at Tiny Desk before finally releasing it in December after fans spent months demanding it. A debut album has been discussed for over a decade. Maybe this is the year it actually happens.

Tiffany Evans

Before the Columbia Records deal, before Star Search, Tiffany Evans and her family lived in their van for five months. She was ten years old when she won the junior singer Grand Champion title in 2003, becoming the first contestant in the show’s history to receive perfect scores on every performance. The runners-up she beat—David Archuleta, Lisa Tucker, Tori Kelly—would all end up on American Idol later. Evans got a record deal instead.

Her 2008 self-titled debut arrived when she was fifteen, with Ciara as executive producer and Rodney Jerkins among the production credits. “Promise Ring” featuring Ciara became her signature single; “I’m Grown” featuring Bow Wow followed. Then the label situation fell apart. She left Columbia and Music World Entertainment in 2011, started her own imprint Little Lady Enterprises, and released the All Me EP in 2015 with the Fetty Wap collaboration “On Sight.” A decade passed with scattered singles and a short-lived duo project with Jawan Harris called Jawan x Tiffany.

The three incredible singles (“Reset,” “Would You,” “Hope You Understand Me”) with producer Dreek Beatz mark the beginning of her next chapter. An EP is expected this year, and Evans has been clear about what she wants it to sound like: 90s-inspired R&B with room for vulnerability. “Living like a ruff ryder in love is a trap,” she told Rated R&B, “especially if that’s not who you really are.” She’s 33 now, a mother, two decades removed from the kid who won a talent show. The voice is still there, but the question is whether anyone’s still paying attention. We are, though. Where are you, sister?

Tone Stith

Tone left RCA for MNRK Music Group in July 2025, joining Elijah Blake and Jaz Karis on the roster. “Shut Up” dropped the same month—first single from a 2026 album, co-produced with Brody Brown (Adele, Bruno Mars) and Kenneth “KP” Paige (Eric Bellinger, Keke Palmer). The track channels the release-valve energy of Michael Jackson’s “Scream”—frustration pointed outward, musicality pointed inward, falsetto carrying the weight. Before the solo deal: “Liquor” and “Make Love” on Chris Brown’s Royalty (2015), both co-written and co-produced, both helping that album go platinum. A feature on Camper’s “Waiting On You” that peaked at No. 4 on Adult R&B Airplay. Guest spots for Eric Bellinger, Elhae, Jaz Karis, Shantel May. The South Jersey singer-songwriter has been in the industry since his teenage group SJ3, building credits steadily while his own projects—Good Company (2018), FWM (2020), P.O.V. (2023)—landed without major label push. The new album will be his first full-length since P.O.V. and his first on MNRK. The label is smaller than RCA but has built a roster of R&B artists who’ve struggled for visibility at majors. Stith fits.

Tweet

Memoirs of a Southern Hummingbird arrives early 2026, nearly 10 years after her third album, Charlene and 24 years after the debut that gave this project its name. Southern Hummingbird dropped in April 2002 through Missy Elliott’s Goldmind Records and Elektra—Timbaland production, “Oops (Oh My)” as the breakout single, comparisons to Minnie Riperton and a female D’Angelo. The Rochester, New York native built her reputation on acoustic-edged soul that sat outside the dominant sounds of early-2000s R&B. The lead single “Toot Toot” was originally recorded for 2005’s It’s Me Again but didn’t make the cut. Tweet co-wrote it with producer Walter W. Millsap III; together they’ve unearthed it from the vault. She signed to SRG-ILS Group in July 2025, ending a long stretch without a label home. “CV, thank you for believing in me,” she said of CEO Claude Villani. “I look forward to making history together.” The album will pull from two decades of unreleased material. What’s old becomes new. What was shelved gets a second hearing.

Victoria Monét

Purple Reign never released an album. The girl group formed by Rodney Jerkins in 2009 landed a Motown deal and got dropped before putting out any music. Victoria Monét, one of its members, pivoted to songwriting. Her first credit: a track on Last Train to Paris in 2010. Then “Be Alright” for Ariana Grande. Then “Thank U, Next.” Then “7 Rings.” Then “34+35.” Then “Ice Cream” for Blackpink and Selena Gomez. Then her own career finally caught up.

Jaguar II broke through in 2023 with “On My Mama,” which hit the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Seven Grammy nominations followed; she won three at the 66th ceremony, including Best New Artist and Best R&B Album. The Jaguar II: Deluxe arrived in October 2024 with 10 new tracks, including “SOS (Sex on Sight)” with Usher and “We Might Even Be Falling In Love” with Bryson Tiller. A children’s book, Everywhere You Are, came out in June, and three months later, she signed with Full Stop Management—the company that handles Harry Styles, Tate McRae, John Mayer, and Cardi B.

The next album points toward 90s R&B. “It’s really, really amazing,” she told The Hollywood Reporter after her Grammy wins. “Now I’m trying to think of the next set of things and not think anything is too big because at this point, so many big things have happened that maybe people would’ve thought were too big for me.” New music has been teased that is produced by Camper, but once again, she has not provided dates as of this writing. The Sacramento-raised, Atlanta-born singer spent 15 years writing hits for other people before stepping forward. The follow-up to her breakthrough won’t take that long.

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