Album Review: All in Love by LeVelle
LeVelle’s third record commits to love as daily labor, specific enough to prove it. Whether that redeems its possessive streaks is the catch.
Most R&B records about relationships freeze a single feeling and hold it up for admiration, whether it’s the crush, the breakup, or the nightstand anthem. Rarely does anyone try to cram the whole domestic calendar into one project: the fight three weeks after move-in, the nervous approach on a dance floor, the morning-after body worship, the pregnancy scare that becomes a celebration, the drive away from the house and the U-turn back. LeVelle’s third outing, All in Love, dropped a day before Valentine’s Day and does exactly that. He now has thirteen songs circling a single relationship at different altitudes, from that first apartment argument to a proposal that resembles a negotiation with his own temper. When the couple’s attention wanders, it’s to address other fathers or to sermonize about kindness to strangers on “Suga,” a digression so wholesome it could play at a church picnic.
“We Can’t” places the couple three weeks into a new home, already in bed facing opposite walls after a fight neither can reconstruct. “A stupid reason it must have been,” he murmurs, and the concession is honest because it’s small. He doesn’t dramatize the argument. He just admits he hates sleeping next to someone who isn’t touching him. His voice drops lower here than anywhere else, nearly whispering. That’s the first real stake All in Love plants. This isn’t nostalgia or fantasy. It’s two people under the same roof right now, deciding whether to roll over.
Everything gets louder outside. “Out There” puts LeVelle on a dance floor until the request resembles an admission that he doesn’t know how to join her without an invitation. His tenor lifts when he’s nervous, floating over a steppers’ groove while his words betray somebody overthinking every move. Contrast that with “Real Thing,” where the nervousness vanishes. He’s watching her in a housecoat with her hair undone, and his attraction carries the blunt certainty of someone who’s witnessed this woman in every possible state. “It’s them stretch marks/I love it/They make me go hard”—the compliment is crude and earnest in equal proportion. He just likes what he sees.
Jaysol’s presence on “Intimacy” pulls the project away from monologue. LeVelle opens by admitting he doesn’t know how to broach emotional closeness with a woman he’s already sleeping with, and that hesitation tells you more about the character on these songs than any of his bolder declarations. Jaysol doesn’t merely agree. “I wondered if you knew/’Cause I’ve been wrestling for some time now with the same thing, too.” The duet converts what could be a one-sided fantasy into a conversation between equals, and All in Love needs that balance badly, because elsewhere LeVelle’s idea of partnership tilts heavily toward his own narration.
Then “Words” tilts hardest. LeVelle catalogs negative emotions and announces he’ll personally rewrite his partner’s vocabulary. “I’ma change all of your vocabulary,” he promises, and a bridge later concedes, “I’m not saying that I’m perfect.” But the softening arrives too late to undo the opening’s posture, which bans sadness, confusion, insecurity, and helplessness by declaration. The writing never commits to devotion or surveillance as a reading, and his vocal warmth while singing it makes the line slipperier. A colder delivery might have forced rejection outright; the tenderness makes the control sound almost reasonable.
Where “Words” wants to govern feelings, “Expecting” surrenders to them. The storytelling is sequential and giddy, moving from “she said, I’m late” through his tears to an imagined future where he’s already naming children. The verse that pivots outward and asks other fathers to recall their own moment is a rare generosity for a set of songs this inward-looking. “Right Here” and “Love It” swing back to the explicit, and both lean on secrecy as currency. “Whatever we do is a secret/I promise I won’t repeat it,” he pleads. The bedroom songs run on ownership, and All in Love seems unbothered by the overlap.
Ashley B’s verse on “I See You” proves LeVelle’s emotional range includes admiration untethered from the physical. “Sometimes all you need is just to be acknowledged/It don’t gotta be no expensive gifts,” he sings, and the plainness of that idea sits well after so many tracks built on desire. “All Behind” complicates things one final time. He confesses to driving away after fights, making U-turns, and claiming, “I’m the man, so I control the future.” It sits there as household philosophy, forgiveness filtered through authority. Although the record appeared on LeVelle’s 2022 LP (My Journey Continues), Hamilton closes things on “Fell in Love,” his rasp carrying decades of adult partnership that LeVelle’s smoother tenor can reference but not yet match. He just sounds like somebody who stuck around, and that gravity gives All in Love a parting credibility it earns more from the guest than from its host.
Above Average (★★★☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Intimacy,” “Expecting,” “Fell in Love”