Album Review: Beloved by Giveon

Giveon’s sophomore album, Beloved, arrives after a prolonged wait, promising a new level of honesty and zooming out to consider the lessons learned and how those experiences have shaped him.

Courtesy of Not So Fast/Epic Records.

In the interim since his 2020 debut EP Take Time and the When It’s All Said and Done project, Giveon’s rich baritone (which can be an acquired taste for some) and heartfelt songwriting have only deepened. Fans have been patient, something Giveon openly acknowledged when announcing Beloved: “I spent over a thousand days crafting this for you and for myself… I’ll never take your patience for granted.” That gratitude sets the tone for an album that seeks to reward listeners’ patience with an intimate journey through Giveon’s emotional landscape. Beloved marks the end of a multi-year hiatus since his Grammy-nominated 2022 debut album Give or Take, and it’s clear from the outset that this project is meant to both fulfill a promise and showcase the artist’s evolution.

Giveon’s inspirations extend beyond his own biography. He has absorbed influences from music, film, art, and everyday moments, which subtly shape the album’s lyrical depth and production choices. There are shades of classic R&B and soul throughout (fitting for an artist who grew up on legends like Frank Sinatra and Barry White), but Beloved also exudes a cinematic flair, perhaps a result of Giveon’s love of film. Over lush, resonant instrumentation and a subtle bass thump, he laments the time “wasted” in his youth, “I didn’t know I’d be wasting my time… spending my twenties on you,” he confesses in his velvety low register, the ache palpable. “Twenties” has all the ingredients of a modern R&B hit: evocative lyrics, commanding vocals, and warm, midtempo production. The same can be said with “I Can Tell,” as it builds the song around an unspoken triangular tension, featuring the singer, the lover who’s half-committed, and the ex still hovering in the doorway.

The crown jewel of this album is “Keeper,” an elliptical confession that uses shifting pronouns and jagged time cues to convey a relationship stuck in a cycle of feedback. He cuts straight to mediated intimacy, showing how even conversation requires an intermediary. That evasiveness fuels the song’s central tension, where he attempts at honesty (“put this pride aside again”) continually collide with hazy self-awareness (“I don’t even know what time it is”). The hook sharpens the conflict into a single plea. Over a ballad, he wants permanence (“be the one that you keep”) yet can’t outrun his own limitations (“I can’t be what I’m not”). That contrast between yearning for stability and acknowledging personal fracture animates the song’s entire arc.

Earlier songs like “The Beach” or “Stuck On You” captured moments of vulnerability and hurt; on Beloved, Giveon often zooms out to consider the lessons learned and how those experiences have shaped him. “Mud” kicks off the album, led by incredible strings by Peter Lee Johnson and co-written by Leon Thomas, he places romance as a zero-sum arena where reputation matters as much as feeling. He reduces the conflict to “emotional blackmail,” a phrase that lands like a legal charge, before flipping loyalty’s weight—“Held you down, now I’m bad for you”—into a stinging reversal of roles. Throughout, as in “Numb” and “Strangers,” they teeter between accusation and reluctant empathy, refusing a clean resolution; instead, they linger in that murky space where love curdles into narrative warfare, and each side clings to a truth polished by denial.

On “Avalanche,” Matthew Burnett, Maneesh, Sevn Thomas, and Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman brilliantly interoplate the Gap Band’s “Outstanding” so subtly, but it works, paired by the avalanche image heightens ordinary pop hyperbole, implying both scale and surrender, amplifying the stakes without resorting to grand spectacle. He abandons ornate imagery for direct need, then immediately pivots to sensual quotidian detail, grounding romance in practiced familiarity. “Rather Be” details surrender isn’t a climax, it’s a condition, and Giveon writes it with enough economy to make the loop feel both claustrophobic and true. Listening to the second verse, he trades the abstract for sensory disarray: a dark room, solitary dancing, a stolen sun. Those images pull grief into the body, making absence tactile. However, the song would stand out more if the vocals were a bit more commanding than being an apathetic onlooker.

The thousand-day expedition to Beloved has clearly sharpened Giveon’s artistry compared to his debut; his storytelling is more autobiographical and poetic, his vocals more dynamic, and his production choices more confident in their restraint, as it’s some of the best in R&B this year. He’s already a multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated star, but this album positions him for even greater longevity. However, it would be nice if a few of the other tracks were more standouts than just completely “meh.” Despite that, the album fulfills the hope that, with time and reflection, an artist can create something solid that deviates from the typical trendy sounds of trap and the inflation of Afrobeats. By diving into his twenties with such honesty and transforming life’s experiences into art, Giveon has crafted a body of work that resonates on a deeply human level.

Solid (★★★½☆)

Favorite Track(s): “I Can Tell,” “Keeper,” “Avalanche”