Album Review: Serial Romantic by Jai’Len Josey

On her Def Jam debut, the Atlanta songwriter chases love in all directions and walks out keeping the last scrap for herself.

Courtesy of Def Jam Recordings.

At the age of 23, Jai’Len Josey is part of Def Jam’s stable of Singer/Songwriters who are co-writing with many of today’s top artists like SZA and Babyface, while also being the closest to a Grammy with their five-time award-winning executive producer providing support for their record. Given her circumstances, there was plenty of room to play it safely. However, that was not the route that Jai’Len chose when creating Serial Romantic.

Of the 13 songs, nearly half are self-produced, and most were written without any featured artists. The themes that run throughout the project include sex and betrayal, original submission, polyamorous dreams, and a desire not to freely give oneself away. The project is anything but subtle about those themes. Jai’Len, originally from Atlanta but raised by a mother from Detroit who introduced her to ghettotech (and other variants) music as a child, has some sentimental dance music influences that come through in some of the moments throughout Serial Romantic. As a teenager, she left a Broadway role (Pearl Krabs in The SpongeBob Musical with actors Ethan Slater and Stephanie Hsu) to pursue songwriting full-time and beat out a publishing deal with Sony to get signed to a record label.

She co-wrote the song “Pressure” for Ari Lennox, which achieved platinum status on Billboard and peaked at No. 2 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. When Tricky Stewart heard six songs she had produced on her own, he contributed six more (originally for other projects) and stitched the whole album together from two separate song batches, which accounts for the tonal shifts in the album while contributing to the restlessness that would have been sanded off by a wholly cohesive single-producer session.

The first song in the album focuses on euphemisms for sex (trumpet, kick drum, bass tone, tambourine, sheet music). She sings, “Lay me like your pastor’s tambourine” in the second verse of “Hearts & Strings”: you either go with it or you don’t. “Freak” removes the euphemism from the second half of the song and instead relays, “Turn me ‘round, pin me against the wall/Then we don’t have to talk at all.” After that, on “Housewife,” she moves from the Hennessy and the 6” Pleaser to a honeymoon in Bali, where she openly questions whether she has ever thought about or been willing to submit to a man. She describes herself as being hot and ready but now has turned into Lois Lane; both titles exist in harmony. The title track confirms that she has a three-person table reserved for dinner at Benihana’s. The album has no interest in consistency.

The breakup lands in the middle of the record. A phone skit: her friend saw her man at Nobu with another woman. “Girl, he didn’t just take her to Cheesecake, he took her to Nobu.” The restaurant is the wound. “Love Ain’t Shit” arrives already past the arguing stage:

“I’m sorry in advance, but we never had a chance
All the pressure, the regression
No goals, no plans.”

She’s apologizing before the fight starts, which is meaner than shouting. The outro goes somewhere sadder: “Wanna believe in fairytales, but that’s a story I know too well/It’s joy to hell beyond compare/It’s just a pain too much to bear.”

On “Truce,” she tries to talk it out and fails in the bridge. “Won’t Force You” is the album’s calmest cut, and its last verse is where Josey stops performing and starts breathing. “No false superheroes to hold me, no niggas to play me and no more chasin’.” She quits calling, and her voice settles lower for the final bars, half tired and half peaceful.

The title track cracks the record open. “If I was risky, and I think I might be, I’d reserve a table at Benihana’s for three.” Josey spends the whole cut turning appetite into a romantic proposition. Bobby wanted to fly her out of state; Tony flew her out the country. She wants both, and possibly a third. The bridge has this resemblance of a personal ad: a lover to go home with, a lover for dinner dates, a lover who thinks shopping’s a treat. “If I could say, I’d put you all on my dinner plate.” And it’s the only track on the whole record where she sounds free from the pull of monogamy, free from the cycle she’s been running since the first cut. She sounds giddy here, lighter than the heavier tracks allow.

Josey produced “I Believe (Selfish)” alone, the album’s closer. After twelve tracks shaped by Tricky Stewart, The-Dream, Leon Thomas, and Noah Ehler, the last song is hers by herself. “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?” The chorus puts it plainly: “Of the love I have to give, I should leave some for me.” After twelve tracks of giving and chasing and reinventing what she wants, the final act is subtraction.

Josey buries her best lines in second verses and bridges, not choruses. The “can you play my favorite tune” hook on “Hearts and Strings” sticks for hours, but the writing earns it with stranger moments: the pastor’s tambourine line, the mother-in-law callout on “Lose Somebody” (“Your mama called, mama called/I blocked her too/She taught you to do what you do”), the specificity of Nobu over Cheesecake. “This Time Around” runs on earnestness alone, and its outro swerves from apology into “pumpin’ my blood, baby boy, let’s get naughty” so abruptly it sounds spliced from a different session. “Out of My Body” is a fine new-crush song that evaporates the second it ends. Those are the album’s soft spots, and there aren’t many.

Josey told Parlé the biggest lesson she’s learned in love is to take her time with herself. On “Lose Somebody,” she blocks her ex’s mother’s phone number. “She taught you to do what you do,” she sings, and moves on to the next track.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Housewife,” “Love Ain’t Shit,” “Serial Romantic”