Between Helpless, Unbothered, and Overdressed
Giveon knows, Baby Rose knows, and Jaz Karis’s therapist knows. The difference is who says it out loud.
Welcome to the Soulpolitan weekly feature, where we highlight the R&B singles worth your time. As people who spend an unreasonable amount of time pressing play on things nobody asked us to press play on, this is our way of passing along the best of what we’re hearing—and occasionally arguing about, so you don’t have to sort through every New Music Friday playlist yourself. Some weeks, the list assembles itself around a theme. This week, it did that without our help.
This week’s picks: a Jezebel, a therapist cameo, a runway strut, and two breakups going in opposite directions. All in one week.
Giveon, “JEZEBEL”
“Tonight, you’re mine, Jezebel, mine” uses a thumping swing that evokes a bar scene. The choruses created a build-up for a big note on the bar, but here, his baritone rests under live instrumentation, and this is Giveon’s best hook in a few cycles. BELOVED. Act II gives Giveon’s baritone a brief spot for “JEZEBEL,” the biggest of five new tracks. Giveon fulfills a brief seven-person production team contract with, from within the team—Jahaan Sweet, Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman, Kemy Siala, Los Hendrix, Matthew Burnett, Peter Lee Johnson, and Sevn Thomas—with a swing that refuses the brooding that BELOVED is known for. He keeps this brief contract for “JEZEBEL” with the best admission in Giveon’s discography. AD “He had you in him too/More than just a kiss or two/There’s no need to introduce/I know just what you are” is a baritone, and it is all four declaratives. The baritone refuses a plea.
Baby Rose, “But, Nvm”
Before her two albums and a Grammy, Jasmine Rose Wilson was the next Billie Holiday. Her press kit has had its elements removed since 2024. The song “But, Nvm,” from July’s album YEARNALISM, is her best single yet. “But, Nvm” opens with “Waiting on a train,” expressing her desire to take a train “somewhere you won’t call my name,” or “where every summer doesn’t feel like rain,” or “I just need a little sun.” Her contralto is still a contralto, as staging has flipped. “But, Nvm” was co-produced by Wilson with Joe Harrison and Ryan James Carr; the arrangement gets handed an acoustic guitar, a small horn section, and almost no room for the kind of wallowing the Holiday-comparison crowd has been waiting for. A verse’s worth of work is being carried by one syllable. Her Materialists soundtrack work and the Leon Thomas record Mutt were rest stops, but the press kit was being cleared all along. Streams were earned by “Friends Again,” yet the actual exit from the Holiday comparison was being saved for “But, Nvm.” Press kit cleared.
Tone Stith, “Pageant Stage”
Brass enters early on “Pageant Stage.” Three horn stabs that escort, not accompany, even before Stith opens his mouth. Strongest stretch on The Edge. Christopher “Brody” Brown and Kenneth “KP” Paige stack a runway-strut snare under those horns, but the tempo still pulls in by one beat so Stith can narrate his own entrance. “Straight from the pageant stage/There you are/Lookin’ like a star.” His vocal stays loose throughout, almost spoken in spots; the lift is saved for the punchline at the top of each refrain. “Lil Miss Expensive, she got good taste,” snaps the diction from the MC of the evening to a guy at the bar.
Within the song’s midpoint the swerve has arrived. Stith opens the script.
“You the definition of a perfect ten
Lighter, action, cameras flashin’, you the main event.”
Two lines later it detonates to the “Type to make me take it off of safety/And fire in it, fire in it/Fuck around and die in it, die in it.”
Jaz Karis, “Life Is Unfair”
Karis’s 2018 COLORS performance of “Petty Lover” pulled sixteen million views. Her first album took six more years. During that gap the songwriter who once wrote songs on a Barbie tape recorder in South London commuted between London and Los Angeles, dropped Safe Flight in September 2024, dropped the Loud in the Water EP a year later, yet watched the U.K. R&B discourse pass her by twice anyway. “Life Is Unfair” is the song the wait built. Prodigal Sons on Rhodes and brushed kit. Her first line on “Life Is Unfair” is an apology for ghosting. “It’s been a while, I probably should’ve text you something.” The apology gets replaced with a hum—”Life is, mmm/Not fair.”
Bryant Barnes, “Apollo”
“Apollo” opens with three images and no melody (“TV lights/In your eyes/Shine till I’m blue.”). Yet Barnes has already locked his cadence inside the first six lines. Short phrases stacked into a confession throughout the record. Each “maybe” line gets withheld until its closing word slams the verdict shut: “Maybe I’m helplessly in love with you/Maybe I’m desperate/For your attention/Maybe there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do.” It’s the opener Barnes wasted on a closer slot.
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
Mýa: Retrospect
Giveon: Beloved: Act II
Tank and the Bangas: The Last Balloon
Dua Saleh: Of Earth & Wires
Tone Stith: The Edge
Adria Kain: This Feels Like Home
Karen Bernod: IRIS
The Elovaters: Shark Belly Motel
Ras-I: Heart of Love
Brooklyn Funk Essentials: Black Butterfly
Stella Heath: For Billie
Bobbi Stella: Risk It All
Down to the Bone: This Way Forward
Randy Brecker: Espirito
James Savage: PINE
Tayc: JOŸA
Johnny Drille: Before the Morning Light
PawPaw Rod: Picture Day: A PawPaw Rod Album
BNXN & Sarz: The Game Needs Us (EP)
M’elle: Stages (EP)
Maya J’an: Blindfaith County (EP)
Shaylin B: Brand New (EP)
Malaya: April Showers (EP)
Zilo: Ready to Bloom (EP)
Other Songs to Check Out
Jorja Smith: What’s Done Is Done
Nao Yoshioka & My Anh: Pieces of Me
Quanie: Right There
Thee Marloes: 6 Years
kwn: idea of love (A COLORS SHOW)
Victoria Monét: Let Me (Live Rendition)
Lee Lewis: The Long Way
Michi & Mndsgn: Are You Lonesome?
Iris Aeria: lavender
Black Atlass: Yours and Mine
Nick Hakim: Real Here Now / Water
OVI WOOD: Playing Games In My Face
Cerrone & Adi Oasis: New Highs
Autumn Paige: Money Money Money
LIZ: Juicy Sweet
Leven & Flow Clark: how dare you
Danny Singh: HONEYBBY
Quail P: Happy Tears
point 5ve & October London: Grown Man Business (Remix)
Larissa Lambert: Blood On the Strings
The Colleagues & Kevin Ross: A Little
Owen Saward: Hard to Get
Lex Aura: Delusion
Courtney Bell & Ron E: He Don’t Know
Latanya Alberto: Window to the Soul
Adanna Duru & Bas: One on One
MorMor & Celeste: Like Heaven
Devon Gilfillian: Moonflower
Devin Morrison & Seafood Sam: ZODIAC SINE
Thutmose: PRADA YOU
AMARIA BB: Break Me Off
tg.blk: So Bad
The Philharmonik & Jakhari Smith: I Might as Well
ROME & Prod. Dior: Figure It Out
Marley Bleu: Missin You
Nezi: Waiting
twin.: vibrations
Paris Rabone: BIRDS
Haley Smalls: Don’t Touch
Angel: Call Me
Shelby Ruger: nintendo switch
VARTIDA: Slow Burner
Ishmael Nehemiah: Bout It (feat. Natalie Chludz)
Nectar Woode: Rivers End