EP Review: Lucky You (EP) by Isaiah Falls
Isaiah Falls has the presence and the instinct for intimacy. While the songwriting often settles for the first draft of an idea rather than pushing through to something sharper, this EP still goes.
Isaiah Falls has always been a patient singer. There is rarely a moment when he jostles for your attention or flails into melisma; instead, his records arrive like conversations whispered in the back seat of a car. Lucky You continues that approach. The set uses intimacy as its organizing principle. In six songs, Falls builds on the warm, understated style he sketched on previous releases but brings in collaborators who work beside him rather than over him. What emerges feels less like a feature‑heavy product and more like a group dialogue about desire, devotion, and faith.
He brings a Florida humidity off the rip with “Brown Sugah,” which feels less like atmospheric decoration and more like a memory pressing against the skin. Isaiah Falls sets the scene with unhurried precision—“That Florida sun do miracles for your skin”—and what could’ve been simple regional flavor becomes something more tactile, more lived-in. The invitation to take a dip in my sugar-coated sins reads sweeter than it should, which is exactly the point. When SiR arrives, he’s not interrupting; he’s continuing a thought Falls started, running a hundred miles toward desire that’s been here before but never quite like this. The collaboration breathes easy, two voices circling the same craving without competition. SiR’s “they say the darker the berry, the sweeter the taste” risks cliché but lands with enough conviction to mean it, though the metaphor itself—pit stops at cherries, flames worth the burn—walks familiar ground without reinventing it. You hear that balance in the song’s arrangement: a lazy backbeat hints at ‘70s soul, while contemporary drum programming keeps things buoyant. Falls never raises his voice, trusting the harmonies and pocket to do the seducing. His tone is soft, but he never sacrifices gravity, a tricky mix that turns what could be a one‑note metaphor into a persuasive celebration of ordinary affection.
But Falls moves most interestingly when he narrows the frame. “God Is Real” strips away guest features and production flourish to deliver something closer to confession than performance. I know God is real by the way you make me feel isn’t a line trying to be clever—it’s testimony dressed as intimacy, the kind of declaration that collapses the distance between the spiritual and the carnal without irony or apology. The hook keeps asking where does your mind go, how does your heart feel as if those questions might actually yield answers, as if he’s genuinely trying to reach across the space between two people and understand what love looks like from the other side. There’s a plainness to the writing here that could read as undercooked (“I love your attitude, but I know you’re fragile“), but Falls delivers it with enough steadiness that it doesn’t collapse into greeting card sentiment. There is no hint of irony, just a man testifying that love has deepened his sense of the sacred.
“Just a Dream” pivots toward temptation but keeps its hands clean. The hook borrows old slang and wears it loose, nostalgic without being dated. Alex Isley’s verse does the heavier lifting here, her twist me like a Swisher Sweet more playful than explicit, walking the line between invitation and suggestion. The bridge tries to slow the momentum, insisting this ain’t a dream that you wanna rush, and the sentiment lands even if the phrasing feels a touch manufactured. The song doesn’t quite commit to being either fully escapist or grounded in real stakes, which leaves it floating somewhere pleasant but not particularly urgent. It’s pretty, certainly—Isley’s voice against Falls’ creates a warm harmonic pocket—but the songwriting doesn’t take risks. It coasts on vibe, which works until you realize there’s not much beneath the surface.
“Enticing” with Chase Shakur aims for sensuality but stumbles over its own mechanics. “Leaving Fenty ‘round my crib and make sure they know that you’ve been here,” tries for specificity but reads like product placement disguised as intimacy. Chase repeats without deepening the metaphor of being untied, never clarifying itself further. Is it freedom? Vulnerability? The song can’t decide. Shakur opens by confessing he hasn’t seen his lover in a while and wants to explore her body like a tour. He leaves Fenty cosmetics around his crib so “they know that you’ve been here,” a clever detail that grounds the seduction in a modern relationship. Falls’ verse is less vivid; lines like “This moment is just for us, I don’t ask for much” feel vague next to Shakur’s imagery. You wish Falls dug deeper lyrically, but his relaxed delivery turns even filler into part of the vibe. The production carries weight here—there’s a drowsy, late-night pull to the track—but the writing feels unfinished, ideas sketched rather than fully realized.
With the viral single “Butterflies,” it finds a surer footing (the song previously appeared on side A of LVRS Paradise). Falls leads with a simplicity that doesn’t apologize for itself: that smile can give a thug butterflies. The juxtaposition of hardness and softness isn’t new territory, but he doesn’t belabor it. He just states it and moves on. Joyce Wrice answers with her own testimony—what you say to me matters ‘cause you’re more than my security—and the exchange feels genuine, two people naming what they see in each other without decoration. The second verse gives Wrice room to articulate agency: “If I had to, I’d choose you,” which shifts the dynamic from pursuit to mutual selection. It’s a small move, but it matters. The song never tips into spectacle. It stays measured, almost conversational, and that restraint is where its power lives.
The closing track, “Have My Babies,” should feel impulsive—that question mark in the title suggests it—but Falls approaches it with a seriousness that transforms novelty into something like blueprint. “I want our kids to have your eyes,” which could be hyperbole, the kind of romantic exaggeration that sounds good in the moment but evaporates by morning. Instead, he doubles down: “Your body lingers in my mind,” and then the admission that he doesn’t usually do this, that her worth has shown him something. The songwriting here is uneven (“Tell me baby is it lust, tell me baby is it love, tell me baby do you have room for us“), which strains for emphasis without earning it. But there’s an earnestness underneath that’s hard to dismiss. He’s trying to name a future, to articulate permanence in real time, and the vulnerability in that attempt carries the song even when the language doesn’t fully deliver.
Falls never forces his voice or chases drama across these six tracks. He stays centered, which is both his strength and, at times, his limitation. The collaborations work because they feel like extensions of his sensibility rather than detours—SiR’s hunger, Isley’s ease, Shakur’s drowsy confidence, Wrice’s clarity all fit inside the same emotional temperature Falls establishes. But that consistency also means the EP rarely surprises. It’s warm, it’s sincere, it’s careful. Sometimes too careful. The moments where the songwriting reaches—“God Is Real” collapsing love into faith, “Have My Babies” naming commitment out loud—are the ones that linger. The rest is pleasant company, well-executed but not urgent, the sound of a man learning to hold affection without armor but not always certain what to say once his hands are full.
Favorite Tracks: “Brown Sugah,” “God Is Real,” “Just a Dream”