Everybody’s Sweet Tooth Is Acting Up
Rapsody sings over a D’Angelo sample, Ari Lennox lies about leaving the party in five minutes, and Wale counts what it costs to put a woman in your songs.
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.
And this week, no complaints. What you’re about to read below—everything landed. All of it R&B (or maybe hip-hop soul), and four of them want something the other person hasn’t agreed to yet. Let’s get into it.
Wale & Elmiene, “Overthink”
Put a woman in your record and you’re stuck with her, long after she’s dropped from every other place she’s listed. This has been the situation since Ambition, when “Lotus Flower Bomb” made a Washington D.C. rapper into the man girls quote to their friends. It’s been twelve years since Maybach Music wrapped up for Wale in 2023, and his debut record for Def Jam, Everything Is a Lot, was the burden of what he told Billboard he called “the world around me, my personal life and the industry.” Overthink is what follows it, and he hands the tender half of the job to Elmiene, the Sudanese British singer raised in Oxford who placed fifth in the BBC’s Sound of 2024 poll, released For the Deported (and a sleeper album this year with sounds for someone), and was up for the BRIT Rising Star award the year after. D. Woo, one of the producers on Everything Is a Lot, made the beat with Wale.
“I should have been cautious puttin’ you in my songs,” he confesses in the middle of the first verse. Then, a bar later, he’s already absolved himself, because someone else might be healing from what he endured, so what’s another girl reduced to song? Between those lines, the lyric gets bolder. He calls his brain a circus, her a “kerosene carousel,” and the scene keeps building till all of D.C. is on fire and she’s the one who took the match. But it’s another small phrase that catches me, and won’t let go: “I’m growin’ into a trope, is that cope? Is this really done?” At 41, he knows he sounds like that and does it anyway, which is how the second verse ends up hunting for real events to lay blame on. There’s a torn-elbow line, “I’m torn like Tommy John, you throwin’ me off with this,” and there’s the podcast. He appeared on Angel Reese’s show last winter to discuss the challenges of dating publicly, and the line is him wishing he’d spent that time differently: “Let me redo Angel Reese interview and just say your name.”
As the hook interpolates 702, Elmiene has the simplest lyrics here, and they come from the person being accused: “You don’t know the pain that I feel/You’ve taken my love for granted,” she sings. Wale’s answer is sidestepping the cure, not wanting to smoke and choosing to spiral anyway. What he can bring us at the end of the verse is an address he doesn’t have, a street with an unrented hotel at its end. That’s the nearest we get to a good ending on this track. —Ameenah Laquita
Ari Lennox, “Hookah Baby”
Has anyone ever actually gone when they said they were leaving? Have you ever announced your leaving at the bar, pulled on your jacket, and taken off? I haven’t. Neither has Ari Lennox, who has been writing songs about the extra hour for almost a decade. The Washington, D.C., singer quit Dreamville last spring, released her album, Vacancy, and saw it unfortunate flop at No. 172 on the Billboard 200, which was the lowest charting project of her career (y’all need to better at supporting our artists). “Hookah Baby,” co-produced by Leather Jacket (who also worked on Vacancy) and Tommy Brown, is what she’s made of it all: going outside.
The first thing she’ll tell you about herself is her hair. “Lil’ beedy bead with the high heels on/Sippin’ tea,” she sings, and placing the beady beads alongside the heels in a single phrase makes it clear that this is not the kind of night you order a beer. Her girls are outside and on ten. She tells you she’s leaving in five minutes, and admits in the same breath that she’s lying, but then she backpedals even the lie itself down to nothing when she says “I might good night, I might just slide,” committing to neither outcome. It’s the truest lyric on the track. Everything else is just lungs and smoke and haze and the taste in your mouth. She’s still in there with those high heels on, saying five more minutes to everyone else. —Imani Raven
Rapsody, “Apple Juice”
Last year, a Soweto youth choir named Karabo Ya Morena (God’s Gift in English) took an evening stroll past the Jabulani flats and into Kwa-Khaya Lendaba. Afterward, an American rapper and the struggle veteran Seth Mazibuko sat down for a drink at a bar called Native Rebels. The tour was organized by Nomsa Mazwai, a South African singer known as Nomisupasta. The rapper was Rapsody, who came to the country to record an album. According to the Mail & Guardian, Denaun “Mr. Porter” Porter followed the choir in Johannesburg that same week, and their voices on “God Gotta Afro,” the first single from the album God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops, coming this month (very excited!).
The Mazwai story stretches far beyond one visit. In 2012, producer 9th Wonder sampled Mazwai’s 2010 eponymous album for three tracks on The Idea of Beautiful, Rapsody’s debut record. In other words, her voice had been part of that discography for fourteen years before they shared a recording booth. “Apple Juice” talks about “the simplicity of love,” says Mazwai to the Mail & Guardian. She has also been clear about the value of her contribution, after a career that earned her a SAMA award 15 years ago, and successfully advocated for a feature billing on two additional appearances elsewhere on the album.
On “Apple Juice,” Rapsody, who is also credited as a songwriter and producer along with Mazwai, Porter, Victor Gaspar, and Groove, is preoccupied with one issue: “All this love inside/I’m hesitating, why?/Why I can’t just reply and tell ya how I feel?” Her verses don’t really feel like the verses she typically delivers. She pesters herself, gets annoyed with her own attempts to flirt, and concludes with a lamentation about how much time they’re spending instead of making use of what they’re feeling. The underlying D’Angelo “One Mo’ Gin” sample is subtle, but the terminology of hunger references his 1995 song. “Got a Jones for you/Sweet tooth/You’re like sugar in my, in my apple juice” recalls the hunger he had on “Jonz in My Bonz” 31 years earlier. Mazwai’s isiXhosa lyrics arrive later in the song, and she sings over the same tune as her English lyrics. —Phil
Isaiah Falls & Mahalia, “HONEYBUTTER”
There’s eight producers on one duet, and all of it boils down to two people asking each other to do something neither of them wants to do. The Orlando singer who dropped LVRS PARADISE (Side A) last spring on his own LVRS ONLY label, distributed by Roc Nation, finished off the set with Side B, consisting of another 12 tracks plus an interlude where an ATLien Big Boi speaks. “HONEYBUTTER” is the track Isaiah Falls gave Mahalia, and it’s the one you need to remember. She was discovered at 14 years old in Leicestershire, her mother used to sing in Colourbox and her father toured with Erasure, and she’s been singing about unbalanced situations since Love and Compromise. The music video released with the song takes inspiration from the red wine line.
Falls asks who owns it and then continues to ask. “Is it mine? I can’t be sure/We both grown, let’s be mature/Promise I’m not insecure.” That is not something any person who is secure has ever said. He is already giving himself an out in the same verse, “If you can’t be mine, I can’t be yours/Only on days when I get bored,” which opens the door before he is ready for it. Mahalia chimes in with the words he has been trying to say. “How many ways you gotta say your unsure?/How many times I gotta come to your door,” she sings, and she identifies the person who has been keeping the relationship going, putting in the work and maintaining the balance between the two of them. Then she finds herself in the situation she has described, asking for entry while offering access back. Mahalia carries this song and delivers it right to his porch. How many more times does she have to travel there? —Jamila W.
Natanya, “PLAY WITH A KISS!”
Natanya has perfect pitch. She had perfect pitch lessons in classical jazz piano on Saturdays as a kid at the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy. She produces her own stuff. She graduated from UCL with a degree in English literature, just in time to release her first EP. Then she opened for PinkPantheress, Ravyn Lenae, FLO and Mereba. SZA, Doechii, Tyler, the Creator and Janet Jackson posted about her. She told Dazed magazine in the spring that her rule for herself is to sing like a pop star and train like a wrestler. On the day this one was released she said: “It’s pure confidence in a song.”
The word she’s screwing up is “exclusively.” She splits it into four bits, singing it “exclu-siv-uh-lly.” It appears two lines after she admits she doesn’t know what she’s doing: “Don’t you get confused, this is new to me.” It’s all big risks taken by someone clearly improvising live, and that’s what makes it work. There’s a moment where she promises to sing it like a kid. She wants to play the fool “till we exist,” which is a bizarrely beautiful way of saying that you want something so badly you’ll behave badly until it actually happens. It was produced by Oscar Scheller, the north London producer responsible for Kelela’s incredible album (new avatar), Ashnikko’s “Stupid” and PinkPantheress’s “I Must Apologise,” and the track always seems to leave space for her own backing vocals to answer her. In the second verse, when the lyric “That’s why I wrote Fantasise” goes by, another Natanya answers in the third person from behind her in the third verse. She is her own hype woman. —Charlotte Rochel
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
Isaiah Falls: LVRS PARADISE (SIDE B)
Jacquees: Mood 2
Cautious Clay: The Hours: High Noon
Kotarayne: Archived Love
The Vintage Explosion: Life and Soul
Terri Lyne Carrington & Social Science: Trip the Night Fantastic
Marques Anthony: A-List Lover
Dead Horse Beats: Chilling Effect
Romi Wrights: Andy
Rakiyah: My Collection of Boy Tears
Tanya George: Contrast
Chazz Dixon: You Should Be Here
Sasha Keable: Live from NPR’s Tiny Desk (EP)
Odeal: For a Good Time... (EP)
Patchwork Inc.: More Patchwork (EP)
Eli Ahmad: Sincerely, Ahmad. (EP)
EDYONTHEBEAT: Out of Reach (EP)
Stefan Mahendra: Home Sweet Home (EP)
Anabel Rose: How Do the Flowers Bloom? (EP)
jael: Mama Says (EP)
Other Songs to Check Out
Debbie: More of You
Eli Derby: Fine As U
Angela Renée: Dreaming In Color
Eliott Skinner: DON’T BE A RUNNER
PJ: Two Steps
October London: Your Girl
jackson knox: Be Somebody
Brianna Castro: like me
Ron E: PRIVATE
Jake Isaac: A LONG SUMMER AGO
Valerie June: Smokestack
R&B Only & Daley: Slide (R&B ONLY Sessions)
Alex Mali: GBG (Good Body Gyal)
ïnnü: That 50/50
Lily Rayne: One Stop Shop
V. Cartier: Wishy Washy
SABRI: Stay
Lusanda: By the Time I Wake Up
FIG: Ordinary Love
Zeina: Ya Hala
GOODBADUGLY: WEAK<3
Josh Levi: Swerve
Arin Ray: Too Good
Johnny Venus: Porsche 911
Jordyn Simone: Gone Girl
LOONY: RaGDOLL
ilham: YES$$
Destin Conrad: I Love Your Body
Maya Jade & Cherrykim: Best Thing
JeRonelle & Sevndeep: BackRoom
BNXN & Asake: Eja Meja
ZURI: GO!
cikho: Crush On You
Jahson Paynter: its not about me!
Clxrity, Musa Keys & Rehsa: Every Part of Me
Earl Hondo: free love
Neema Makesa & Austin Marc: With You
Yo Trane: Ready for You
FKJ & Lucy Park: How Much Does It Take to Shift It All
CD Rose: OFF & ON
luvblue: ON TO YOU
Résa: Cool Off You