Five R&B Songs Warming Us Up This Week
A wildfire survivor turns grief into a gospel come-on, two 2000s hitmakers age their seduction into something warmer, and a Raphael Saadiq production sells a relationship its singer knows is doomed.
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.
This week is lighter: songs about seduction, songs about reunions, and even a song about a relationship that the woman who sings about it might not even want anymore. Five picks, five reasons, and one long exhale.
Masego, “Heaven”
Losing everything you own on TV while you’re watching it happen from halfway across the world is a scenario likely to send most people into a dark place. Instead, Masego processes the loss of his Los Angeles house during the January 2025 wildfires in the way he’s known for: by seducing. “Heaven” is the result, and the third studio album from the Kingston-born, Virginia-based saxophonist and producer. What keeps this track from feeling blasphemous is the tenderness of the lyrics. He remembers a lover “like books in the Bible” and describes her as his “revival”—a powerful description of what must be a very heavy burden. In this context, the church-girl fantasy plays through in everything from waiting for a Sunday best to turning her “letter S a god.” While the flirtation is a stand-in for something more basic, he wishes there was something to go back to besides the wreckage. —Nehemiah
B2K, “Mileage”
Imagine Omarion and the rest of B2K taking on the Verzuz stage against Pretty Ricky, twenty-five years removed from the teen idol screaming that made them, still able to move in a way that will remind you exactly why your cousin had the poster on his bedroom wall. This is the premise of the first release of new music in more than two decades from the band, which has announced a forthcoming album entitled Eclipse.
What’s smartest about the track is how well they recognize that they’re not seventeen anymore. When they sing, “Don’t care about your mileage/All over your body,” it’s a mature statement, and an appeal for remaining loyal to someone whose past you’ve decided to overlook. The structure is as pure early 2000s pop&B as can be, but the tone is something warmer than lust. On the track, there’s a verse in which he thanks a woman’s mother “for them big ole thighs that bring me back to life”—exactly the cornball devotion the genre used to be based on before everyone became too cool for it.
On “Mileage,” he’s “all in” over and over again, repeating the phrase until it begins to feel like something more mature than the boast it once was. B2K was created to be desired by the teens; “Mileage” is them learning how to do the desiring, and it works surprisingly well. —Jamila W.
Leon Bridges, “Light the Way”
The most exciting development in retro-soul music right now has to be that its artists keep leaving the country. The opening track from the fifth album from the Fort Worth native finds him handing over control of the song to J. Lloyd and Lydia Kitto, members of the British dance act Jungle, and the result sends his Sam Cooke sweetness out past the Gulf towards Lagos and Bahia.
Underneath the track “Light the Way” lurks an AfroBeat beat and the loose swing of Brazilian pop music, and Bridges rides it like a man finally free from the vintage microphone diorama that his early work built. He’s still writing summer-evening reveries, full of “Bulleit” whiskey and afternoon romance, but the setting has become tropical and sweaty, and better suited to his croon than the churchy austerity of the past. “Wanna riot/When you’re walking with me,” he sings on the chorus, and the word “riot” arrives relaxed and joyous, not political. The old Leon Bridges wanted to sound like 1962. This one sounds like a party that you can hear three streets away, getting louder with every step you take towards it. —Imani Raven
Tiana Major9, “MORE”
Each love song sung by a guarded individual has to solve the same problem: how do you sell surrender when your entire persona is based on not needing anyone else? For the British-Jamaican singer whose gospel-trained voice anchored the Queen & Slim soundtrack, that guarded persona has given her career longevity and a certain worldly untouchability—but it’s also what makes the exposure on “MORE” so compelling.
She starts by acknowledging the pattern that she’s breaking, “I used to run for the hills/Wear out the thrills,” describing a flight risk woman who’s going to agree to stay grounded this time. What follows is one of the most compelling accounts of falling that R&B has offered in a while, and it succeeds precisely because of its reluctance. In the pre-chorus, she keeps coming back to her history of fleeing, “Want all the feels/Something that’s real,” as if she’s trying to convince herself of it in real time. Then, suddenly, the dam breaks: “When it rains, it pours/There’s an overflow.” The song was written in a camp in St. Vincent and produced by Malik NinetyFive and Michael Baretz, and the arrangement leaves plenty of room for her to negotiate. By the time she’s pleading for more, you believe her because you’ve heard how hard it was to get there. —Ameenah Laquita
Syd, “Any Time” feat. James Fauntleroy
There’s a particular pleasure in recognizing a bassline you know anywhere, and this particular one from Raphael Saadiq sits right at the start of Syd’s new track. “Any Time” is the standout track from the third studio album from the neo-soul singer, and the bassline alone is enough to set the mood. This is a track about desire for someone who you know is bad for you, and Saadiq’s low-end groove gives the wrong idea a place to flourish. “Every time I’m runnin’ from you, I lose,” she admits, and James Fauntleroy responds with a verse about being unable to move on, “Too strong, can’t move it,” trading off positions in the same doomed circle. What makes the track stand out is the bridge, where Syd abandons the performance of cool in favor of honesty: “Maybe I’m numb or afraid of change/I wanna be done.” She admits that she would have ended things by now if she hadn’t fallen in love—and realized that “we know we don’t belong in love.” She’s newly sober and married and living her life tending to her garden and her dogs in Baldwin Hills, and this backward-looking song feels less like a self-indulgent wallow and more like a door she’s ready to close. —Miles Everette
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
Steve Lacy: Oh yeah?
Masego: Fix Your Face
Syd: Beard
Kamal.: how the f*** does everybody else manage?
Ambré: PEYOTE
Nia Archives: Emotional Junglist
Dame Atlas: If I’m Being Honest
Nao Yoshioka: self
Avara: why do women jump in the fire?
Martin Luther McCoy: Welcome Back Love
Ranky Tanky: This Village
Zaytoven: Zaytoven’s Trail Ride
Jamar Jones: Blue Oceans
Steven G: R&G
Peach Tree Rascals: Velvet
Kadi Lee: Still the Same LVR Boy: Disc II (EP)
Loo: Rien a Sauver (EP)
Fantastic Negrito: Alive (Live)
AKIA: DUMBCRAZYSTUPID (Deluxe)
Soul In the Horn: Soul In the Horn (Act 4) [Deluxe Edition REMIXES AND BONUSES]
_BY.ALEXANDER: MEMORIES FOR SALE ---AT---> 66 GREENE ST SOHO NY (DELUXE)
Other Songs to Check Out
AMAKA: Motion
Luna Elle: Moment of Silence
Sonny Tennet & Zak Abel: Make You Feel My Love
Devvon Terrell: Crash
Kalisway: I Like It (feat. LAYA)
LÉA THE LEOX: LEMONS
Davido & NO11: Gimme Dat Ting
St. Paul & The Broken Bones: Mess I Made
Dee Gatti: Tit 4 Tat
ïnnü: DTN U (See Me Up)
Jordan Rakei: Enemies
Khal!l: COMMUNICATION
MorMor: Don’t Need It
Yazmin Lacey: Summer Haze
Allyn: Pop It
Jaymin: Proud
Larissa Lambert: Tunnel Vision
CANDIACE: Pretty Ain’t Perfect
Jordan McCullough: See Me
rache.: Let Me Know
TEHYA: 4L
Laura Mvula & Cynthia Erivo: It Would Be
((( O ))): Earth Octaves
Tkay Maidza: Romanticize (feat. Jenevieve)
Rebel Rae: Me and Your Ex
b.kae: One & the Same
ZADA: They’ll Never Find Us
Alexia Jayy: One and Only (Cover)
Thee Sinseers: How Lonely Is Lonely
FromJerome: THE DISTANCE INTERLUDE
Notifi: Level
Quail P: Make My Love
DAP the Contract & Bymaddz: House of Blue
LAWSON: Ballerina Tea (feat. Ty Dolla $ign)
Elijah Boothe: No Fear
Neya: Prince Charming
Essiyas: your prime
Tora-i: Champagne & Lace
Manana: Calendar
Chitra: 808_Heartbeat
Roy Woods: Brunch
Ye Ali: Never Do That
Naïka: ONE TRACK MIND (feat. Jessie Reyez) [Remix]
Junetober: Same House New Color / It’s a Party / Fallen Angels Still Have Wings