Glenn Lewis, Thundercat, Alex Isley, and More R&B Songs This Week
Glenn Lewis is back. Plus Thundercat, Alex Isley, Leven Kali, and Casper Sage. What do we get? Returns, debuts, and a duet that sounds like almost drowning in the nicest way.
Welcome to the Soulpolitan weekly feature, where we highlight the R&B singles worth your time. New music drops every Friday, and most of it blurs together by Saturday. This is the stuff that didn’t. Glenn Lewis’s comeback single has no interest in proving anything to anyone except the woman it’s aimed at. Thundercat recruits WILLOW for a love song where nobody reaches shore. Alex Isley distills all of Los Angeles into one neighborhood and one instruction: go. Leven Kali drops the Def Jam debut he’s been circling for years. And Casper Sage, out of Nashville via Oklahoma, writes the most honest four minutes of his catalog so far.
Glenn Lewis, “Past Tense”
He’s back! A decade can hollow out a career or sharpen the person behind it. Glenn Lewis, the Toronto vocalist whose 2002 debut World Outside My Window peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 and earned a co-sign from Stevie Wonder himself, has been functionally silent since 2013’s Moment of Truth. Two albums shelved by Epic in the interim, a Grammy nomination for his duet with Amel Larrieux on Stanley Clarke’s record, and then nothing. “Past Tense” arrives through his own Reimagery Inc. imprint, and the independence suits him. Lewis is talking to a woman who knows her man isn’t returning.
“First, everything is cool
Then he ghosting you
Saying he lost track of time
And he missing you.”
Lewis skips sympathy and goes straight to his case, pitching himself as the alternative, but the sharpest move is how plainly he names the cycle: she keeps waiting for a man whose affection expired months ago, and the waiting itself has become the relationship. “At this point, you playing yourself/Now it’s on you” cuts through the tenderness of his vocal, which remains startlingly close to the one that had Wonder singing “Don’t You Forget It” back to him at a Los Angeles radio station in 2002. Written with Juwayon Clarke and produced by Seige Monstracity, “Past Tense” refuses to crowd its own argument. Lewis’s father, Glenn Ricketts, fronted Crack ov Dawn, a mid-‘70s Columbia Records band, and there’s a patience here inherited from that generation. A voice, given sufficient room, can do the persuading by itself. — Jamila W.
Thundercat, “ThunderWave” feat. WILLOW
Six years between albums is unusual for someone as prolific in collaboration as Thundercat, who spent the gap lending his bass and his weirdo charisma to records by A$AP Rocky, Silk Sonic, Gorillaz, KAYTRANADA, and Justice. Distracted, his fifth studio album due in two weeks, was built primarily with pop super-producer Greg Kurstin, a pairing that could easily sand down Thundercat’s oddball instincts. “ThunderWave” suggests the opposite happened. Kurstin’s production backs off entirely, leaving room for water sounds and flange-drunk bass while Thundercat and WILLOW braid their falsettos together into late-period Doobie Brothers territory, specifically the Michael McDonald years when the harmonies got so thick they swallowed the song whole. Both singers are begging the same person, or maybe each other, to hold on. WILLOW grounds it by matching his vulnerability note for note rather than playing the cool counterpart. Thundercat described the collaboration by calling her “the weeping, the whimsy, the whispy, the wizard,” and there’s real affection in how their voices tangle here, neither one leading, both a little lost. — Imani Raven
Alex Isley, “Westside”
Her major label debut, When the City Sleeps, drops next Friday on Free Lunch Records and Warner, and Alex Isley spent the rollout naming Los Angeles as the album’s main character. She told Instagram the city is “the setting of all my dreams, my triumphs, my heartbreaks.” “Westside” takes that claim and scales it down to a single person with a couple hundred dollars left, running the same dead days Monday through Sunday, trying to figure out where they can lay their head safe.
Alex has never tried to dodge the Isley family name or the weight it carries in American music. She built her own catalog through a steady run of independent EPs and a breakout NPR Tiny Desk performance last summer, and the Grammy-nominated singer’s voice here carries the whole arrangement without leaning on production to fill space. “One stop short of paradise” is what she calls the Westside, and the honesty of that phrase sticks. Home offers familiarity enough to breathe, not perfection. “It’s worth the trip, yeah, it might take some time/But the light is green now, take it as your sign.” Isley sings those lines with the calm of someone who made the drive years ago and is circling back to collect whoever got left behind. — Jill Wannasa
Leven Kali, “Starlet”
“What you think ‘bout love?/What you think ‘bout lust?” Leven Kali asks both questions flat, no buildup, over a chant-like “ay-ya-ya” pattern that gives the song a pulse before any instrument commits to a groove. Four-time Grammy-nominated for his contributions to Beyoncé’s Renaissance and Cowboy Carter, the Dutch-born, Los Angeles-raised singer and multi-instrumentalist co-wrote “Bodyguard” from the latter. Those credentials make LK99, his Def Jam debut album feel overdue. He’s been building toward a solo statement since the Low Tide and HIGHTIDE mixtapes, working with Syd, Smino, and Topaz Jones along the way, collecting co-signs from Quincy Jones and George Clinton. “Starlet” burns through its subject in under three minutes. After all the heat, what Kali wants is symmetry. To be perceived as clearly as he perceives. That need has nothing to do with lust and everything to do with recognition, which he’s spent years earning from other people’s projects while his own sat waiting. — Kendra Vale
Casper Sage, “i’m dying to feel alive again”
Oklahoma-born and Nashville-based, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Casper Sage has been releasing EPs through Warner Records since his 2022 self-titled debut, and “i’m dying to feel alive again,” the lead single from his forthcoming PATINA EP due in April, marks the first time his writing has sounded less like processing and more like pleading. Sage wrote about emotional isolation on his SAGEhaven EP, which circled the same loneliness, the tug between wanting people close and suspecting solitude is safer. This time, the details tighten. “Went searching for relief and found regret” lands without any cushion. He pins the exact image that won’t leave. “Of you cheesing when you knew you found connection.” That grin, mid-realization, is what he can’t shake and can’t replicate. “How come I won’t let nobody be there for me?” he asks twice, and follows each time with “How come I feel lighter when you’re leaning on me?” Two questions that answer each other without him having to say so. Sage, who penned a Black History Month essay for Atwood Magazine about carving space as a Black artist in Nashville’s country-coded music scene, carries that same stubbornness into his lyrics. Complicated feelings don’t get flattened here. — Tai Lawson
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums Released This Week to Check Out
No, we’re not adding that Poodoo album.
James Blake: Trying Times
Eric Roberson: Beautifully All Over the Place (Streaming Release)
Leven Kali: LK99
Olive Jones: For Mary
Self Proclaimed Narcissist: Self Proclaimed Narcissist
Larrenwong: Love Games
MF Robots: III (Part One)
Lo Steele, Charlie Hunter & Marcus Finnie: Only a Drop
Kärma: The Deep End (EP)
Miranda Rae: Soul Food (EP)
sky: songs we used to hate! (EP)
Ebubé: A Mile In My Mind (EP)
Charlotte Colace: No Way But Through (EP)
Jiire Smith: Diamond in a Process (EP)
Marlon Funaki: Half Moon (EP)
Other R&B Songs to Check Out
Jordan Adetunji: Who Is It
Jacquees: Physical (feat. Tink)
Thee Marloes: Under the Silver Mon
Noxz & Sipprell: Dreaming Wide Awake
Nemchel: Makeup Room
Mrcl & The Pocket Queen: Who Knew?
Olivia Escuyos: Need Your Love (feat. Lowkey)
Isaiah Kaleo & Vesta: touch me, tease me
Neya: All for Me
Josiah Bassey: The Dress
Parlor Greens: Emeralds
Dua Saleh: I Do, I Do
Keoni Usi: zye
Olympia Vitalis: Daze
LoSmoothe: Fool for Love
Whyz: Try (feat. Xiamara Jennings)
thatboykwame: SPECIAL WAY (feat. Stevan)
Conner Reeves & Joss Stone: SLOW LIGHTNING
Lekan: Safety
Cholita: No Second Chance
Huakeem: you don’t care
praise.: spicy rigatoni. (feat. Lizzy Cameron)
CUBE: Mr. Right
Angela Renee: Run To (feat. Jadakiss & Resa)
Owen Saward: Don’t Let Me Down
Kuzi Cee: Rain
Luh Kel: I Want You
JRDN: Can’t Go On
Aaron Childs: Getchu Down
Juls: You Know I’m Down (feat. Tyler Daley)
Lily Massie: Cycles (feat. Byron Juane)
Shaggy: Looking Lovely (feat. Robin Thicke)
Buddy: House Jam (feat. Faucet)
Arkose: Don’t Matter / Girl Let’s Groove
Jacob Banks: Claim to Fame
Maverick Sabre: 8 Stages
Amadi Blue: Lotus
Tom Misch: Days of Us (feat. Kaidi Akinnibi)
MarcLo: ONS
GAWD: Lie to Me
Aaron Taylor: Changing Weather
Keenan TreVon: 3 Days
Brayla: Control (feat. Paul Grant)
Kayam: Crashing Out
Cocoa Sarai: Chakra
Gen Bello: So Fine
Qui: H.O.M.B.
chromonucci: FAVORITE. (feat. SAFA)
Nic Dean: Lights Low
Dee Gatti: Seasons
Baby J: The Fix
REMI: Your Loss
4Fargo: Relieve You (feat. Jastin Martin)
ARDN: High Demand
BRI.: Mr. Say So
Iris Aeria: Throw It Away
ALANN: NVR KNW
Matté: 24:9
Chelan: ALONE IN ALL THIS MESS
cinquemani: Something Runs Through Me
Anna Moore: Soft Sunset