Grandma’s Yams With the Marshmallows on Top
Jill Scott came back with instructions. Plus: Ella Mai does math, Elmiene stays inside, Destin Conrad figured out his ex wasn't real, and Tiana Major9 opens her new track with a refusal.
Welcome to the weekly Soulpolitan feature, where we highlight a handful of new tracks catching our attention, along with others you should check out. This week's songs are full of people doing calculations. Jill Scott lists exactly what she wants and how she wants it. Ella Mai turned partnership into fractions, Elmiene counts fourteen days alone and asks if it's healthy, Destin Conrad inventories everything that was stolen—the smile, the frames, the Rolex that wasn’t bought, and Tiana Major9 clocks someone’s energy before the first word gets said. Everyone's keeping receipts.
Jill Scott: “Don’t Play”
You want to tell someone they’re bad in bed, but you’re Jill Scott, so you have to make it sound like a song your auntie would play at the cookout. “Baby don’t play with it,” she warns, standing alone on the COLORS set in all black, hair look good, looking directly into the camera like she’s about to have a conversation you’re not ready for. No jackhammer thrusting. No closed eyes. She wants Afrobeats rhythms. She wants you to “please me hard, so hard like a K-Dot lyric, then sweet like my grandma’s yams with the marshmallows on top, pineapples and candied pecans.” That bar broke the internet for a weekend. People wanted the yam recipe. People started calculating whether a Kendrick collab could happen since Ab-Soul’s on her new album and Kendrick sampled “A Long Walk” back when he was still getting discovered. But the yams are doing something specific because she won’t say “touch me” and leave it there. She wants the texture, the sweetness after the heat, the whole holiday spread. She’s 52, her album is releasing on Valentine’s Day weekend, and came back with instructions. — Kendra Vale
Ella Mai: “100”
While sampling Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mustard sits across the blackjack table dealing cards. Ella Mai’s in sunglasses and fur, and her partner’s in on it—they’ve already rigged the game. When we get to the end of the video, they’ve cleaned house. That’s the whole song in thirty seconds of visual. There’s two people running a scheme together, walking out with more than they came in with. “Love ain’t never fifty/fifty, it’s whatever I got in me.” Then she starts doing math. Twenty for my eighty. Forty for your sixty. Different combinations, same sum. She recorded the album pregnant, finished it postpartum, told Capital XTRA she’s never been more sure of what she wants to say. The certainty shows up in the arithmetic; she’s stating facts. You short me, I cover. I short you, you cover. We leave with a hundred either way. — Jamila W.
Elmiene: “Reclusive”
At long last, we get an official debut album in two months. But the latest music video puts Elmiene in an elevator that won’t stop filling up. People shake his hand. People make small talk. He stands in the center looking like he wants to dissolve through the floor, and the camera stays on his face long enough that you start feeling the walls close in too. He wrote it after getting severely sick in December 2024, trying to see if the most boring moment of his life could carry a song. Fourteen days alone. Video games. Stepping on wet leaves outside and wondering why it’s always raining. “I ain’t even gonna lie, not a social butterfly, I keep to myself.” The chorus keeps cutting off mid-word—“I get so reclu—”—like he can’t finish the diagnosis or doesn’t want to. Biz Markie was the model by taking something ordinary, make it funny and honest and impossible to forget. Elmiene’s version is a guy in an elevator who can’t get out. — Keziah Amara Reid
Destin Conrad & Terrace Martin: “Nothing Is Real”
You date someone, watch them smile, notice their style, their vintage frames, and the Rollie on their wrist. Then you find out the frames were stolen and the watch was claimed, not bought, and the smile was practice. “I thought that you were special,” Conrad sings, “but like you, there’s plenty more. You’re sold a dream and overcharged, I should’ve never paid.” Terrace Martin’s saxophone wanders through the track like someone pacing a room at 2 a.m., and Vanisha Gould’s harmonies fill the spaces Conrad leaves empty. His jazz album (wHIMSY) hit number one on Apple Music’s Jazz Chart last year; this is the first taste of the deluxe, and it sounds like a man who’s stopped being angry and started being tired. “Don’t know if you’re living in a dream or waking up,” he repeats, because he genuinely doesn’t know anymore. Atlantis. Optical illusion. The spark that was never there. — Murffey Zavier
Tiana Major9: “Energy!” feat. Keyon Harrold
Tiana wrote this record in Kingston at J.L.L’s studio during what she calls a transitional time in her life. The lyrics fell into her lap, she says. PRGRSHN added production. Keyon Harrold sent trumpet lines from wherever Keyon Harrold sends trumpet lines from—the man ghosted Miles Davis’s horn in Miles Ahead and has session credits across a decade of everything. The song opens with a refusal: “Don’t ask me why my eyes are closed, just build a spliff, no micro-dose.” Someone’s stopping by. It’s always a vibe when they stop by. She likes how they talk to her, and feeling a little heated. Harrold’s trumpet stays at the edges, never pushing forward, because this isn’t his moment. It’s the moment before the moment. “I’m a frequent freak,” she admits in the outro, “and now you’re giving me them eyes.” — Tai Lawson
Other R&B Songs to Check Out
Al Green: Perfect Day (feat. RAYE)
Karyn White: You’re Gonna Want Me Back
GENA: Lead It Up
Saint Harison: Bad
Charlotte Day Wilson & Saya Gray: Lean
Ego Ella May: What You Waiting For
Shaé Universe: Journey to the Sun (feat. Ariel J.)
Nija: In Between (feat. Jordan Adetunji)
James Bambu & Durand Bernarr: Antidote
Gabby Simone: Complicated
Hollyn: Aren’t We All (feat. Foggieraw)
Khalil: Lost in My Bed
Junetober: Call Me Baby
Ariel: Ta Da!
Secily: Let Me Go
Noah Guy: Again
S. Fidelity & Dawn Richard: Play
Emmy Meli: Other Things
GoGo Morrow: Hard to Love
Ray Lozano: i still/two cups
Ebubé: Mr. Postman
The precision in these write-ups is wild. The way the Jill Scott analysis unpacks exactly what shes doing with specificity (Afrobeat rhythms, the yam metaphor) versus just vague praise makes each entry feel like actual critical engagement. Ella Mai's fifty/fifty arithmetic breakdown is smart framing, turns what could be a simple love song into game theory. Ive always felt R&B roundups either go too technical or toonostalgic, but this thread walks that line where each track gets its own logic explained without forcing them into a unified narrative.