Grown-Folk Flirtation and Juke-Joint Confessionals
Brown and Thomas trade heartbreak, Wrice hovers above the beat, Chxrry’s breakup anthem, Mýa calls Too $hort at two in the morning, and The-Dream steals somebody’s girl.
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. Some weeks, the list assembles itself around a theme. This week, it did that without our help.
This week’s five R&B songs range from the confessional to the confrontational. Chris Brown drops to his knees over a blues-soaked groove with Leon Thomas, Joyce Wrice surrenders to something she doesn’t fully trust, and Chxrry and Mariah the Scientist trade venom and war paint over Believve’s tinted-window production. Mýa links with Too $hort for a synth-heavy late-night flirtation ahead of her first album in eight years, and The-Dream—freshly anointed one of America’s greatest living songwriters—returns to the thing he’s always done best: steal somebody’s girl and laugh about it.
Chris Brown, “Fallin’” feat. Leon Thomas
Tank’s background vocals land first, low and churchy, humming underneath as though an organ got left droning in a church basement. The bassline follows, a thick pulse that Antonio Moses and Roccstar built around what amounts to a late-night confession booth, and Brown leans all the way in. His 12th album, BROWN, drops this Friday, and “Fallin’” is the final single before it arrives, but the song feels unencumbered, already loose. The music video steals, oops, borrows its warm-toned cinematography and suited-up aesthetic from Sinners. Brown occupies that second category here with zero irony. He pleads on his knees, and I mean he is begging: “Tryna plant my feet on the floor/Can’t believe how I’m fallin’.” His melisma curls around the chorus as though he’s gripping a doorframe, trying not to slide further.
Leon Thomas takes the verse that shifts the song from a plea into something heavier. Brown is spiraling; Thomas walks through the wreckage with his eyes open. A gorgeous double meaning is buried in “Fell in love when you land here/Didn’t even know you had wings”: she arrived as grace, and she also might fly away. He goes to “I loved you until the casket/I just wish we could get past it/Burnin’ bridges ‘til our paths meet again,” and those three lines reshape the entire song. Brown can’t find his footing. Thomas already sees where the freefall ends and has accepted it. With writing partner Clifton Haralson, they’ve put together the kind of blues-soaked R&B duet that used to anchor whole eras of radio, a song about two men fluent in loss who still show up to the session to sing about it. It’s a step in the right direction, but let’s not get carried away. Will that be enough for a 27-track upcoming bloated album?
Joyce Wrice, “Crack the Code”
Four years after Overgrown and its KAYTRANADA-blessed standout “Iced Tea” put her name in rotation, and a handful of guest features later (Jordan Ward, Mahalia, Jaz Karis), Joyce Wrice hasn’t rushed toward a sophomore album. Since dropping singles through her own imprint via BMG, “Break Me In” in January ran hotter, Amerie-era percussion and a frank demand for physical release: “I need you to break me in/Don’t make me wait.” On “Crack the Code,” produced again by Malik Ninety Five, the heat has lowered to a simmer. Wrice described the song as written from the perspective of her own guarded instincts meeting the one who makes guarding yourself nearly impossible, “exciting, but there’s tension underneath it all.” That tug lives in the phrasing. “The way ya killing me softly, so gently/Oh, it got me weak, I don’t understand” sounds a little spooked by how good surrender actually is. Wrice hovers just above the beat, and the pull between wanting to fold and wanting to bolt is the whole engine.
Chxrry, “Bottles & Lights” feat. Mariah the Scientist
A Nextel chirp opens the track, a direct line, no middleman, and Believve’s production glides in behind it with tinted-window patience. Chxrry became the first woman XO Records ever signed. Her debut album U, Me & My Ego arrives later this spring, and “Bottles & Lights” is the single that clarifies what kind of record she wants to make: one where getting your heart smashed and going out with your girls aren’t separate moods but the same night. She opens venomously:
“You was eating me for dinner back in the Maldives
Thought I was the one when you had me down on my knees
Met my family in December, thought I would get a ring
Whole time you was fuckin’ these bitches in Sandy Springs.”
Mariah the Scientist picks up the thread from the other side of that same betrayal, her tone running at a lower temperature than Chxrry’s, bruised and slow-burning where Chxrry was sharp. “Said I want a winner, but not the kind that would cheat/Not the kind bringing bitches back up to the Four Seasons.” She names the hotel, the behavior, the type, and flips the gaze outward: “If y’all got so much to say then why y’all ain’t been stop me?” It’s a dare aimed at gossip commenters and concerned DMs alike. Between them, Chxrry and Mariah built a song that moves from wound to war paint in three minutes, and the recurring mantra, “real bitches back in style,” stings more for how unbothered they both sound delivering it. They already got dressed and left.
Mýa, “Just a Little Bit” feat. Too $hort
The intro plays out as a 2 a.m. phone call that both parties hoped for. Mýa picks up: “It’s 2am, now you wanna call somebody back?” Too $hort, casual as a Cadillac idle: “I ain’t never too busy for you.” Grown-folk flirtation with no pretense of coyness and zero interest in playing it cool. Mýa hasn’t put out a studio album in eight years; Retrospect, her tenth, lands May 15 on Planet 9, the independent label she founded long before artist ownership became an industry talking point. She toured with Brandy and Monica last year on The Boy Is Mine Tour, celebrated Fear of Flying’s 25th anniversary with a vinyl reissue and a BET Awards performance of “Case of the Ex” that went viral, and was named by Billboard one of the Top Female Artists of the 21st Century.
LaMar Edwards’s production on “Just a Little Bit” is rooted in the late-’80s Minneapolis funk that anchors the album, synths pulsing with that Rick James-adjacent heat that Mýa has called “a bridge between the past and the future.” The drums stay crisp and the bass runs warm enough to sit in your ribs. She hits the pre-chorus (“Heartbreakers break hearts/Love makers make life/But you’ll never feel real love, unless you’re willin’ to try”) and sings it the way you deliver advice you figured out decades ago and haven’t had to revisit. Too $hort’s verse is a full-tilt cameo; he’s in the Cadillac with vogues and wires, top down, talking about “Put this thang on your mind/Make you drop it to the floor.” Classic $hort Dog. Mýa has always had a gift for making features sound as if they wandered into her living room and decided to stay, and by the bridge she’s hosting a party for two: “We can get this started/Baby we can have our own party.” She’s not asking.
The-Dream, “Bring That Body”
Four words into the lead single from LoveHate 2, The-Dream reopens a book he first cracked in 2007: “Previously on Love/Hate.” His debut album landed in 2007, when ringtone rap and watered-down R&B hybrids dominated the radio, and he and Tricky Stewart answered by writing hits that bent pop into alien shapes: Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body.” As a solo artist, The-Dream always kept the stranger, dirtier versions of those ideas for himself (we know), and Love/Hate was the proof, an album about desire that never cleaned up after itself. Nineteen years later, LoveHate 2 marks his first commercial release through a major label since 2013’s IV Play, arriving via his Dreamboy Records partnership with Republic. The New York Times just named him one of the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters, a designation that was earned largely through other people’s hit records. He could come back sober and reflective. He chooses to come back macking.
Stewart co-produced both “Bring That Body” and its spiritual ancestor “I Luv Your Girl,” and the blueprint hasn’t budged: locate the girl whose man ain’t shit and pitch an alternative with zero subtlety. “Heard he didn’t love you/Tell me where to kiss it, tell me how to fix it/Call it hatin’, but he ain’t shit” has The-Dream at full cheerful ruthlessness, delivering a home-wrecking bid dressed in falsetto silk. In the second verse, he drops the pretense: “I ain’t judgin’/I’m just a messenger here to undress you/Maybe I shouldn’t address you like that.” That last line, the flicker of self-awareness that he immediately ignores, is funnier than any written punchline. The bridge goes fully unhinged:
She belong to you, my nigga, we gon’ see
We’re just friends/But I got keys
Let myself in, then I’m on ski’s
Like, “‘Wee.’”
I haven’t heard a grown man giggle through an infidelity metaphor with this much joy since the original Love/Hate. “I want to make a record about where love is now,” he told the press. “Relationships became cheapened. People used to fight for their love.” He went and made a song about stealing somebody’s girl and laughing about it on the way out.
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
Durand Bernarr: BERNARR.
Jarrod Lawson: Just Let It
Taj Mahal & Phantom Blues Band: Time
Oteil Burbridge & Lamar Williams Jr.: The Offering
The Nth Power: Never Alone
duendita: existential thottie
Traetwothree & OG Parker: Sorry, I’m Not Sorry
Mellissa: Diamond Baby (EP)
India Shawn: Subject to Change (EP)
Jahson Paynter: is anybody home! (EP)
Tiara Thomas: Make It Make Sense (EP)
Essosa: Crush! (EP)
Canti: Citrus (EP)
Maya Law & Freya Ray: Tall Tales (EP)
Kehlani: Kehlani (Uncut Edition)
Other Songs to Check Out
Alina Baraz: Take Care of You
Jon Onabowu: The Emergence
Bryson Tiller: IT’S OK
Chenayder: Wonder
Calvin Richardson: Radio Rodeo
Mack Keane: Cherry Red (A COLORS Show)
Charlie Bereal: When You’re Around
Rio Sterling: Die On Me
Lucy Park: BLUE SASHIKO
Dayo Bello: Stand Still
Bobby V: Both Ways
Cory Henry & Rafael Labate: Dance (Remix)
Lex Aura: Gravity
KAYAM: Deja Vu
Kid Travis: Diamonds On Your Neck
Moio: Just a Man
Odessa A’zion: Maybe I’m Not What You Need
GAWD: GTA
Ama: So…
Kelsey Lu: Better Than That
Talia Goddess: WE COME AGAIN
Shann Aberdeen: State of Flow
ARYIEL: No More
Jeff Bernat: Whatever Goes
Pan Tèrra: Quit My Job
Zenesoul: Heart on Fire
MAKALM: Choose
Sarah Defne Gray: That Girl.
Saint Demarcus: Lifeline
Echo Huang: YOUR GIRL
MOIO: Just a Man
Tyree Thomas: Safe Place
Aiyana-Lee: Pretty Picture
Claire Brooks: LIKE LOVERS DO
James Berkeley: back again
Maz B: Running Out
Isaiah Kaleo & ROME: lead me on
Tama Gucci: My Body Is Your Wonderland
Jaz Elise: Move Mountain
Anna Margo: Brainrot
Kavi Synatra: Calling for You
BJ Swayed: Downtown
Ariel J.: Forever
Tyler Watts: Number One (#1)
Mike Teezy & Kierra Sheard: TIME4U
Jessica Tori: Curious
Pan Tèrra: Quit My Job
ace hashimoto & kenya fujita: TOP NOTCH (Japanese Version)
Jessie Reyez & Muni Long: AIN’T U TIRED
The-Dream: Bring That Body
Felix Ames: Crack a Smile
Jamal Roberts: Perfect for Me
James Savage: Higher Power
Phoenix James: Company
CTLN: Headspace
Anjali Asha & Khrysis: Big Deal
Patrick Paige II: Let Me Down Easy
Roberta Flack: I’d Like to Be Baby to You (Live at Montreux, 1990)
Zae France: Said Summ (feat. K Camp)
Roderick Porter: Roll the Dice
Elmiene: Honour (feat. Baby Rose)
Junetober: Like You Need It
FIG: Day One
S!MONE: The Worst Part
H33RA: SHOOK