Nobody’s Coming to Save Us, So Dance Anyway
A four-time Grammy nominee gets political, a Hackney busker stalls at the edge of love, and three women sing themselves out of bad situationships.
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 definitely turning into an R&B showcase—a bit of a soul protest record for grown folk, a busking-bench intimacy, and two about the sort of love you just know you need to break free from, while still going back for more. Get into it.
Eric Benét, “Who’s Gonna Save Us?”
After ten minutes trawling Eric Benét’s social feeds, it becomes clear this four-time Grammy nominee with two recent No. 1 Adult R&B songs believes the only way to get ahead is to tell the people running the country what you really think of them. The posts are scathing. The food supply, the Epstein files, who the country gets to send to war and who doesn’t. “Who’s Gonna Save Us?”, produced by Camper and released by Benét’s own JBR Creative Group, translates that rage into a brand of slow-burning soul he’s been crafting since the late-90s, a kind of soul that’s as direct and church-bound as possible. He delivers the title question as one he’s already answered for himself.
The verses are where Benét really unnerves, in a satisfying way. “The people suffer from disease/You know it’s from the food they eat,” he begins, then lands a couplet the whole track rests on, “They found a cure for cancer/But that ain’t no good/Cause business won’t do well without sickness in the hood.” It’s a conspiracy theory that, delivered in the mellowest baritone in modern soul, makes you want to crawl under the covers. This isn’t a shouting match; this is a lullaby being sung toward your dread, as he explains it as gently as he can. The second verse focuses on recruiters: “The ones that sent them, they would never send their own.” The track turns again, mid-way through, into a near Curtis Mayfield call-and-response, the familiar call to arms of “people get ready” bubbling up through the chorus like a half-forgotten hymn. Benét’s answer is anything but warm. No one’s coming. “If we don’t, you know.” —Phil
Mai Anna, “Baby Blue”
There’s a specific genre of songs that psych you into being brave before you have decided that you’re brave, and I’ve had this one stuck in my head (since she teased it with a Tiny Desk submission years ago) trying to figure out exactly how it does it. Mai Anna and co-producer Solomon Fox create “Baby Blue” from a pile of clichés about seizing the day that should completely collapse under their own corniness and somehow do not. “You only live one time/You only live once so/Imma take my chances,” she says, and stacking the lines, “Not once but twice and three times,” somehow turns a Valentine’s Day slogan into a declaration of faith to herself.
Then she stops bluffing in the chorus: “Wake/Wake up and feel the love/Put on your favorite shoes/And dance all around your room,” she commands, and the direction to waltz alone in your bedroom is such a small and unglamorous thing that it somehow feels like the only true statement here. But I’m stuck on the next image: “Im in the rain in my church clothes/Got to breathe with my eyes closed/So wherever I go/I know I’ll be home.” This picture of a grown person standing in the rain in their church clothes and trying their best to get it together with their cap off, who then declares that home is a state of mind rather than a physical location. The title seems like a reference to the ache-baby blue is a fresh bruise-but Mai Anna sings like she’s already been over the hump and she’s just looking for company on the other side. —Mina Abdel
Lala, “Do Better”
Is there a theme in R&B that lasts longer than the lover you shouldn’t get back with, and Lala’s “Do Better,” produced by good.will, does nothing if not luxuriate in just how great it feels to make the bad choice. “My friends told me to do better/I should’ve known but you’re clever,” she starts, and she’s already lost the argument she’s pretending to have in that second line alone. The story of the whole train wreck can be told in just five words: “Not trusting/Just friends to/Good lovin’/To just fuckin’.” No lead-up, no apologies, just the simple, inevitable slide from one to the other, like naming the stages would stop her from having to go through them.
What’s truly appealing about this is how she’s not at all ashamed about being the instigator. “Have to admit, I like when you chase me,” she says, leaning into the part of herself that craves the danger. She collapses in the very act of talking about her commitment to the break up, “When you got me alone, I fold and I fold into your arms,” the double-fold says all a verse about self-control would. And the chorus is absolutely unconcerned with the glaringly obvious hypocrisy (“We can break up-up to make up-up/And then wake up and do it again”), before she seals it with the least innocent booty call-line of the year: “Let’s keep it simple/You got my location.” She knows this is a mistake. She’s telling you where to find her anyway. —Jamila W.
Debbie, “Weight On Me”
Two weeks ago, when south Londoner Debbie gave us “Weight On Me” on COLORS, in that stripped-down, pastel room in which any slight vocal vulnerability has nowhere to hide, she sang like the breakup had just happened that very morning. The song is the pure, unadorned physics of being rejected, “Look how you left me/Bags on the floor/I don’t sleep anymore/Living on empty,” she wails over Luis Navidad’s arrangement, each sentence heavier than the last, the title landing less like metaphor and more like flat fatigue.
What elevates this above the ten thousand other heartbreak tracks in the space is how honestly she copping to needing him back- “Push you away, need you again/Wearing your t-shirt,” and that detail is everything to the song: the object that grief holds onto, the souvenir of this thing at its worst. She takes one good swing at the most obvious piece of advice you get when you’re distraught: “They say time is a healer/It’s not healing me now, with my head to the ground/I go deeper and deeper,” she sing-screams, and frankly, not since Jorja Smith’s early singles have we heard a new UK voice make this much with so little. —Ameenah Laquita
Mychelle, “Sunday Afternoon”
Before a label took notice, Mychelle had been singing on the streets of London for four years, practicing a trick that all the good ones have figured out—how to be utterly vulnerable and yet seemingly pay it no mind. “Sunday Afternoon,” her new single out now on FAMM, is a song about realizing when you want something the trick fails completely. In her own words, the Stoke Newington singer, early in the track, bluntly lists her limitations: “Vulnerability doesn’t come easily to me/I can’t lie I’m scared/All my friends keep telling me/I really need to put myself out there.” It’s the oldest of the love song tropes, and she delivers it with the tone of a confession she’d rather not be performing on her record.
But what saves the track from being anything like an inspirational meme is that she names precisely the thing that frightens her. The reality she longs for, that she continues to outline here, is not spectacular. It is “to dance with someone on Sunday Afternoon,” it is “to tell someone how my day went so they can tell me how their day went too,” it’s mundanely domestic, and in that way is therefore more dangerous to risk than something extraordinary. Her self-awareness about her dodges, too, is clear. The people she holds close are “just a placeholder until it’s all worth it,” and she’s aware enough to understand that that’s really how she makes sure she’s not worth it to anyone. The core small heartbreak of this song comes at its end, with her retracting what she just put out: “Right now I don’t think I’m ready/Right now I know I’m not ready.” A busker learns to keep a crowd at arm’s length and calls it performance. Mychelle finds herself doing the same to the one person she may have truly wanted. —Imani Raven
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
Blxst: Labor of Love
Jessie Reyez: A Little Vengeance
Eloise: My Man & Me
Melvin Riley: No AI
KELS: Dirty Blues Princess (EP)
Good Girl: Sugar Honey (EP)
Luh Kel: Love Me, Love Me Not (EP)
Claire Brooks: Book of the Cure (EP)
Rebel Rae: Free the Girls (EP)
Carla Prata: It All Leads Back South (EP)
Elujay: A Constant Charade (Deluxe)
2BYG: The Yearbook: Second Semester
Other Songs to Check Out
The-Dream: Tampa (feat. Usher)
Jacquees: Lick Back (feat. Juvenile)
JHart: Memories
Asha Banks: Come Down
4Fargo: Posted Alone (Remix) [feat. Ty Dolla $ign & Honey Bxby]
Cheyanne: Angels
Kaylee Ameri: Better Than Digital $ex
Orrin: Pretend
Dylan Chambers: I’m Already There
Gnoir: Safety 1st
Ama Louise: Love or War
Khal!l: MY FEET
Sonny Tennet: Innocence
Indigo Mak: Truck Driver
Pere Navarro: You Know (feat. Braxton Cook)
Quinn Oulton: Circles
Kalisway: Not So Sweet
Cherrelle: This Time
pastels: Pastels World
Ryan Trey: Need You (feat. Lecrae)
Zacari: Real Life
H3rizon: Future Self
Ambré: Go to Hell
Yellow Shoots: WALL STREET
PJ: To the Ones
H3adband: Move Your Body
MYST: Dynamite
Justelle: Keep It from You
Noah Guy: GREEN VOWS (A COLORS Show)
Parisalexa: Wrong Generation
Nick Hakim: I Can See
Vandell Andrew, Jah Born & Jordache Grant: Tasty
Kendra Morris: If I Called You (Acoustic Version)
Roy Woods: Trust and Believe
Yazmin Lacey: Sweetest Season
Davion Farris: Frontin’
Ash Minor: Okay With Me
Ryael: Changes
Biirthplace: LOST FAiTH
Dave Hollister: Voodoo Magic
Gemaine: Less of You
DAMEDAME*: FIRE BURNIN’ THRU THE RAIN
Oranj Goodman: Drama
Jabriel: Wanna Be In Your Skin
LARIICA & Isaiah Kaleo: kiss in public
Flyy Armani & JULY: ti ti ti.
Pino & ZaeFyeHunnit: Move
Nanette: Ask for Nun (Freestyle)
ZURI: Satisfied
Ria Sean: You Want It
SICKOFTHEINTERNET: H.I.M
Reign Judge: Wouldn’t You Like to Know
Andye: Centerfold