R&B Songs Where Everybody’s Losing the Argument This Week
New R&B songs where Bruno Mars surrenders, Liv.e runs a background check, Elmiene confesses, Saint Harison restrains, and GoGo Morrow hangs up.
Welcome to the weekly Soulpolitan feature, in which we pick five new R&B records and write about what’s keeping us up at night. The Romantic arrived this week after the longest gap between Bruno Mars solo albums, and the man came back contrite. “Why You Wanna Fight?” finds him trying to redirect an argument into an evening he’d rather be having, and the desperation sounds real enough to make you wonder who he’s actually talking to. The other major drop this week belongs to GENA, the new collaboration between Dallas singer-rapper Liv.e and Detroit drummer-producer Karriem Riggins, whose The Pleasure Is Yours runs sixteen tracks that rarely slow down long enough to get comfortable. “Douwannabwitastar!?” is Liv.e in evaluation mode, flipping a flirty question into a screening process nobody asked to be part of. Elmiene, a British-Sudanese artist headed toward his first album on Def Jam, got another one with “Honour,” a song about asking your partner to believe in you before you’ve figured out how to believe in yourself. Saint Harison’s “Glass Houses” turns the familiar proverb into a breakup song about self-control, and GoGo Morrow’s “La La Lies” shuts down a man’s sales pitch before he finishes making it. Every song here involves someone deciding what they’re willing to put up with. Nobody’s answer is the same.
Bruno Mars, “Why You Wanna Fight?”
Ten years between solo albums is a long silence for someone who never stopped touring or guesting, and The Romantic, which landed this week, sounds like Bruno Mars spent every one of those years rehearsing an apology. He co-produced “Why You Wanna Fight?” with D’Mile, and the two keep the arrangement lean enough that Mars’s voice has to carry the entire weight. He admits he was wrong within the first verse, then spends the rest of the song trying to convert his apology into a physical invitation. “Wouldn’t you rather make love tonight?” could scan as deflection, a man trying to shortcut the hard talk by steering toward the bedroom. But Mars sells the second verse’s promise to call her mother and plead with all her friends as genuine panic, not strategy. He’s offering to humiliate himself in front of her people because staying mad at each other costs more than his pride. By the bridge, when he’s down to just two words, the begging has been stripped of its choreography. Whether that lands as romantic or suffocating probably depends on who you’ve been in the argument. — Imani Raven
GENA, “Douwannabwitastar!?”
A Detroit drummer who toured with the Ray Brown Trio and produced for Common and Erykah Badu teaming up with a Dallas singer-rapper whose solo records refuse to sit still sounds like a recipe for something careful and studied. Karriem Riggins and Liv.e, recording together as GENA, scrapped that instinct entirely. Their debut album The Pleasure Is Yours, released this week on Lex Records, moves in short bursts, most of its sixteen songs wrapping up before you’ve caught your breath. “Douwannabwitastar!?” fits that pace but packs more teeth than its bratty title suggests. Liv.e rattles off conditions for entry. She refuses the bumper-sticker girlfriend role, won’t play superwoman, and couldn’t care less about a man’s money if his fingers are useless and his pitch is hollow. Riggins backs her with horn lines that push the tempo forward without ever settling into a comfortable groove, keeping everything slightly off-balance. The question in the title sounds playful, but Liv.e is running a credit check. She’s asking if a man can match her speed, her schedule, her standards, and she already suspects the answer is no. — Jamila W.
Elmiene, “Honour”
Most songs about wanting respect from a partner begin from a position of earned confidence, someone who got mistreated and now demands better. “Honour,” a an incredible outing from British-Sudanese singer Elmiene’s upcoming debut album sounds for someone (out March 27 on Def Jam), enters from the opposite end. He spent 2025 collecting co-signs from Questlove and Missy Elliott, a BRIT Award nomination, and a BET Awards performance, all before turning in the record. “I’ve always been the one to doubt myself/Convinced I don’t deserve a ‘someone else’” kicks off the song with an admission that he walked into this relationship already expecting to fail. The plea for honour reads differently when the person asking doesn’t believe he deserves it yet. He wants her to keep believing in him while he figures out how to believe in himself, and he’s honest enough to admit that love makes him fold first in every disagreement. He could have tucked a bravado verse in there to recover some ground, the way most male R&B singers would. He just keeps asking. — Kendra Vale
Saint Harison, “Glass Houses”
Everybody knows the proverb, but Saint Harison, a Southampton singer whose viral COLORS session put him on American radar in 2023, uses it here to talk himself down from revenge. “Glass Houses” is the lead single from his May EP ghosted, produced by Akeel Henry, D’Mile, and Daoud. He lied about a breakup, told people they just grew apart when the truth was uglier, and now he’s caught between wanting to expose his ex and knowing the retaliation would shatter his own walls. He sings, “Blood on my fingers/On all of my bracelets and rings/My only reminder/Why me and you ain’t nothing more than friends.” You’d notice that every time you washed your hands. Harison grew up in a difficult household in Southampton and started writing during stays at a women’s centre with his mother. A person who lived through that knows what retaliation actually costs. He could match his ex’s damage, and he spells out that temptation across the bridge, listing the retaliatory moves he’s choosing not to make. He puts the stone down. — Jill Wannasa
GoGo Morrow, “La La Lies”
For years, GoGo Morrow stood a few feet behind Lady Gaga and sang harmonies for arenas full of people who didn’t know her name. She performed alongside Kanye West, too. Her new EP SET, executive produced by Grammy winner Harmony Samuels, is the first project where she’s the only voice that matters, and “La La Lies” makes the strongest case for why that took too long. Morrow, a Philadelphia native who came up at the city’s Creative and Performing Arts High School, sings every bar from a place of total certainty about the man wasting her time. She clocked him from the start, she tells us, and his big talk about big stacks converts to “blah la la” the second she checks his receipts against his promises.
“You ain’t talking bout my heart
You ain’t talking bout a ring
You ain’t nuttin but a thing to me.”
She’s tired of his lies, found the total unacceptable, and issued the invoice. “Run them pockets” stops being a figure of speech when she means it literally. — Tai Lawson
R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out
Bruno Mars: The Romantic
GENA: The Pleasure Is Yours
Michelle David & The True-Tones: Soul Woman
Lindsey Webster: Music In Me
Vahn Black: I Am a Woman Again
BRTHWRK: 1.blurry (EP)
GoGo Morrow: SET (EP)
Luck: It Wasn’t Luck: The R&B Files (EP)
olayinka ehi: Thank You for Listening (EP)
Myshaan: My Love (EP)
Lex Aura: No More Lies. (EP)
Braye: Love Stray (EP)
STUTS & Julia Wu: With U (EP)
Other R&B Songs to Check Out
Gnarls Barkley: Pictures
Naomi Sharon: Miss That
Genia: Downfall
Baves O: September Rush (feat. M.anifest)
Alexia Jayy: (You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman
Chelsea Jordan: Picky Choosy
Lee Vasi: Worthy
TheARTI$t: Shut It Down
Mýa & 21 Savage: ASAP (Remix)
Larrenwong: Worth Your Time
Skye Newman: Walk
Karen Bernod: Believe
KYANTII: Riddles
Moliy & bees & honey: PARTYGYAL
OVI WOOD: Need to Know
Amaeya: Let Me Remind You
Devon Gilfillian: Hold On (Hourglass)
Kid Travis: Hang Up My Jersey
spaceluvrrr: HAND$
Blossom, Queen Millz & Shapes: Decline
cortex: Days Are Over
Nic Dean: Between Us
Jerome Thomas, Makzo & Lucid Green: Absence
HoneyLuv: Don’t Stop (feat. Muni Long)
Otis Kane: Let Me Love You
Nali: Maybe (feat. Coi Leray)
Jay Safari: Temptations
Carla Genus: Hold Up
Brianna Castro: 4 U
I Am Roze: Love Will Find You
Kid Travis: Hang Up My Jersey
Dreezy: Worth My Time
Jazlyn Martin: Follow Your Direction
Miranda Rae: Moonlight (feat. Durand Bernarr)
Amal Zenab: groove theory (feat. MoRuf & BASI VIBE)
Nectar Woode: Lights Off
Lolo Zouaï: Desert Rose pt. 2 (A COLORS Show)
SIPHO., Ayeisha Raquel & nikhil: COLD WEATHER
Namasenda: Miami Crest
Jesse Gold: When You Know
The Erikson Project & Enzo Franchi: Jamais vraiment
Marie Dalhstrom: Frostbite
Olivia Escuyos: Ride
The Womack: You Went Away Too Long
Gareth Donkin: Never Gonna Break Your Heart
Daniela Andrade: Steer
Tom Misch: Slow Tonight
Nia Wyn: Two Steps Back
rum.gold: Asleep at the Wheel
Bnnyhunna: The Heart Part 2 (feat. 3DDY)
Mary Ann Alexander: Better Than This
Devin Donnell: fiftyfive
nomi.: badman
Dono: Fair Exchange
EAN: Lay It On Me
Jay R: Underneath It All
Kevin Spears: New Waves
Nana Fofie: Where It Hurts
Blaxian: GETCHONAME
spaceluvrrr: HAND$
chromonicci: STUPIDLOVE.
RUSSELL!: JULIANNA