R&B Songs Where Nobody Gets What They Want
Jill Scott watches her ex smile for the cameras. Ari Lennox keeps asking questions that go unanswered. Plus: Jordan Ward apologizing to his mother and D Smoke rehearsing optimism he hasn’t earned yet.
Welcome to the weekly Soulpolitan feature, where we highlight a handful of new tracks catching our attention, along with others you should check out. These are songs we can’t stop playing, songs that speak to us in particular, and songs we think will speak to you, too. This week’s picks share a strange thread, where every hook promises something the verses can’t deliver. Bruno Mars is holding out on commitment, Jill Scott is holding onto resentment, Ari Lennox is holding her breath for reassurance that never comes, Jordan Ward keeps calling his mother a champion while listing all the ways he's made her life harder, and Moonchild has D Smoke insist nothing can touch him while describing everything that already has. Five songs about wanting, asking, and not quite getting there.
Bruno Mars: “I Just Might”
There’s something almost retro about a song built entirely on a conditional. Bruno Mars hasn’t put out a proper solo single since, what, 2016? The Silk Sonic stuff with Anderson .Paak was fun, and the live shows looked like a blast, but “I Just Might” is the first time in nearly a decade he’s sounded like he’s just trying to get somebody’s number at a party. The whole song hinges on whether this woman can dance as good as she looks. That’s it. That’s the premise. He’s not promising anything. He’s watching her from across the room, asking the DJ to play something that’ll test her, and holding his verdict until he sees what she’s got. “But what good is beauty if your booty can’t find the beat,” he sings, which is both shallow and honest in a way I kind of appreciate. The bridge tells her to break it all the way down, put some spirit in it, and if he likes what he sees she’s coming home with him. It’s a song built on maybes. The production is bright and syncopated, the kind of thing that would’ve killed on radio in 2012, and Bruno sounds loose, unbothered, like he’s having a good time not committing to anything. — Jamila W.
Jill Scott: “Pressha”
I’ve been listening to Jill Scott since Who Is Jill Scott? came out in 2000, when I was probably too young to understand half of what she was singing about but old enough to know it sounded like grown folks’ business. “Pressha” finds her in a familiar register—talking to a man who did her wrong—but the specifics are rough. He wanted her at night but couldn’t be seen with her during the day. “I wasn’t the aesthetic,” she sings, “I guess, I guess, I get it.” The repetition of “I guess” is devastating; she’s talking herself into understanding something she knows is bullshit. The song keeps circling back to “so much pressure to appear just like them,” and by the third time through you realize she’s not really singing about him anymore. She’s singing about the machinery that made him act that way, the same machinery that made her feel like she had to accept it. By the final verse, he’s got money and fame and she’s watching him smile for cameras, knowing her name is still in his head. She calls the whole thing pathetic. She means both of them. — Kendra Vale
Ari Lennox: “Twin Flame”
Domesticity is a strange flex in a love song. Ari Lennox has one of those voices that makes everything sound like a confession, even when she’s just listing errands. On “Twin Flame,” she’s cooking and cleaning and promising half her pension, which is a wild thing to say in the first verse. She keeps asking “do you feel the same?”—over and over, in the chorus, in the post-chorus, trailing off at the end—and it starts to sound less like a rhetorical question and more like genuine uncertainty. She calls the person her twin flame but phrases it as a question: “Are you my twin flame?” She admits he’s got her writing love songs, “Jason’s lyric,” which I applaud for the movie reference, and this is a better single-worthy track that would work wonders for radio. The production is sweet, her voice is controlled, nothing cracks, but the lyrics keep asking for reassurance that never arrives. — Murffey Zavier
Moonchild: “Up from Here” (feat. Robert Glasper & D Smoke)
The word “only” is doing a lot of work in this chorus. Moonchild have been one of those bands I’ve always meant to spend more time with—jazz trio out of LA, studied at USC, make the kind of smooth, harmony-rich R&B that gets played at wine bars and also, apparently, gets Stevie Wonder’s attention. “Up from Here” brings in D Smoke, the Compton rapper who won Rhythm + Flow back in 2019, and Robert Glasper on keys. The chorus is all uplift: “Nothing can touch me, it’s only up from here.” But D Smoke’s verse is where it gets interesting. He’s on his knees, tears collapsing against cement, looking up and laughing because he noticed he fell but landed on grass. He references the Ye and Sway interview, a busted tour van window in Oakland that got fixed by the next day, wanting to be bulletproof but settling for accepting fate. “Love lost, use pain to fuel old school cause / Use anger to begin my process/Endangered, but I still ain’t lost.” The chorus keeps saying “nothing can touch me” but the verses make it clear that plenty has touched him—he’s just decided to keep moving anyway. Glasper’s piano floats underneath, pretty and unobtrusive. The optimism sounds like something D Smoke is rehearsing, not something he’s arrived at. — Tai Lawson
Jordan Ward: “Champion Sound”
Calling your mother a champion is easy, but earning the right to say it is harder. Jordan Ward spent years as a backup dancer for Justin Bieber and Janet Jackson before signing to Interscope and releasing his debut album Forward in 2023, executive produced by Lido. “Champion Sound” is addressed to his mother, and it’s one of those songs where the hook says one thing and the verses say something rougher. “You’re a champion, a warrior,” he sings to her, but the rest of the song is him cataloging all the ways he’s made her job difficult. He was on stages while she was going through something alone. He was in Europe while she had pennies for his thoughts. He was in a cell he never told her about. He blew money, lacked self-control, almost cost them financial freedom by 25. Immigration trouble, lawyers, a cousin picking up bad habits, two weeks sober just to test himself. The pre-chorus asks “what do you hang on the wall?”—as in, what do you have to show for all this?—and the answer is never a trophy. It’s just him, trying again, still not in the clear. He keeps calling her a champion, but the song makes you wonder what she’s won. — Keziah Amara Reid
Other R&B Songs to Check Out
Phabo & Kiana Ledé: Win or Lose
Ezra: Come Get My Love (feat. ZaeFyeHunnit)
Inea’J: Say It (feat. theMIND)
ELIZA: Cheddar
Jaymin: Wamu
V. Cartier: Kryptonize
DUSIN DAB BOWIE & Lucky Daye: Your Number
Kenny Sharp: Old Lady
Shaylin B: Options
MIRIAH.: Superpowers (feat. TheARTI$t & theMIND)
I really enjoyed the way this was broken out.