The Happiest Couple in Music Just Made a Breakup Song
Plus: Erykah Badu’s first new album in 11 years is finally happening, a Brooklyn producer taking the board for somebody else, a guest verse that disputes the count, and more.
Welcome to the Soulpolitan weekly feature, where we highlight the R&B singles worth your time. This week we have a few arguments in the marriage band about exit strategies, an eleven-year-old silence shattered with a black magic joke, bedroom producer MC‘ing for a guest, the rapper demanding the number be right, and a come-on cobbled together almost entirely from other people’s proverbs. Let‘s begin.
The War and Treaty, “It’ll Hurt Me More Than It’ll Hurt You”
Captain Robert Scheetz was killed when his vehicle struck an IED. Michael Trotter, Jr. sang him a song and performed it at his memorial service, with hundreds of soldiers in the audience for it, and the Army awarded him a new position on the strength of it, composing music to be played for the fallen. Prior to all this, he and his mother cohabitated in a homeless shelter when they would watch Sister Act 2 and compete over who could out-sing “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” so which woman was the first with whom he infatuated himself into harmony was first his mother, then the star of the picture. Years later, he encountered that very star at a festival in Maryland. Tanya Blount had learned the hard way herself what it felt like to come within spitting distance of a career, with a Polydor record (Natural Thing), a Bad Boy distribution deal that delivered a blank copy of a record. They wed, formed as a duo, and the rest was history, releasing multiple good to amazing albums.
There is so much weight on Michael here, as he takes his turn at the first verse and delivers what is at once a very gentle eviction notice. “I can tell you ain‘t been happy for a while/And your face has been missing that smile,” he sings before reaching the line where she‘d already notified her kin that he was the one. Then he and Tanya combined to trade a line every band has heard from the child with a switch, and here two grown folks use it on one another. “It‘s better off this way/Rip off the band-aid.” Tanya takes the second and refuses these terms. “I hear what they‘re saying, I done broke your heart,” she sings. “They only know one side, but two had a part.” She pours whiskey into a glass full of expectations. She calls their burning home a burning home. She won‘t play the fool while he plays it cool.
And then comes the bridge and they finally sing together, and Tanya asks that the tears she‘s crying be taken as a sign for a truce. Michael tells her he doesn‘t want to lose her, one verse after telling her she‘ll be fine in a day or two. —Phil
Erykah Badu & The Alchemist, “Witch Doctor”
Three years ago the story was passed along to Cold Cris. His creative partner was prepared for the Mobb Deep “The Realest.” That beat was made by the Alchemist. Through a fortunate series of circumstances someone was willing to make the call to finally have the beat speak to all of us. After a nomadic period of more than a year and a half in Dallas and Los Angeles, Badu will release an album (her first in more than a decade) on August 28. But will it come out this time? “Witch Doctor” opens in Spanish as well, with a correction: No es una bruja, es una doctora de brujas. She’s the doctor witches go see. That can be daunting, and indeed she is daunting in equal measure, wide-eyed and menacing, as though she doesn’t want to scare you but she is here to shake up your universe, and then she pins her own self down on a rhyme so simple and so unremarkable I almost miss it: “’Cause a witch is just a medium/And a medium like the media/And you take it all in, what they’re feedin’ you/That’s witchcraft.” The third section finds her naming herself not as a bruja, but rather as a curandera, healer, which is perhaps a more accurate description of the service she has been performing in between CD releases. —Harry Brown
Laila! & Teezo Touchdown, “ANGEL”
Laila! makes her own her own record for the first time on “ANGEL” (still her own record, Tyler Cole’s record on strings), and with Cole on production. It was him who made Teezo Touchdown’s debut record three years ago. Laila!’s the one directing the rest of us on where to position our bodies. Her version of the chase begins “There’s an extraordinary angel/I’ve been searching hard to find,” and the angel is deep within her own mind. She goes up to God to ask for a telephone number (quoting what the church-goers all knew to say back when Walter Hawkins was the king of gospel), and while she’s talking, on the other side of the chorus Teezo is wondering whether he can “dance that much for you.” He‘s four feet behind her, going in circles and honing the particular details of his performance. “I ain‘t know it was that bad,” he mutters after not getting a response. “I‘m just trying to make you laugh.” Teezo’s been doing work like this for a long time, and one time he brought a speaker and his friends all the way from Dallas a 250-mile trip with no permission and no show, and they made the whole of Sixth Street bounce until the police told them they had to leave. While “ANGEL” a song where somebody is being convinced to stand in the sun and put his hand over his eyes plays, we are taken through Thomasville on the hillside, through Yaletown by the marina, Poolside Estates on screens, through the transition from golden hour to night. —Marjani Fields
Honey Bxby & JID, “A Thousand Times”
Since she was a kid in a house with a studio and production equipment in the basement thanks to her Dad, Honey Bxby was on the grind. She was on an Atlantic imprint that produced 3 Words, 8 Letters, and “Touchin’,” cut a Lisa Lopes tribute called “Left Eye” with Lil’ Kim, and signed to Warner that last year for Raw Honey. This one features J. White Did It on production with Akil “Universalfresh” King. That‘s a true swing at it. Bxby‘s lines are a damage report of all of this, and the images are all her own (“The shit that you say to me/Ain’t what it claimed to be/Company needs misery”). But when did the guest on an R&B breakup song get to say this much back? JID comes on and accounts for the amount. She says it a thousand times. He says it was 999, and she’s going to need to let him know about any lies. He uses it to detail the custody fight for their friends, the proposal of communion, the aborted attempt to contact her mother, and her arrival “as if she was Solange lapping Celine,” which compresses a decade of tabloid drama into a dozen words. He ends up on “I did not even have a pot to pee,” and the whole story of what he thinks he‘s supposed to do. He also says, “You look cute, and I want to kiss you, and you want to cuss,” which is the only line of the couple’s lyrics in the song that could be interpreted as being sung while the couple is still together. —Tabia N. Mullings
Tiana Major9, “Heaven”
As Tiana Major9 is about to release her deluxe, “Heaven” arrives. The come-on is predominantly borrowed material, singing, “If you haven‘t got no plans I‘ve got the space,” is how she begins, and before the next line, she‘s quoting Dinah Washington (“I‘m lovin’ your company, oh, what a difference a day makes”). The hook builds a farming proverb with the oldest pick-up line: “Let‘s make hay while the sun shines” and is followed two lines later by “It must be Heaven that you fell from.” Then the second verse opens a window. “Let‘s workshop, you see I love the chance to teach/One-of-one kinda freak, a Scorpio, I‘ll show you somethin’/Pussy university, the stars above want you with me,” she says using the same breezy syntax she employed on the eggs, aiming the whole thing at someone in church on a Sunday morning. —Jamila W.
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
October London: Love Me for Me
L’Rain: fata morgana
The Womack Sisters: The Womack Sisters
SUMIN: dinnermode
Abby Jasmine: I’ll Be Home Soon
Genia: INTENSE LOVER
Kelly Finnigan: B-Sides, Singles & Forgotten Gems
Oxii Moron: SELF-CTRL
André Cymone: The Resurrection of Funk
Ash Levi: Vinyls and Ashtrays: Disc One
Yasmina Sadiki: Made for the Past (EP)
MIYANA: Stories of the Yearner (EP)
Ron E: PRIVATE NIGHTS, VOL. 1 (EP)
Arin Ray: LIMBO (EP)
MALIA: Live In Studio (EP)
Brenna Whitaker: Reverie (EP)
Isaia Huron: Mr. Lovebomb (Deluxe)
Other Songs to Check Out
Jorja Smith: I Lied, You Lied
SiR: Back to Friends
ALA.NI & Adrian Younge: Middle of Nowhere
JACÓTENE: Aeroplanes
Niko Noir: Different
Liv East: Projections
jackson knox: Be Somebody
Ray Lozano: fallin
Thee Heart Tones: Don’t Forget Me Love / Sing Your Song
Summer Banton: Problematic
Children of Zeus: Before We Drown (feat. Knucks)
Qendresa: Besitos / Gave Myself 2 U
SWEATA: Did a Number
Otis Kane & Aaron Childs: Monday
J.P.: How Does It Feel
Gabby Samone: SAFE
Bobby V: Nick Nack
Oladapo: Sugarcane
Ramriddlz: Caliente
ROZZZQWEEN: Can’t Rub Shoulders
Mamadou.: Memory, Awayago
Humble the Great: left you
DAV!D: remines
Janette King: Circles
Ojerime: 4ME
Quail P: Vacation Love
Neya: All for Me
Jordan Rakei: Promise
St. Paul & The Broken Bones: Loving Wrong
Tama Gucci: Hot Night
Romeo Miller: Doin Something (feat. Trevor Jackson)
Ari Kemera: Set Yourself Free
3LISE: no ids