The Loverman Asks Permission Now
Tank flips a Floetry classic into a question only you can answer. Plus: Coco Jones’s two-minute glow-up, Masego’s basement-party invitation, and a Tottenham soul anthem with an L.A. cosign.
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’s selections are full of R&B and largely lacking in tiers. We have a self-love track that packs no filler, a legendary bedroom crooner exploring the sensuality in soliciting permission, a password-only party, the love song that may well be a prayer, and a hook wide enough to draw all of North London in. Well, shall we?
Coco Jones, “Body So Tea”
Every woman I know follows this same post-breakup agenda, I am pretty sure. Nails, hair, skin, gym, block button, group chat extraction, again and again until entire. Coco Jones has obviously maintained one herself, and she is making it sound the most frisky it has sounded in her entire tenure so far; she lands in a year she already performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the Super Bowl and closed out her tenure as Bel-Air’s Hilary Banks. She spends no time on the person who caused the maintenance regime and instead jumps right to the ante, intoning “Body so tea, hair, nails done, skin glowing” as if a motivational sticker.
She sneaks a surprising amount of therapy speak into that strut. “I don’t chase nothing, I attract, I set intention,” she sings over a Stargate co-production (yes, the same Norwegian duo behind Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” and Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable,” still out here crafting magic). I usually roll my eyes when fellow vessels of manifestation start spouting off, but Coco delivers “Blocking you was a blessing, baby” with the kind of motherly affection you give someone a plate, and suddenly the healing sounds not quite so dutiful and a little more Friday. She got her toes did. She tracked her diet. She cut off the chaos. In and out before the candle even melts. Will I ever want a song like this from Coco? No. —Jill Wannasa
Tank, “YES”
Back in March, just a few days before the Verzuz battle with Tyrese, a snippet of a song based around Floetry’s “Say Yes” made its way onto Instagram Live. Touching that song is a tightrope walk. Marsha Ambrosius’ performance in 2003 is scripture to a certain generation of slow-dancers, so revered that Floetry named their spring reunification tour after it. Well now the full song has arrived, and Tank, the artist who gave us “Maybe I Deserve” and “Please Don’t Go,” has done something more clever than a cover. He changed the vantage point. Floetry’s original was a woman reaching out, but Tank promises that he won’t take one step unless you say yes out loud.
“It felt like we was floating in the ocean/It felt like we touching in the open,” he opens, all warm water and memory, before setting up the actual conditions: “I’m just waiting on permission, I won’t fold without it/I just got one condition then I’m all about it.” I hollered. Two decades of R&B men have written desire as weather, something that just happens to everybody in the room, and here is a man twenty-five years deep in the bedroom-serenade game making some of the most uninspired music he’s created. Consent as foreplay, sung by a man who could bench-press the concept. Marsha walked so Tank could wait politely. —Jamila W.
Masego, “Recommend”
A location you stumble upon through a friend of a friend, a dark dingy basement where the coat check has been overrun by friends having sex with their underwear on, a dive that smells like everyone wearing the same shirt under four layers of clothing on the day there’s a snowstorm outside. This is the atmosphere Masego paints in “Recommend,” as the Virginia-born saxophonist and looper (the self-taught creative mind who birthed the phrase TrapHouseJazz and hammered out the casual DJ fusion of “Tadow” into a new international hit with FKJ) plays it like he is in the bottom of a review for a venue he plans to visit a second time. He is recommending a visit that hasn’t happened yet, in advance, would return, which is why the chorus stumbles “I would recommend-mend-mend”, back and forth like a happy noise bouncing off the basement walls.
In the second verse, I hear my favorite piece of humorous lyricism in an R&B song all year, a party checklist delivered as impatiently as if a man was double-parked. “First off, where’s the women? I’m wondering/I ain’t put on this cologne for nothing,” he makes his first proclamation to a crowd not even there yet, then moves down the planner: “Third off, take ya shirt off, I’m rushin’/It’ll get hot by midnight, just trust me,” he’s two steps ahead of the evening’s events. There is true Cab Calloway style showboating in the way he emcees his own expectation. —Esther Blake
Amaria, “‘Til We Meet Again”
An ‘80s-inspired love song appropriating funeral language must be a tough grab. Amaria has been self-producing and composing her own clear slow jams since she was a teenager; from 2020’s Morning to 2024’s Free Fallin’, this latest is her creepiest stunt yet. “I can’t help myself/Just look what we made”, she laments—and for a second it’s bliss. Is her beloved disappearing, dying or simply nodding off while they talk? “I get ahead of myself/Don’t wanna feel you fading,” she warns, delivering love songs about absence before it even comes; mourning someone just within reach. She’s advising a lover to keep still and squeeze tight ‘while you can’; these words could be taken from a wedding or a funeral. Who else is making love songs so ghostly? —Asa McKenzie
Nippa, “Homegrown” feat. Blxst
From Tottenham, the well-known musical exports have been grime titans, with Skepta, JME and Wretch 32 putting N17 on the global stage through bar pressure. Nippa, who from just off White Hart Lane watched his mum running community projects in Haringey Council (and the newest Warner Records signee), running carnival days and caring for the neighbors’ families, comes from his ends with a lot more tenderness. “Homegrown” is his ode to the postcode and he brings in Los Angeles’ Blxst, who has spent years penning love anthems to his city, for a transoceanic first bump over the beat of Camper.
Nippa writes the come-up in physical objects. “Funny I’m here, I’m looking way back/I was the needle in the haystack,” he remembers, running through the account from frontline to “the backseat of the Maybach” without pretending that the gap removes the city from him. The love extends uncategorized up through the bloodline (“This is for my mother and my granny”) before the hook addresses it to anyone within earshot: “What would you do/When you know you hungry, but you can’t eat nothin’?” Blxst matches him, slipping “out that pocket like a quarterback” and marveling at his own emergence: “Ain’t no wishing on a star, on the block we came from/Ain’t it funny? Look at God, baby, I became one.” Two humans from two hemispheres, identical block loyalty, and by the end of the chorus Nippa is threatening anyone who touches his dargs in the sweetest voice you will hear all week, a Sunday roast with the smoke alarm. —Ameenah Laquita
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
Kelela: new avatar
Baby Rose: YEARNALISM
Ne-Yo: Highway 79
The-Dream: Love/Hate II
Davion Farris: Alchemy
Lance Skiiiwalker: #invite,sessions,only!!
Magi Merlin: POWER HOUSE
Zae France: Final Say
NORSIDE: Coal & Soul
Jesse Gold: Lucky Me
Will Sheff: Extra Mile
Soul Fever & Mohdalsoul: Camera Boys
Jaz Karis: Twenty Something (EP)
Anna Margo: Swings (EP)
CANDIACE: Nenuphar (EP)
KALLITECHNIS & mango heist: kosmos (EP)
papaya noon: through the moods (EP)
Orrin: Yours Truly (EP)
Other Songs to Check Out
Ciara: Yes
Dinner Party: If It Aint Broke (Love Wins)
Felix Ames: Second Second Chances (feat. millkzy)
nomi.: What U Want
Grace Carter: Bittersweet Escape
Nia Archives: Get Me Down (feat. Jorja Smith)
SABRI: Voices In My Head
The Womack Sisters: If I Let You
Flwr Chyld: Moth 2 a Flame
Marcus Harvey: Come to Me (feat. Mick Jenkins)
Kelly Finnigan: The Hurting Truth
Ezra Collective: Well Organised (feat. Lila Iké)
R&B ONLY & rjtheweirdo: Tricks Are for Kids (R&B ONLY SESSIONS)
pastels: Coconut Island
Owen Saward: Not Mine
Naomi Lareine: Hot Girl Summer
JONES: When Life Calls
Lucy Park: OUTLINE
Byron Juane: Nobody But You
cortex: Made Me
Justin Nozuka: On Your Time (Hold You Like It’s Ice)
Algee Smith: Otw
Khari Isiah: What’s the WiFi?
Devin Tracy: Nobody Nobody
Gretchen Parlato: Never Come Down (feat. Meshell Ndegeocello & Mark Guiliana)
Nick Hakim: Endlessly Waiting / The Reason
Adam Ness: Gimme Some Mo
Bobby V: Like That (feat. Silvastone)
HUGEL & Bryson Tiller: Temptation
Tyler Lewis: yesterday
Nao Yoshioka: Shelter
Autumn Paige: Cute Girl Weekend
Olympia Vitalis & Maverick Sabre: Lady Luck
anaiis: Sunshine / P4P
Genia: Miss Your Touch (Garage Live Version)
Dahi & Childish Gambino: Running
Deb Fan: Angel(s)
Mary Ann Alexander & Hunna G: NYC
JACOTÉNE: Shut You Down
Kareen Lomax: OFFLINE
Taylor Contarino: Survivor’s Guilt
Daley: Slide
Aaron Taylor: Ask Twice
Eldana: Is this what Saturday evening feels like?
James Berkeley: sliding doors
$yn: Overthink
SHVVN: 2AM
Zenesoul: Bad Timing
5an: ROCK WITH YOU
Brenna Whitaker: A Song for You
Myles Lloyd: One Sided
Luh Kel: Wrong (Acoustic)
Sophia Galaté: Just for a Moment (feat. Dende) [Acoustic]
Sipprell: Energy
Felix Hien & GINGE: Choirs
DaVionne: All On My Own
b.kae: Easy
Tomi Thomas: How I Know
Lazā: Kiss N Tell
Ethan French: i would - day 48
Miiles44: All 2 Myself
Chenayder: DOOM
Zeke Bleu: Did You Drop the Ball?
Javán: Dare You/N2S
María Isabel: 1-800
Latanya Alberto & Andhim: Landing Soft
Alice Aera: Searching for Love
MILLENNIUM PARADE, Saya Gray, Daniel Caesar & Daiki Tsuneta: Blue