The One Where Everyone Catches Feelings
New R&B songs from Ty Dolla $ign, Jorja Smith, kwn, Jai’Len Josey, and Yaya Bey. Here are the songs that stretch from luxury-brand flirting to rock-bottom self-rescue.
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. Love was loud this week, but not always in the way you'd expect. Ty Dolla $ign and Leon Thomas opened the Girl Music Vol. 1 rollout with “Miss U 2,” a Keyz-produced Aaron Hall flip where affection and a credit card statement are basically the same document. Jorja Smith went the opposite direction entirely, completing a decade-old demo addressed to a twelve-year-old on the verge of running away—not a love song at all, unless you count begging a child to stay alive as one. kwn, who spent last year being the toughest woman in every room she entered, kicked off what she's calling her “lover girl era” with a Joel Compass track about wanting kitchen dancing and grey hair. Jai’Len Josey gave her Def Jam debut its most deliberate provocation — a song called “Housewife” where settling down is voluntary and she answers every objection before you can raise it. And Yaya Bey, at the lowest point of her life, wrote “Blue” as a conversation with her younger self in the mirror, sweetening the melody enough that you almost don’t notice she’s commanding herself to stop running. Five songs about how people tend to themselves and each other when the stakes are real.
Ty Dolla $ign, “Miss U 2” feat. Leon Thomas
Girl Music Vol. 1, the six-song project Ty Dolla $ign has due March 6, started as a conversation at a dinner in New York. The DJ was spinning records that made the table agree: somebody needed to bring back the kind of R&B women actually want to hear while getting ready, while out, while thinking about somebody they shouldn’t be texting. “Miss U 2,” produced by Keyz and flipping an Aaron Hall sample that Sue-perman also recently touched for “Gimme a Hug,” is the first offering, and it slots Ty and his EZMNY signee Leon Thomas into the easiest version of themselves.
Ty is spending. Balenciaga, Chanel, Miu Miu, Hermès, a Baumatic ring, a Platinum Amex with charges climbing. Every line of affection is a receipt. He’ll go to war about this woman, he says, and then he specifies what the war looks like. Wedding rings on every finger, no wedding any time soon. He wants the commitment gesture without the commitment, and neither he nor Thomas seems bothered by the gap. Thomas, whose voice has sharpened since his own Grammy-winning run, picks up the second verse and name-dropping vintage Jeffrey, KAOBA, Camzoo—betting that brand-name fluency proves the relationship is real. The snap beat underneath stays spare enough for both of them to coast. Nobody is trying to fix anything or sort anything out. They miss her, she misses them, and somebody’s going shopping. For a project pitched to women, the first single asks almost nothing of them back. — Tai Lawson
Jorja Smith, “Don’t Leave”
Ten years ago, an eighteen-year-old Jorja Smith recorded this around the same time she made “Blue Lights” in 2015, and sat on it ever since. Last month she dusted off three unfinished demos on SoundCloud under the name “Demo Dump ‘16,” and fans voted “Don’t Leave” as the one they wanted completed. Smith, who has spent ten years releasing music independently through her own FAMM imprint, obliged. She got her nails done with her friend Ulla in Penge before uploading “Blue Lights” with no strategy and no label, just excitement. That same amateur nerve runs through “Don’t Leave,” which still carries the unsteadiness of a teenager working through something she’d only half-processed.
The song is addressed to a child. A twelve-year-old whose mother is absent, whose home reminds her daily she was a mistake, whose bag is packed and ready. Smith lays out the girl’s situation with care. Mum’s with a client, so her presence is vacant. The production, handled by New Machine, holds low and close—any louder and the kid might bolt. Her friends ignore every warning sign. — Ameenah Laquita
“You’ve been planning this climax for years
I’m gonna ruin it, so dry your tears
Turn right back around and face your fears.”
kwn, “Hopeless Romantic”
For most of last year, kwn built her name on songs about control. Who has it, who wants it, who folds first. with all due respect, her debut EP on RCA, ran on swagger and nerve. “Do What I Say” barked instructions, “Back of the Club” kept things sweaty and transactional, and “Worst Behaviour,” her duet with Kehlani that fueled months of will-they-won’t-they gossip. The East London singer sold out her UK tour on the strength of being the woman in the room least likely to get sentimental. “Hopeless Romantic” scraps all of that in three minutes. Joel Compass, who has worked with Snoh Aalegra and Jorja Smith, shaped the beat, and kwn wants matching slippers and kitchen dancing while dinner burns, sex on the stairs because the bedroom is too far away, grey in their hair—all of it aimed at falling in love with her best friend and keeping the honeymoon phase from ever ending. — Terryl Jameson
Jai’Len Josey, “Housewife”
Before she was on Def Jam, Jai’Len Josey originated the role of Pearl in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, which is a wild sentence to precede what follows. The Atlanta-raised, platinum-selling songwriter has penned songs for other artists while steadily building her own catalog since 2023’s Southern Delicacy, and she’s now gearing up for Serial Romantic, her debut album on Def Jam, executive produced by five-time Grammy winner Tricky Stewart. “Housewife” is the final single before it drops. The premise tilts provocative on purpose. Josey is hanging up the Hennessy, the hoes, and the six-inch pleasers, trading all of it for a honeymoon in Bali, all expenses paid. She used to be outside every season; now she’s Lois Lane to her man’s Superman. She’ll submit, a word she deploys deliberately, but only because he earned it. Then the verse tightens. “She’s too damn young, I know that’s what you’re thinking,” she pre-empts an imagined audience, “but he’s treating me right, so I’ll play my part.” Josey has said the song is about reclaiming domestication on a woman’s own terms, using submission as something given voluntarily rather than extracted. — Kendra Vale
Yaya Bey, “Blue”
Bare and cracked-open, “Blue” came out of rock bottom. Yaya Bey had just finished touring behind do it afraid, her 2025 album, and realized she’d been suppressing grief she hadn’t let herself name — the death of her father, Grand Daddy I.U. of the Juice Crew, the loss of her home, the splintering of the communities she’d oriented her life around. “I realized I had to make a big shift mentally and emotionally or I was gonna drown,” she said. The song is the first single from Fidelity, her seventh album, due in April—Bey having a conversation with a younger version of herself in the mirror.
“Say what you mean, mean what you say/It’s a new day, there’s no running away from yourself,” she opens, then catalogs the evidence. You’re getting old. A few grays. You ain’t no baby no more, and there’s no excuses left. The production, which Bey says reminded her of early-2000s pop-R&B, “something red-haired Kelly Rowland would sing over,” carries a warmth that cuts against the bluntness of what she’s actually saying. She tells herself to cry about it, to stop being shy about it, to accept that her sadness is visible. “It’s written all over your face, baby, you look blue.” And then the second verse closes the last exit. Your lover can’t fix it. Time comes back and hands it right to you. Bey has called fidelity—staying joyful when everything insists otherwise—the ultimate Black skill. “Blue” is her practicing it in real time, sweetening the melody enough that you might not notice she’s stopped pretending. — Imani Raven
R&B Albums Released This Week to Check Out
Moonchild: Waves
Choker: Heaven Ain’t Sold
3ee: MORELUV
5an: Ethereal (EP)
Misha & BeMyFiasco: Aura Gold (EP)
Nnena: Love...Aftermath (EP)
Pale Jay: Celestial Suite Flips
Brent Faiyaz: Icon (Director’s Cut)
Other R&B Songs to Check Out
Ego Ella May: Don’t Take My Lover Away
Kem: One Love
Noah Guy: Higher
Devin Morrison: Amor (feat. CUBE)
Aiyana-Lee: Housebroken
Olivia Escuyos: On Top
Casper Sage: bits + pieces
RnBoi: MON BÉBÉ (feat. Ayra Starr)
NOVA WAV: NBG
Zenesoul: Not Crying
sagun & Floyd Fuji: Trouble (feat. Liv Miraldi) / Planet Ours
Breez Kennedy: Cycles
GiddyGang, Braxton Cook & Vuyo: Survivors Guilt
Joy Postell: Easy
Raelle: round, round
Äyanna: Ordinary
Jalisa Rey: Good Time
Reuben Aziz: Circles
ZENA: It’s You (Ante Neh) [feat. Meron T]
RealestK: Angels
Chezelle: Another Life (feat. Bryant Barnes)
Myles Lloyd, GEMINI, Karencici & JUNNY: DMC
Imani-J: Something Special
marQ: What You Want
Sylo: Way 2 Paradise
Jordan Rakei & Tom McFarland: Easy to Love
Essosa: Touch bby
Kwaku Asante: Lights On
Liam Bailey: Gold
Roann: Safety
Maya Jade: Could’ve Been
Lah Pat: SHAKE
Beau Diako, Ben Esser & emawk: Pretty Little Fears
Self Proclaimed Narcissist: Save Her
PawPaw Rod: I Wish
Flyy Armani & JLLY: room 305.
Maz B: Forgive Me
Jermaine Reese Jr.: Call Me / 1Time
Benny Sings: Real Person (feat. Elijah Fox)
Bobby V. & Ray J: Toy