What Happens When R&B Stops Pretending to Be Chill
Steve Lacy narrates his own heartbreak, Fana Hues isn’t sure she’d know love if it hit her, Ama runs the seduction, FLO threatens a boyfriend, and BOY SODA blames the breakup on the weather.
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 is filled with so much self-persuasion: Steve Lacy singing a love song that’s so self-aware that he has to talk himself through its own defenses, a Fana Hues song where he stops believing anything anyone is saying. Ama goes after somebody who really can’t believe he’s been asked out by her, a friendship anthem from FLO that’s also an intimidation to some girl’s boyfriend and finally BOY SODA and his break-up caused by an act of God. Five forms of love.
Steve Lacy, “The Feeling”
Whatever happened to the love song where the singer is totally aware of how pathetic they sound and cranks the emotions up higher anyway? “The Feeling,” the single Lacy wrote and produced himself, is entirely constructed out of just that; the entire thing exists because he understands how much of a fool he sounds. This particular verse is a standard trope: the plea toward the person whose body is halfway to out-the-door, except he keeps stammering over himself in embarrassment-he understands, and so he shouts it louder. The opening couplet (“Something’s burning, I smell fire/The devil’s working hard to keep me alone”) turns to the mundane, then at the next section where he actually becomes profound; catching himself in the act of emotional processing: “When you start writing songs just to stop thinking ‘bout him/Oh, then you start writing songs and you make ‘em about him,” and the name of the other person appears without decoration, the lust travels where lust goes. He follows it with a happy memory of that night that “Seemed it was some kind of dream but it happened,” on a AirBnB in 2019, when he kept stumbling, and they’re all just one movement. —Jhanel
Fana Hues, “Recognize”
After hearing “Recognize” so many times from people who are clearly on their way out anyway, you stop believing what they say and begin to count the escape routes. Fana Hues leaves “Recognize” anchored in that suspicion, and what’s brilliant about the track is that she allows herself to become the target of her own cynicism. Hues isn’t sure she would be able to recognize love if it landed on her doorstep. Its disappointment has already eaten away at her capacity for it.
The verses stack up received statements of “It ain’t hard to say it/Or to lie/I’ve heard it all before halfway out the door” that she’s no longer willing to consume. Her hesitation comes across less as woundedness and more as weary, self-acknowledging weariness: “Can you really blame me/For being tired?” (No, Hues. No, we can’t.) Mulherin and Mulherrin’s catchy production lets her stay in control of the conversation, interrupting suitors mid-spiel with her flat dismissal, “I won’t take the bait/That same old line.” It cuts deepest when she reveals that the scar may be imperishable: “Been looking/But I don’t think I’d recognize love/If it was close enough to hit me.” And “This ain’t high school anymore” decisively ends all the old approaches, the lines that used to lure her in. —Mina Abdel
Ama, “Holding Back”
With a seduction song, ownership of the flirt is normally with the desired. But on “Holding Back,” Ama owns all of it and is even on the offensive, trying to wear down a shy guy who just won’t budge. The serenade runs on her assurance versus his hesitant nature, a funnier take than the style’s often inclined to explore. Her certainty that she will get her man before he says hardly anything back drives it, where no time is lost for laying down the challenge: “Better take your clothes off, it’s getting hot in here” and immediately framing the appeal in the here-and-now: “Watch these hips rock TikTok type like that post you hearted.” Ama does all the walking with the Dpat production; in one moment she has the full movie mob swagger (”Come be my don and daughter, top shotta baby”), and the next she has an infomercial vibe (“I’m a pro, you’re my snow, I don’t waste time”). It’s on the bridge that the challenge gets a bluff call: “So we know that you big and bad/But I got things you’ve never had,” where even the neighborhood gossip is on her side: “A little birdie told me you want more than that.” In light of this, the title query is almost entirely genuine; it’s not that he shouldn’t be holding back, it’s why is he? —Jamila W.
FLO, “Don’t Break Her Heart”
If “Don’t Break Her Heart” was an earnest best-friend-pact, it would be cute. Instead, FLO have fashioned a thinly veiled protection racket. They skip the catharsis and head straight for the boyfriend, outlining what awaits him in advance, should things get out of hand. The love they’re protecting is the friendship and the boyfriend is a factor requiring a good talking to. The taunts are playful, the UK slang a fantastic detail, “Post up on you block, blow your spot/Send the mandem ‘round your way” is both aggressive and silly; or “Beep-beep, it’s me at your front door: after which, you disappear like “poof-poof.” Julian Bunetta produces it and keeps the cartoonish threats consistent throughout, “If you break her heart/I will break your face.” The genius line is obviously “You can break her bed but/If you break her heart,” the distinction is made perfectly clear. FLO would rather drag the culprit’s doorstep to his house, than dwell over the spilled tears. —Tori Hammond
BOY SODA, “Elements”
“Elements” has to be the most forgiving breakup song that has ever existed. No one is to blame in BOY SODA’s latest single. Instead, two people built from different climates are just unlucky. He can’t help but harp on the shorthand for the breakup: ground vs. Wind, something neither party can control nor have picked for themselves. As a breakup song that absolves both parties involved, perhaps that is why it works so well.
He even escalates it beyond a relationship toward cosmic forces: “You like the ground/I like the wind/Don’t start a war with elements,” and a search for explanations persists through verses. “It all comes down to fundamental difference,” “a Your normal natural disaster,” and even the date are called as witness. Produced by MXXWLL, the astrology and the elements exist as a pleasant distraction from the simple truth: “Said you need a change wanna be a new woman/And I could never be the one to hold you.” All of the elements are a gentler version of the underlying message. He bookends the song where he began: “I’m on the ground/You’re in the wind,” two people rooted in the same place facing in opposite directions, neither reaching the other. —Phil
R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out
Imani Imani: Papercut
Jalen Ngonda: Doctrine of Love
Latanya Alberto: SEEN
Inayah: Therapy Wasn’t Enough
sparklmami: in this body
Mica Millar: A Little Bit of Me
Lex Aura: see you never.
Will Preston: Erratic Heartbeats
Architects of Sound: Architects of Sound II
okay coleman!: 001
Chant God: Sable (EP)
Mannywellz: Small Chops (EP)
Pheelz: A Rii Set (EP)
S!MONE: There Will Be Signs (EP)
Kavi Synatra: Emotional Value Vol. 1 (EP)
Dxtiny: Sweet Sins (EP)
Viuta: Refer to Judgement (EP)
IYAMAH: chapter five (EP)
Ny’Aira: Melodramatic (EP)
April + VISTA: April + VISTA on Audiotree Live (EP)
Other Songs to Check Out
Prince: Stone
Glenn Lewis: Impressions
Natanya: CANDYLAND!
Nina Sky & Statik Selektah: I’m Hot
Jaz Karis: Faith
Storm Reid: Clean Sweep
Naomi Sharon: Weak
Zenesoul: Summer Breeze
The Colleagues & October London: Seduce Me
Brenna Whitaker: Sunny
Aaron Thomas: All I Need
Joseph Solomon: HALF ON THE BLAME
Bobby V: She Got It
James Berkeley: my teenage dream (feat. J Warner)
Dahi: Find Me (feat. Moses Sumney & Mez)
Oscar Jerome: Everything In Between
Nao Yoshioka: Safe Place (feat. Jamila Woods & Peter Cottontale)
Sy’Rai: Late Night
Jake&Papa: Don’t Hurt Nobody
Sam Pounds: No Diggity
Genia: Hot
Kelela: point blank
Blxst: Ruin (feat. Sasha Keable)
FKJ: Soulmates
Charlotte Dos Santos: Roses
b.kae: snap ya fingers (jazzy)
Alexia Jayy: Money
Marie Dahlstrom: 1 Journey Away
Michi & Mndsgn: Playing Pretend (Mndsgn RMX)
Thelma Houston: Love is the Power
Flwr Chyld: Squeeze
Sipprell: Superstar
Dreamer Isioma: On My Grind (feat. Vayda) / Love Me (feat. Dante Swan)
Mai Mai: Why Me?
Abrina: Gotta Get Home
OVI WOOD: SHAKE THIS FEELING
Richard Saunders: Bitter Honey
Africaine: Whatever
Chenayder, Vayda & Norah’s World: Solitude
Chuka: Man on a Mission (feat. The Destroyer)
Nectar Woode: Wine into Water (feat. Elton John)
Qiuntellii: After Party
cortex: Don’t Try
Yo Trane: International Flavor
Gerald Wicks: i get it, i get it
twiin.: good life
Monroe Jordan: freckles
Cameron Wright: Hot and Heavy
Ashya: Relapse
sp84: Give It to Me (feat. Alexx Skyy)