Tag: r&b

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Kelela – Contact

Kelela’s mixtape CUT 4 Me, debut LP Take Me Apart, and especially her 2015 EP Hallucinogen remain high watermarks in alternative r&b, so it was great to see her putting out new music last year after a few years off-radar: a break that was long enough to instigate a Where is Kelela? Reddit. Her new album Raven is scheduled to land 10 February, and has been proceeded by a run of singles, the latest of which is Contact. And while so far I’m not convinced the production is quite as interesting as it has been in the past, her voice still sounds incredible, so hopes are high.

https://www.kelela.co

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SZA – Conceited

Lol at everyone who’s already published their end of year list! (TPW’s is coming tomorrow – thanks for asking). SZA’s SOS is one of two albums released last week that will definitely making my list, so my slackness in publishing has turned out to be quite a canny move. Usually if an album pushes over the hour mark it’s a warning sign for some damaging indulgence and self-regard, but there are so many good tracks – Conceited not least among them – that in this case the extended running time is entirely justified.

https://www.instagram.com/sza

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B. Cool-Aid x Ahwlee x Pink Siifu – usedto

Pink Siifu and producer Ahwlee return to release new music as their enigmatic hip-hop/neo-soul duo B. Cool-Aid: the first official release in more than 3 years following their last full-length project Syrup back in 2019. It’s very good!

https://soundcloud.com/bcool-aid-music

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poolblood – wfy

Maryam Said performing as poolblood has shared the latest single from their forthcoming debut album mole. Meditative and sombre, the song deals with “the anxieties of love and learning how to self soothe”, which makes it sound like it has the potential to be quite a angsty slog, but is instead moving, delicate and very lovely indeed.

https://www.instagram.com/poolblood.jpeg

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Contour – Nigga Won’t Reach Mars

South Carolina-based Contour lands on London’s Touching Bass with Onwards!, billed as “an evocative, twelve-track journey through black art both past and contemporary with soul, electronics and archival material at its core.” Nigga Won’t Reach Mars is enjoyably downbeat, and sounds like a lost Dummy-era Portishead b-side, albeit with Contour’s smooth vocal replacing Beth Gibbons’ harrowing wail.

https://ar-contour.bandcamp.com/album/onwards

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Imani Wj Wright – So I Thought

There’s something immediately, hauntingly arresting about the scratchy, low-fi guitar strumming on this that I was sold even before Wright’s broken, beautiful vocal comes in. Then the beat drops, the melody surges, and I’m melting.

https://www.instagram.com/imaniwjwright1

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Quinton Barnes – Fuck On U

Quinton Barnes’s fantastic new album For The Love Of Drugs landed last week, and while my overall takeaway from the LP is that Quinton has bascially had enough of everyone’s shit, there are a few gentler, borderline romantic moments, of which Fuck On U is arguably the strongest. Boasting the crunchy synth lines that characterise much of the album’s production paired with some truly gorgeous piano, it sees QB showing his vulnerable side to powerful effect.

https://quintonbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/for-the-love-of-drugs-2

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Blood Orange – Relax and Run feat. Erika de Casier, Eva Tolkin

If anything it’s surprising it’s taken Devote Hynes and Erika de Casier this long to collaborate, so perfectly do they compliment one another. Taken from the new Blood Orange EP Four Songs, Relax and Run is so ruthlessly up my street I was worried about its potential to underwhelm, but thankfully it’s everything I need it to be.

https://bloodorange.lnk.to/FourSongs

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JID – Kody Blu 31

People are really losing their shit about the new JID album The Forever Story. I’m less overwhelmingly convinced (so far), but there are definitely a few really impressive moments that elevate it above the standard rap fare, the low-tempo, lo-fi r&b-meets-soul swagger of Kody Blu 31 not least among them.

https://jidstoryforever.bandcamp.com

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Kyle Kidd – Scars Alight

A member of Cleveland’s multi-generational Mourning [A] BLKstar collective, Kyle Kidd’s debut solo album Soothsayer is a deeply moving, highly personal exploration of many of the themes that have defined their life so far, including blackness, gender nonconformity, American history, community and more. Their vocal performance throughout is extraordinary: you can hear that this is not just sung, but deeply felt by the artist. Scars Alight – which explores the damage done by Kidd not feeling as if they were not truly accepted for who they are – is a highlight, but this need to be listened to in its entirety to be properly appreciated.

https://kylekidd.bandcamp.com/album/soothsayer-3