Jhene Aiko released her 4th studio album, Westside Whimsy, on September 11, bringing fans into a new world of songs, melodies, and poetic stories that only Jhene can make. But beyond the conversations about whether she’s talking about Big Sean or whether Twenty88 will ever record a follow-up album, another conversation seemed to spark up, rooted in a larger R&B talking point over the past 10-15 years.

One post, in particular, springboarded the online discourse around Jhene saying that she’s ruined R&B. Dejon Paul, a rap critic, said, “Jhene Aiko ruined R&B. Before she blew up, women would really SANG and had vocal range and sounded like the church in some capacity. Now all the R&B girls make that soft ass, hella low and quiet voicemail interlude music.”

Now, if this were a one-off comment in the void, I wouldn’t have much confusion, especially from a rap critic. However, going down the rabbit hole of tweet after tweet critiquing Jhene’s R&B style and casting her as this horrid infection in the genre really felt off. Especially when the supposed “disease” has existed for decades, even before her debut mixtape in 2011.

20 years after the term “R&B” was coined in the 1940s, Motown, the R&B hit machine, produced artists who could deliver gospel- and blues-like vocals as well as soft, melodic harmonies that are soothing to the ear. Beyond vocal powerhouses like The Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Stevie Wonder, the label was also home to light, airy songstresses like Brenda Holloway and the famed Diana Ross and the Supremes.

Commercial crossover appeal through calmer, more flowy vocals and melodies that aimed to float rather than flood became the hallmark of vocalists in this space within R&B. The Supremes produced 20 chart-topping hits and were among the most popular artists of their time. They crafted some of the most influential R&B and Pop songs in history with this vocal delivery. If that doesn’t say anything, I don’t know what else does.

Other names with lighter vocal deliveries and softer approaches that come to mind include Minnie Riperton, Deniece Williams, Stephanie Mills, Janet Jackson, Sade, and so on. And that’s before even crossing into the 21st century.

One song that, to me, could only be delivered with this lighter, airy approach to vocals and production is “Lovin’ You” by Minnie Riperton. The ease and calm Minnie shows through the control of her voice, along with the peaceful styling of Richard Ripperton’s production, are qualities a singer with this type of voice and feeling can produce.

Beyond their “sanger” counterparts, these artists and their work resonate with listeners because of their stylistic choices, their lyrical relatability, their earworm melodies, etc. Providing ways to bring the themes of rhythm and blues to the average consumer beyond a power vocalist is just as essential as having singers who blow up and down the entire musical scale.

From the early 2000s to the 2010s, artists like Mýa, Ashanti, Corinne Bailey Rae, Ciara, and others continued to create music that floated vocally, even with heavier, more hip-hop-influenced instrumentals entering the arena. Still, they're proving they can create names that dominate within the R&B genre, without the vocal stature of artists like Beyoncé or Jazmine Sullivan. Especially when these same artists make songs that work better when they reach into a more falsetto-y tone that modern artists like Jhene Aiko thrive in.

Now this takes us to today, where there are still tons of heavy-hitter vocalists like Coco Jones, FLO, Raye, and H.E.R., among so many others. Still, the mellower side of R&B has great songstresses like Alex Isley, Cleo Sol, Summer Walker, and, of course, Jhene Aiko. To pretend there aren’t enough artists in both worlds is to be blind to the world of music around us.

Even with this critique of Jhene Aiko’s current album, artists like LAYA are singing all the way down on her latest release “Yeeha.” A legend like Lalah Hathaway shows that vocal agility is still present in R&B on her upcoming album release “Made In Chicago,”. There’s always room for all of these worlds to coexist and be appreciated.

Jhene’s work, especially, is always an essential part of the many sounds that thrive and sew themselves into the tapestry of R&B. Songs like “So Good”, “He Belongs”, and “I Don’t Mind” were some of my favorites, bringing us into this new era of Jhene’s work. Her brand of R&B, like that of her counterparts and those who came before her, remains an essential part of why people continue to love and appreciate the genre, even if some who don’t know better consider it moody voicemail music.

It’s a hot day at the end of August in New Orleans, Louisiana, where I meet the world builder that is Dawn Richard (pronounced “ree-shard”) for our Culture Issue cover shoot. Why New Orleans? Because there was nowhere else it could have happened. It’s the city that we both have familial roots in. It’s the city Dawn has spent two decades rebuilding in her own image, and photographing her anywhere else would have been a lie The Culture Issue couldn’t afford to tell.

A certain kind of confidence comes only from surviving your own history. Dawn Richard has spent nearly two decades learning to make something out of whatever she's been handed: a girl group, a record deal, a breakup, an unconventional solo career, an independent path, a city full of musical history, and a family full of artists. She has never seemed particularly interested in asking for permission. Instead, she builds.

Before The World Knew Her

That instinct goes all the way back to New Orleans, where Dawn grew up surrounded by people who understood that creativity wasn’t separate from everyday life. Her mother ran a dance school that became a gathering place for the local community. Her father was a musician in the funk and soul group Chocolate Milk, signed to RCA. Her parents were artists, educators, entrepreneurs and, as Dawn remembers it, people with an almost comical number of jobs. “I was inspired by my pops and my mom. They were two hardworking people who somehow managed to be everywhere for their kids but also have 300 jobs.”

In the Richard household, hard work was a family value, but a career in music was never treated like a guarantee. Her father’s experience in the industry had already shown the family how complicated a creative life could be. Music was encouraged as an escape, but academics were the foundation.

That changed when Richard was a teenager. Around 16, Anthony Hamilton invited her to open for him during a show at the UNO Lakefront Arena in New Orleans. For the first time, the thing she had always done simply because she loved it suddenly felt possible in a different way. “I always was doing it, but I never saw the possibilities until I felt the response of the people.”

That moment became a permission slip. Not from the industry, but from herself. Dawn still remembers Hamilton taking that chance on her. “You just never know when someone takes a chance on you what it means to them.”

Years later, that same belief in taking a chance on yourself would become one of the defining themes of her career. For millions of people, Dawn Richard’s introduction to the music industry came through MTV’s reality TV competition series Making The Band and the pop girl group Danity Kane. The group became a genuine cultural phenomenon in the late 2000s, but when Richard looks back on that era, one of her clearest memories isn’t a chart position or a television moment. It’s sewing.

“We were willing to sew our own costumes,” she says. “We didn’t care that no one believed in us.” During the 2007 Back To Basics Tour opening for Christina Aguilera and The Pussycat Dolls, Dawn and her groupmates (Aundrea Fimbres, Aubrey O’Day, Shannon Bex, and D. Woods) found themselves making their own costumes from Forever 21 pieces. It wasn’t glamorous, but the memory has stayed with her.

“It wasn’t one person sewing,” she says. “It was an assembly line.”

There is something almost perfectly “Dawn” about that image. The glamour comes later, but first comes the work. What she remembers most fondly, though, isn’t the resourcefulness it took to make those costumes. It’s the feeling of having four other women who were just as invested in the dream as she was.

“You can have it for yourself, but when you have other people wanting the same dream as you and are desperate for it... it felt good to feel not alone in that process.”

That instinct followed Richard beyond Danity Kane. Her career refused to move in a straight line. She joined the chart-topping Hip-Hop/R&B group Dirty Money after Danity Kane, before embarking on a solo career that pushed her into increasingly experimental territory.

Her solo music moves between R&B, electronic, pop, dance, and folk genres, often resisting the easy categories the industry prefers. Along the way, she has continued building a body of work that feels unmistakably her own. And has done so as an independent artist.

And Then Came The Hearts

Goldenheart in 2013, Blackheart in 2015, and Redemption in 2016 formed an ambitious trilogy that allowed Dawn to build an entire musical universe outside the expectations attached to the woman audiences first met on MTV. Goldenheart was grand and mythic, turning heartbreak into battle scenes over R&B, house and electronic production. Blackheart went darker and stranger, pulling those ideas further into abstraction. By Redemption, the dance floor had become a place for release, reflection and possibility. Across the three albums, Richard treated genre less like a set of rules and more like raw material.

Looking back now, that run feels even more important. Before “genreless” became a way to market an artist, Black women like Dawn were already challenging the idea that R&B had to look or sound one particular way. Alongside artists like Kelela, Rochelle Jordan and Tinashe, she helped widen the possibilities for Black women working between R&B, electronic music, dance and pop. Their careers aren’t interchangeable, and neither are their sounds, but together they helped make the borders feel a lot less fixed.

For Dawn, that wasn’t only a sonic choice. She wanted to change the image of what a Black female artist could be. She could come from a platinum-selling pop group and make left-field electronic records. She could be feminine and futuristic, pop-minded and experimental, grungy and deeply conceptual at the same time. She could care about choreography, technology, fashion, animation, world-building, and R&B at the same time without choosing which version of herself audiences would find easiest to understand.

Building Without Permission

Imagine the exhaustion of having to prove you belong somewhere over and over again. Dawn knows it well. The music industry has changed considerably since her earliest days in Danity Kane, but maintaining a career hasn't gotten any easier. For independent artists, the job extends far beyond making the music. There is the business, the promotion, the visibility, and the constant work of finding new ways to reach people without a major-label machine behind you.

Dawn has little interest in spending that extra energy convincing people who aren’t paying attention. Or convincing her peers, who pay attention in secret, while looking to her for inspiration. “I don’t deal with that because it’s not my problem to deal with whether or not people believe in my innovation,” she says. “I’m grateful that I’m on people’s mood boards, but I’d be just as happy if not. I’m still gonna do me whether I’m there or not.”

That freedom has also pushed her to think beyond her own records. “What I care about is how I can constantly build things that can help others. I’m here for the people who do care, not for the ones who don’t.”

Validation is nice. Building is necessary. But what Dawn wants to be known for goes beyond a hit or chart success: “I wanna be a world builder.”

The phrase kinda hits like a mission statement, but she isn’t talking about some far-off creative ambition. For Dawn, being a Black artist whose work lives at the intersection of music, technology, history, and culture comes with a responsibility.

World-building usually brings to mind creating something completely new, but Dawn is just as interested in what already exists. She isn't trying to leave the past behind in pursuit of the future. It’s the material she builds the future from.

“Because I want my world to be authentic and honest, it has to lean into ancestry, archives, roots. And what better way to build a world than from the veins of the people that have built it before us?”

What (Creole) Culture Sounds Like

That philosophy sits at the center of Creole Culture, the forthcoming album (out October 9, 2026) that completes the trilogy Dawn began with New Breed and continued with Second Line. What started as an exploration of her New Orleans roots has become something more personal, with each project offering a different view of the city and the family that shaped her.

“I hadn’t realized that I’d been telling the story through my father’s eyes with New Breed, through my mom’s eyes with Second Line...but I hadn’t had mine,” she says. “So I thought I could finish it off by telling my perspective of the culture of New Orleans.”

The triptych was not necessarily planned from the beginning. Richard originally believed the story had reached its conclusion with Second Line, but as she began making music for this new era, she kept finding her way back to the same cultural foundation.

With Creole Culture, she isn’t simply documenting what New Orleans was. She is asking what its traditions can become next.

The new album reaches into Louisiana's language, instrumentation, and people. Richard incorporates Kouri-Vini, the Louisiana Creole language, into the album’s interludes, working with Clifford St. Laurent, one of the people teaching the language to a new generation. She pulls from instruments associated with zydeco and Creole Cajun music, including the washboard, triangle, and banjo, but approaches them from a contemporary perspective. She also brings in local New Orleans talent like bounce legend Big Freedia, Tank & The Bangas frontwoman Tarriona “Tank” Ball, Anjelika Jelly Joseph, and her father Frank Richard.

“I thought it’d be really cool to modernize something that has been a part of Louisiana’s culture for a very long time,” she says. The project is led by the single “baby, can we?” featuring 2026 GRAMMY winner Durand Bernarr.

Nothing on Creole Culture feels included just because it sounds good. The language, the instruments, the people — it all points back to her roots. Dawn is taking pieces of the culture that have been here for generations and giving them a new place to live.

You can see that idea before you ever hear the album. In the images from our cover shoot, Dawn wears a hand-beaded suit rooted in New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Indian tradition, also known as Black Masking Indian culture. The hand-beaded, feathered suits are among the city’s most recognizable forms of folk art, but calling them costumes almost feels too small. They can take an entire year to sew by hand. Every detail becomes part of a tradition built on craft, community, pride, and passing knowledge from one generation to the next.

What might simply read as spectacular fashion to someone outside New Orleans is, for Dawn, part of a much longer conversation about family, craftsmanship, and who gets to carry culture forward.

The city’s identity lives in the details that don’t always make it into the glossy representations of New Orleans. It’s in the potholes and the pavement, the shutters on houses that have seen better days, the corner store that still sells the same hot pickle or crawfish you’ve been buying for decades. The Vietnamese hair store you keep returning to because “that’s the one that feels the best.”

Culture isn’t something sitting behind glass. It’s what you know without thinking.

That kind of New Orleans cool doesn’t need much explanation. You know it when you see it. It’s in the people, the neighborhoods, the music, the way somebody puts an outfit together without looking like they tried too hard. It’s a confidence that comes from somewhere deeper than taste. Dawn has carried pieces of that with her everywhere in this music industry.

The music industry can be inconsistent. New Orleans, she says, has given her something she can recognize immediately. “My New Orleans family gonna be exactly who they think they are, exactly who they say they are, and the love is just so real.”

If she’s “outside” in the streets, she says you’ll find her supporting the next artist’s concert, the next show, the next person trying to build something. It’s an idea that takes us right back to Danity Kane, five women sitting together sewing costumes because they believed in what they were creating before everyone else did.

The circumstances are different now. The instinct isn’t. For Dawn Richard, independence has never meant isolation. It’s meant having enough conviction to build her own thing and enough generosity to bring her community with her along the way.

What She Wants To Leave Behind

Near the end of our conversation, I ask Richard what she wants people to remember about her. Her answer isn’t about her solo albums, Danity Kane, the performances, the career milestones, or the innovations.

After everything she has accomplished, the legacy Richard imagines for herself is surprisingly simple.

Maybe that’s the part of Dawn’s story that makes everything else click. For all the conversation about innovation, independence, and being ahead of the curve, her idea of success ultimately comes back to people. The work matters. So does what the work allows her to build for the future of the culture.

We chose to style Dawn’s hair with a magnolia flower during one of the looks in this photoshoot. As Louisiana's state flower, the magnolia symbolizes perseverance, dignity, and nobility. Very fitting, right?

As our time comes to a close, she turns her attention to YAMS.

“Thank you for supporting artists that don’t get platforms,” she tells me. “Thank you for leaning into talent when the talent feels like they should stop, and this one moment gives them a reason to continue. Thank you for spending your own money to lift others. Thank you for doing it with quality, because you could do it and it looked tacky. Thank you for meeting people where they are, and thank you for seeing the value of one-on-one in-person contact.”

It’s an unexpected moment in the interview, but one that brings our conversation home. Dawn knows what it means to have someone believe in your work before the rest of the world catches up. Anthony Hamilton did it for her. She found it again with the women of Danity Kane and others along her journey. Now, nearly two decades into her career, she understands exactly how much those moments can matter.

It’s funny, generous, and unmistakably Dawn.

Dawn Richard has been a pop star, girl-group member, songwriter, solo artist, producer, collaborator, indie artist, and innovator. She has spent years proving there is more than one way to build a career in the arts. Now, she seems increasingly interested in what else she can build with everything she has learned along the way.

With Creole Culture, she isn’t looking backward at the city that made her. She’s taking everything that came before — her father’s music, her mother’s dance school, the language, the sounds, the streets, the people, the struggle, the joy, the generations of Black innovation — and asking what it can become next.

That’s the cool thing about culture. It doesn’t stay still. It gets passed down. It gets remixed. Flipped. Reversed. It gets protected. Challenged. It gets loved enough to be changed.

And in Dawn Richard’s hands, New Orleans isn’t just where the story began. It’s what she’s still building from.

Credits:
Photographer: Corey Anthony
Stylist: Taylor Lewis
Creative Director: Dante Nicholas
Hair: Nadia Mays
Makeup: Jessica Harris
Photo Assistant: Kai Nadirah"
Video Director: Jonai Casso Jackson
Executive Producer: Dante Nicholas
Writer: Dante Nicholas

Tinashe has been a pop star for a long time. Before “Nasty” & “No Broke Boys” became impossible to escape, before Songs For You, before the internet collectively remembered just how good of a dancer she is. Before people who hadn’t checked in since “2 On” suddenly started asking where Tinashe had been: she was right here. Working.

That’s what makes the title of her new album, Popstar, feel less like aspiration and more like declaration. The album arrives at an interesting point in Tinashe’s career. More people are watching now. More people are talking about her music, paying closer attention to her decisions, and inevitably weighing in on what songs she should release, what her album cover should look like, and what kind of artist she should be. But Tinashe has spent the last decade learning not to let those opinions drown out her own.

After parting ways with RCA Records in early 2019, Tinashe entered a period that would redefine her career. Songs for You arrived that same year, followed by 333, BB/ANG3L and Quantum Baby. Her music became freer. The visuals became more specific. The lines between R&B, pop, electronic music, and whatever else she felt like experimenting with became increasingly irrelevant. More importantly, Tinashe became more confident in being Tinashe.

In conversations about her independent career, she has spoken about rediscovering confidence in her own ideas and creative instincts. It sounds simple, but it might be one of the hardest things for an artist to hold onto. We talk constantly about what artists need to succeed: a catchy song, a great manager, a major label, a big marketing budget, playlist placements, radio spins, a viral TikTok, the right co-sign. All of those things can help. But what happens when you have resources and no longer trust your own taste? What happens when everybody in the room has an opinion about your career except you?

The music industry loves proof. Streams, followers, ticket sales, engagement, previous hits. Before someone gives you money, they usually want evidence it's a good idea. Artists don’t always get that luxury. Sometimes you have to make the video before anyone knows the song. Sometimes you have to pay for the rehearsal, finance the tour, or release the project without knowing whether anyone will care. Sometimes you have to believe the idea is good simply because you think it’s good.

Tinashe has been doing some version of that for years. Her post-RCA career wasn’t built around waiting for another institution to tell her what she could become. She released music. She toured. She creative-directed. She experimented. She endlessly expanded the world around her work and eventually, the world caught up.

When “Nasty” went viral in 2024, it would have been easy to frame it as Tinashe’s comeback. But you can’t come back if you never left. “Nasty” wasn’t the beginning of Tinashe’s second act so much as a moment when a much larger audience finally walked into a room that was already pretty full. There were already albums there. There were sold-out tours already there. A world was already built for that moment to land on.

That’s the difference between going viral and building a career.

There’s something almost ironic about Tinashe naming this album Popstar. The word comes with a particular set of expectations: big budgets, big hits, choreography, spectacle, major labels, and mass appeal. Tinashe understands those expectations. She grew up admiring performers who made the idea of the popstar feel larger than life. Janet. Britney. Beyoncé. Xtina. But with Popstar, Tinashe got to define and question what the term means for herself. Even deeper, she got to redefine it for herself as a 33-year-old and answer the questions her child self also wanted answers to.

That distinction feels especially important for a Black woman whose music has spent years being shuffled between the walls of R&B and Pop. Black artists have long had to contend with the ways genre can function as both a music descriptor and an industry limitation. Tinashe’s music has rarely seemed interested in respecting those boundaries (in the best possible way). R&B sits next to electronic music. A dance record can exist beside something atmospheric or trap. She can give you iconic pop choreography and then make something that is weird and cold. The confidence isn’t in picking a lane. It’s in knowing that Tinashe is the lane.

And believing in yourself doesn’t mean believing every idea you have is perfect. Tinashe talks about that on songs like “Empty Stadium.” Believing in yourself means trusting yourself enough to see it through anyway.

That’s an important distinction because independence can become romanticized in conversations about music. An artist leaves a major label, finds success, and suddenly the lesson becomes that labels are bad and independence is good. But real life is more complicated. Money helps. Infrastructure helps. Distribution helps. Great teams help. Having people who understand how to turn an artistic vision into a sustainable career can change everything.

After years of rebuilding outside the traditional major-label structure, Tinashe can approach partnerships from a different position than she could earlier in her career. She has a catalog that demonstrates her instincts, an audience that she’s cultivated herself, and a creative identity that exists independently of whatever company logo appears on the back of a CD case. That’s leverage. And maybe that’s a healthier way of thinking about independence. Not as refusing help, but as knowing what you’re building well enough to recognize the right help when it arrives.

You can see a different version of that struggle in Chlöe Bailey. Chlöe entered her solo career with people already watching, eager to witness her ascent to superstardom. They knew her from Chlöe x Halle. They knew the harmonies, the musicianship, and the Beyoncé connection. More importantly (and unfortunately), they already had an idea of what Chlöe was supposed to be. Then she had the audacity to become somebody else in front of them.

Everybody had an opinion. Too sexy. Too theatrical. Too polished. Not enough of this. Too much of that. “Where are the hit songs?” and “Why is Beyoncé not supporting her more?” are some of the daily questions that come up on Twitter when you search Chlöe’s name.

Chlöe has spoken about how criticism around her solo career affected her confidence and made her question some of her instincts. Self-belief doesn’t mean insecurity disappears. It doesn’t mean every decision works, every song connects, or criticism suddenly stops hurting. Sometimes believing in yourself simply means doubt doesn’t get the final word.

And that might be an even more difficult challenge than starting with nobody watching. What happens when you finally get the attention you wanted and discover that attention comes with thousands of people telling you who they think you should be?

You keep becoming anyway. You release the music you want. You fund your own music videos when the label decides they won’t do it for you. You show just how passionate you are about your art. And eventually people start to understand. I see it happening in real time with Chlöe’s ‘Resurrection’ mixtape. People are finally starting to see what Chlöe has been all along. They’re starting to trust her vision of who she wants to be as an artist – something that should’ve happened from jump.

Nobody understands the world around the music better than the person creating it. The artist knows why that photograph should be the cover, why that song deserves another listen, why the choreography needs another rehearsal, why the video needs one more scene, and why the weird song everyone says isn’t “a hit” absolutely belongs on the project. That doesn’t mean the artist is always right. It means their instincts deserve to be taken seriously, especially by themselves.

Artists have to be their first fan.

That’s ultimately what makes Tinashe’s current moment feel so satisfying. It isn’t simply that she’s experiencing greater visibility. It’s that the visibility arrived after the belief. She believed when the numbers were smaller. She believed when the budgets were different. She believed when her relationship with the industry changed. She believed through Songs for You, 333, BB/ANG3L and Quantum Baby. Then “Nasty” happened. And now she’s standing in front of us with an album called Popstar, and everyone else believes too.

There’s a lesson somewhere in that journey for every artist trying to figure out whether the thing in their head is worth pursuing. You might have a label behind you. You might have a manager who believes in you. You might have three friends willing to split the cost of a video. You might have $50 or $50,000. Resources change. The need to believe in what you’re building doesn’t.

The audience might be late. The algorithm might be late. But not you.

Sometimes the apology is sincere. Sometimes it is self-serving. Sometimes it is so dramatic that you have to wonder if the person even wants forgiveness or just wants everyone to know their side of the story.

And sometimes, the apology becomes a hit.

Twenty-six years ago, on October 24, 2000, OutKast released “Ms. Jackson,” and André 3000 gave us one of the most memorable examples of turning personal relationship fallout into a public musical confession. The song was written from the perspective of a man addressing his former partner’s mother after a breakup, but it became much bigger than that. It became a cultural shorthand for saying, I know I messed up, and I’m going to tell the entire world about it.

Technically, “Ms. Jackson” isn’t an R&B song. It’s OutKast, Southern hip-hop, funk, soul, and a little bit of everything else they could get their hands on. But its emotional DNA would become deeply familiar in R&B: the public apology, the vulnerable confession, the attempt to explain yourself after the relationship has already fallen apart.

I don’t think “Ms. Jackson” invented the apology song. R&B and soul have been full of regret since people started putting heartbreak over a beat. What it did was make the public apology feel like an event and turned the aftermath of a relationship into storytelling.

But First, Who Was Ms. Jackson?

The song opens with a dedication to “all the baby’s mamas’ mamas,” immediately putting us somewhere between family drama and relationship fallout. But the real “Ms. Jackson” was Kolleen Gipson, the mother of Erykah Badu.

Read more

Born and raised in Carol City, Florida, Twelve’len’s musical style exemplifies something you wouldn’t always expect to come out locally. Growing up in the church, but having connected experiences with artists like longtime collaborator Denzel Curry and Robb Bank$, his musical start always had roots within the two worlds of R&B and Hip Hop.

Starting as a band and later branching into a solo effort, he was finding his footing from 2011 to 2015. Moving between works and writings tinged with the musical influences of Andre 3000 and the sunset-tinted backyards and donks of Miami-Dade hip hop culture, his music in this era was “formed out of pure creativity and just doing it to do it.” It wouldn’t be until 2016, with the release of his first full body of work, Fri(end)s, that he felt he was seriously taking to his craft.

“I was going through a lot at the time, and I didn’t think I had much fight in me.”

After meeting and gaining the backing of Coach K of Quality Control, along with other contributors who helped produce and develop his first project, the foundation of his artistry began to take shape.

Even in hearing his story of manifesting his path through this time in his life and diving into this specific sound within the R&B genre, it is reflected in his music on this first project, from songs like “Florida”, “All Night Long”, and “Girl From Nowhere/Carol’s City”. Taking on this malleable blend of the genre that current alternative-leaning “R&B” artists like Kelela and Ravyn Lenae acknowledge within the expansiveness of the genre label, and how it can exist outside of that label. The elements of dance music and rap that influence his project are hard to ignore, and they serve as a glimpse into the further exploration Twelve’len would pursue in these realms throughout his career.

“I was being creative; at the time, I needed music that was an escape. The music wasn’t for reality. It was based on the Book of Enoch, and I interpreted it in the way that it’s like if it were our last days on Earth, how would you want to spend them?”

This cathartic release would continue to come through the releases of features on Denzel Curry’s projects “Imperial” and “TA13OO” (released in 2016 and 2018, respectively), his “Swim” EP in 2017, and his “Tomorrow After One” EP in 2020, before his follow-up full-length project, “Sugar Hill Express,” was released in 2021.

“That was the first time I went and made music outside of Miami. I was in Los Angeles working with FNZ. We were in a studio for 2 weeks, and it was a different experience compared to before.”

This jump in sound production, vocal production, and writing, along with continued exploration of this unique R&B sound, is evident throughout this project. Listening to this project, amongst his other work, and seeing him, as he reminds me so much of so many people I saw growing up locally, is a dichotomy I never really think I see too often. Someone who presents more so in the vein of someone who I wouldn’t think to be crooning over melodic mid-tempo and slow jams, but can do so with ease, truly is something that even in conversation I kept trying to shake.

After having a song featured in “They Cloned Tyrone,” his following release, “Solace in the Night”, which dropped at the tail end of 2025, was a collection of singles released from 2023 to 2025. However, the intentionality of his work began to come through during the development of this project.

‘I wanted to focus on heavy bass and soothing musical sounds for my son, because he was having a problem sleeping. So I would play jazz music and play, like, heavy vibrations for him. I was like, you know what, I already have the records for this project, but I’m going to reproduce them.”

The attention to detail in his son’s ability to listen to and be soothed by his music is also felt throughout the project.

Through songs like “For Crashing Out” featuring DRAM, “Lady Draco” featuring Denzel Curry, and “Klub 24” featuring 03 Greedo, this smoothness and heavy bass add to these songs in the best way. Especially “For Crashing Out,” this slow, crawling song with DRAM adding the Midas touch through his vocal additions, has easily made its way into my weekly rotation.

“The production was the focus for my son, but the writing and delivery was me just experimenting vocally and seeing how far I can push myself with my pen.”

Through it all, his music and his artistry are truly within their own lane.

“I just want to create what the people who f**k with me like. I’m not trying to compete with anybody. I don’t want to compete, no way. I want to create the best art I can make visually, conceptually, and story-wise.”

Alongside Twelve’len, particularly in South Florida, R&B artists have been getting more eyes and ears on the sounds coming out of the area. Artists like Savanna Christina, Q Marsden, Phoenix James, and many others are helping expand the new and established R&B sounds of areas often overlooked in the R&B and Alt-R&B space. Despite not having the same access or chain of command for music as in other states like Georgia or New York, Florida artists are making waves in the spaces they deserve.

“What I do love about Miami is that it’s like the city of gods, and to make it, you have to build a foundation and create it yourself and go out and actually interact with people.”

This is evident even in his work with Velvet Velour. This creative agency creates spaces for local Miami creatives to express themselves, cultivate, and build connections with lovers of creative events and cultural connectedness.

Still, ten years into his career and still within the spaces of South Florida, he continues to remind his listeners and himself why he’s even doing all of this in the first place.

“Of course, my son, my family. But for real, seeing my friends making their art and loving what they’re doing gets me gassed up to get involved with them, and I fall in love all over again. The people I surround myself with are my biggest motivations.”

For his upcoming project, he promises that love is the center of the message.

“There’s nothing negative; there’s no heartbreak. I want people to feel whole and warm inside their homes with this next project. We can love, and we can love passionately.

Looking beyond this project, though, you can see that same love oozing through his words when he talks about his music, his process, and how he creates the bodies of work people can carry with them today. This same love and passion for his craft, still being so bright and clear at this point in his career, shows that there’s so much more to tell through his music beyond the city limits of Miami-Dade County.

That is the origin story behind Masego’s viral 2021 sensation, “Yamz.” Much like this recollection, the Jamaican-American phenomenon also had to resort to his humble beginnings to figure out how who he was could benefit who he was becoming. Masego was once known as the cool kid with a saxophone, full of mystique. Years and a few life-altering obstacles later, he realized he had to peel back the layers of himself to rebuild his life, now putting the man behind the mystery on full display to cement his place in the R&B pantheon.

His journey with R&B began when he was working for the Air Force. Chrisette Michele’s Epiphany, Fantasia’s vocal prowess, and Jamie Foxx’s soulful freestyles during his standups in the ‘90s were standout moments that made Masego both a fan and an eager student of R&B.

Early in his career, he also freestyled much of his music in the studio, but for his latest album, Fix Your Face, he took a different route—deeming it necessary to put pen to pad. The catalyst was his vulnerability. “Seeing how Usher, Sade, and Lauryn Hill approach songwriting, [they] asked these questions that I don’t wanna ask out loud, [discussed] things that make me feel very exposed. I was like, ‘Yeah, I never do that,’” he explained. “If I’m truly trying to really be in [R&B], I need to do my rite of passage. I gotta be vulnerable and take off my cool for a second.”

Masego quipped, “Bravado and charisma are easy for me. But vulnerability? Nah.” He faults his Caribbean upbringing for that, affirming the notion that it’s often made difficult to express your emotions freely in Caribbean households. He recalled once when he was afraid to swim, and his uncle tossed him in the pool anyway. “You live or die” is what he was told, and though Masego did learn how to swim, it also taught him to face his fears head-on in its own seemingly traumatic way.

For his new album Fix Your Face, Masego reveled in introspection, gauging when vulnerability was present, but he continually reiterated the fact that being emotional isn’t something that comes easily or naturally to him. Thus, he became a student of those he felt oozed emotion, like Amy Winehouse.

Records like “Breathe,” which he freestyled, and “Sounds Like” were among those that carried an emotional weight for Masego.

“I didn’t see my story as something worth pausing on and singing about,” the musician confessed. “I was trying to play basketball. That didn’t work out, and I started doing music. But when I told my story to a few people that didn’t know me, they were like, ‘Wow, so you went through this life-threatening accident, and it pushed you towards music?’ In Caribbean culture, it’s like, yeah, that’s just life.”

That emotional fortitude also expanded to his featured guests, including Musiq Soulchild, Keyshia Cole, and Lekan. “I wanted to get people that I was both studying and proud of with how they’ve approached vulnerability and not just being cool,” Masego said happily. “Cool is important, but I like the people that touch on certain areas that aren’t as shiny. Musiq is one of the smartest people in the studio. Like, he can just sing what I should play on the saxophone, and it’ll make sense by the end of the session. I’ve always loved his conversational songwriting, which is so difficult to replicate because he’s gonna get across what he wants to say, versus making sure that the melody is the key. [With] Keyshia Cole, she’s a lot more gospel than people let on. I feel like she comes from that Mary J. [Blige] lineage.”

The real challenge for Masego, however, had less to do with him and more to do with the people in the stories he was sharing. “It was difficult to write because I had to be very intentional about what I was saying, and then being okay with exposing parts of my story and my parents’ and whatnot,” Masego confessed. “So, that actually was the challenge.”

In his youth, Masego had dreams of being the next Kobe Bryant. He was certain about that, but when he pivoted to music, he poured all of his athletic drive, passion, and discipline into the art form. “I feel like whatever [the] career, you have to put on the version of you that can accomplish that career at its fullest form,” he shared. “For music, it’s all these feels, emotions, and talking to people. I had to just learn to be a different version of myself, basically.”

Over time, several new versions of Masego have emerged. He became obsessed with legacy, wanted to convert every song he created into sheet music for schools, desired to buy land in several cities, and it was all in an effort to find his purpose beyond being online and onstage. He started to sit with a lot of things, delve into new projects, and find fulfillment. All of which led to the making of Fix Your Face.

“I never wanna make the same album twice,” Masego said matter-of-factly about the album’s inception. The album’s title stems from a common idiom about masking one’s true emotions. For Masego, it’s about being self-aware. “Even to this day, you still have to fix your face based on what can’t be exposed at the time,” he explained. “Saying ‘fix your face’ is being self-aware that you’re masking right now, so just carve out some time to deal with it later.”

He often finds himself caught doing a balancing act. Whether it’s the common ground between being sanctified and secular, stepping out as Micah or Masego, or being transparent over being transactional, he still seeks human interaction even when that desire isn’t reciprocated. In true Gemini fashion, though, he’s accepted that there’s a thin line drawn in the proverbial sand.

Throughout his life, Masego has recalled having two identity crises. The first came in 2020 when his world tour was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “A lot of my identity was [in being] a performer,” he admitted. “When that was stripped away, I had to figure out who I [was] if I’m not performing.” The second came last year when his Los Angeles home was destroyed during the wildfires. “I was really trying to build a life. I was buying custom furniture, doing yard work, and signing up for local whatever,” the 33-year-old reflected. “To see that not be God’s plan for me, I had to spend a lot of time like, ‘Okay, what is my relationship with things?’ I [needed] to get closer to my faith to make sure I’m not moving in a way [where it’s not] my desires and my plan for myself versus God’s plan.”

Masego ended up moving to Brazil, which felt like a “second Jamaica” to him— comparing both countries’ cultures, music, and internal comfort. His current residence, New York City, brings comparable joy. “It’s all familiarity,” he shared. “The first place my father went after Kingston was New York. So, I have family all over New York. I’m looking for comfort to balance out the stress of the industry.”

Coincidentally, he did his best to ensure the final stages of piecing together Fix Your Face weren’t that stressful. With over 150 tracks to choose from, Masego fully credited his team, a.k.a. “a room full of smart people,” who helped make sense of his creative, albeit chaotic, process. “The beauty and the balance of it is they just let me be an artist. I’m just gonna make music and do what I wanna do, and then we can sit and piece together something that is cohesive,” he praised. “We will never run out of music, I can tell you that part, but they knew which songs would convey what I was trying to say.” The album’s cover art channeled the energy of his late grandmother, which was intentional. “For whatever reason, you can show your emotions to your grandmother,” he quipped. “This was the closest to emotion I was expressing back then, so I wanted to kind of explore and honor that a little bit.”

If the version of Masego who made Lady, Lady could speak to the one who made Fix Your Face, the musician joked that they’d probably fight first and reflect later. “Back then, all I cared about were women,” he teased. “I feel like I would admire me, but I wouldn’t change my journey. I would probably try to avoid at least two heartbreaks, though. Just two.”

With this new era, Masego hopes his fans will meet him on this deeper level. His former cool demeanor can remain a thing of the past. Prioritizing tangible connection is why Adele’s Las Vegas residencies consistently sold out, Amy Winehouse’s legacy is rightfully immortalized, and Usher’s Confessions is certified diamond. Fix Your Face is placing Masego in that lexicon of openness, with fans now singing along to the vulnerable soundtrack of his own making.

So, picture yourself at a Masego show in the fall of 2026. The world itself may not feel like the way it has previously. We’re routinely living through unprecedented times, but you’ve pressed play on Fix Your Face— an album that feels like a hug you’re craving, the “come back to yourself” moment you’ve been avoiding, or something else you haven’t quite found the words for yet.

In April 2006, Beyoncé completed 6 months of filming Dreamgirls, and without telling her father/manager or label, she booked rooms at Sony Music Studios in New York. She called up the best producers & songwriters in hip-hop and R&B, and cut an entire sophomore album in two and a half weeks. She told Billboard she had ”so many things bottled up, so many emotions, so many ideas” at that time. And you can hear every one of them on the album. B’Day turns twenty today, and I want to make a case that I’ve been making for years: this might be the best album she has ever made. Not the biggest. Not the most decorated. The best.

Stay with me.

The B’Day sound is the key, so let’s start there. Dangerously in Love was plush, grown, a little polite – a great introduction into solo stardom. B’Day is all elbows. Hungrier, grittier, funkier, louder. Rich Harrison built “Suga Mama” and “Freakum Dress” out of live horns, drums and 1970s funk grit. It’s cut from the same cloth he crafted on “Crazy In Love,” except meaner and hungrier. Swizz Beatz turned “Ring the Alarm” into an air-raid siren with a woman scorned and screaming over it – which is still to this day the most unhinged single in her catalog (they released it second in the US; it rattled radio a little, and good). “Get Me Bodied” is an energetic choreography manual set to drums and chants that will not let you sit down.

Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins put the bass and the hi-hat in your face on “Déjà Vu” and let her count the band in like a bandleader, because that’s what she’d become.

Even the ballads have teeth. “Resentment” is a woman itemizing a betrayal in real time, receipt by receipt. And “Irreplaceable,” the prettiest, most radio-friendly song on the project, is a breakup carried out with the pent-up sass of someone reading you your rights before they set your bags at the curb. To the left, to the left.

Here’s what twenty years of distance lets you finally see clearly. B’Day is where Beyoncé the producer showed up. She co-wrote, co-arranged, and co-produced every track on it, sat in those rooms fourteen hours a day, ran what she called a “healthy competition” between Harrison, Jerkins, Swizz Beatz, and Sean Garrett down the hall from one another, and molded the whole thing with her own hands. Then she shot thirteen music videos in two weeks and bundled them as a visual album in 2007; before any of us had the vocabulary for it.

Everybody credits 2013’s self-titled album as her “rebirth into a true artist” era: the surprise release, the “I’ll put it out when I decide” control, the visuals. But B’Day created that instinct. Self-titled just gave it a bigger budget with more power behind her name. B’Day saw her celebrating her Southern roots loudly and proudly, something that went against the grain of what we saw in pop music at the time. It was her way of honoring her Louisiana roots after the 2005 catastrophic events of Hurricane Katrina. Beyoncé would go on to be known for being a musical and cultural historian of sorts (think: Lemonade, RENAISSANCE and COWBOY CARTER), but it started here on B’Day.

B’Day matters right now for a reason that has nothing to do with nostalgia. We’re living through an R&B/pop moment that’s obsessed with softness: the whispered vocal, the 3 a.m.-text-as-a-song, the beautiful interior. I love that music. But B’Day is a standing reminder that R&B can also be big, loud, funky, percussive, and physical. It’s a reminder that a woman can make an entire album about being furious and passionate, and STILL make you move your whole body in the process. A lot of emerging artists could learn from a record cut this fast, this unbothered, this certain of itself before anyone had a chance to focus-group it and ask the algorithm for help.

And let’s talk about the performances this era gave us while we’re here. 2006’s iconic BET Awards performance of “Deja Vu.” The iconic 2006 MTV VMAs performance of “Ring The Alarm.” 2007’s iconic BET Awards performance of “Get Me Bodied.” The Oprah Show performance of “Listen.” The Beyoncé Experience world tour. This era was Beyoncé firing on all cylinders in every direction she turned. There were several career-defining moments happening weeks apart from each other. Only her.

It won Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 2007 Grammys. It moved 541,000 copies its first week and has gone 5X platinum since. Those are the numbers people strive for their whole careers. But, they’re not the reason I’m still playing it.

Twenty years later and I still put it on when I feel like moving THROUGH a moment, instead of past it. The sheer number of singles and performances and iconic moments that we got from this album era showcase how hungry Beyoncé was to claim that crown she currently holds. On a good day, my honest catalog ranking has it above Lemonade and RENAISSANCE, which I know is a fighting sentence for most and critics, but it deserves its place at the top of her catalog too. It was a rule-breaker in 2006, and I love rule breakers. They make for the best artists.

Today, on the album's twentieth birthday, Beyoncé reissued B'Day as a sprawling deluxe: remastered vault cuts finally set loose ("Creole," “Lost Yo Mind”, “Back Up”, "Can I Watch You" with Pharrell), and a run of Spanish-language reworkings folding in Maluma, a Celia Cruz sample, and a duet built from the late Selena Quintanilla's vocals with her estate's blessing. In the press release, she says she wanted B’Day to be "big, percussive, hard, and up-tempo," to cut through with live instrumentation, because while hip-hop was swallowing up radio at the time while she was fighting to protect the bridges and harmonies at the center of R&B.

So tell me: what’s the B’Day song you’d defend to the death? Mine is “Upgrade U.”

“Limbo” is the state of being stuck, forgotten, or caught in the middle place between two options. When Arin Ray talks about his new five-track EP, LIMBO, released August 11, it becomes clear that the project was never really meant to exist in the way it does now.

There was no carefully mapped-out concept or moment where he decided exactly what he wanted to say. Instead, the EP came from a period when Ray was unsure what came next. After spending roughly two and a half years unable to release music while dealing with his former record label, he found himself somewhere between the career he had built and the one he was still trying to reach.

“I feel like I’m in limbo,” Ray wrote in a note to himself during that time. He underlined it. Looking back at the note later, the title felt obvious.

“It just made so much sense for me,” he said.

LIMBO is a collection of songs born out of that uncertainty. It’s not necessarily a project about his former label, but the emotions surrounding that period found their way into the music. Love, self-worth, uncertainty, healing, and emotional accountability exist throughout the project, but Arin Ray wasn’t sitting down with the intention of creating a cohesive story.

“I just wanted to get my feelings out,” he said.

That feeling is especially present on “Lose,” a song Ray had written much earlier but continued to connect with. The song captures the feeling of fighting against yourself while knowing you don’t want to remain in the place you’re currently in.

“I know I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “I know I don’t want to be in this place.”

That feeling of wanting to move forward while still being unsure of what comes next is almost the perfect representation of the EP.

The project itself came together in pieces. Some of the songs were created years ago. Others came from sessions Ray entered intending to write for someone else. “Cheap Champagne,” “Just Like Everybody” and “Sweet Thang” were created within the last couple of years, during sessions where Ray was primarily expected to be a songwriter.

But Ray kept making records for himself, too. Every session became an opportunity to create something, even when he had no idea where the music would eventually end up. “I don’t know where this is gonna land,” he recalled thinking. “But hey, let’s do it.”

That uncertainty followed the project all the way through its creation. “It was really not too much cohesiveness,” Ray said. “It just all kind of works for the limbo thing.”

There’s something fitting about an EP created without a strict blueprint becoming a project about being stuck somewhere between places. Ray describes the songs as coming from different versions of himself, periods, and mindsets.

Ray recently revisited “Lose,” adding new production, including a bassline and a funkier groove toward the end. It’s one of the places where the artist he was and the artist he’s becoming meet in the middle.

That evolution has been happening throughout Ray’s career.

From Platinum Fire to Phases, Phases II, Phases III and Hello Poison, his music has continued to change. But according to Ray, the most consistent part has always been himself.

What has changed is his understanding of what he actually wants to make.

Earlier in his career, Ray admits he sometimes worried too much about what people expected from him. What would become the hit? What would make the label money? What did an R&B artist supposedly need to sound like?

At one point, he felt like he needed to lean into being an overly sexual R&B crooner because that was what he thought people wanted. Eventually, he realized he was trying to fit himself into a version of R&B that didn’t represent all of him.

“I felt like I got lost in certain places because I was worried about the wrong thing,” he said.

Now, Ray sees himself as more than just a singer. He writes. He produces. He collaborates. He experiments.

“I feel like I’m a hybrid of all of those things,” he said.

His work as a songwriter for other artists played a major role in helping him figure that out. Writing for different artists taught him what worked for them, but it also showed him what didn’t feel natural when he tried to apply those same approaches to himself.

That realization pushed him toward a sound that felt more personal.

“I always wanted to kind of be sonically different and push the pace with the breakbeats and the sounds,” he said.

LIMBO, in that sense, feels like a transition. It isn’t necessarily the definitive statement of where Ray is going, but it gives him a chance to look at what he’s been through, put music behind it and finally let it exist outside of him.

Although with a new EP out, he’s already thinking about what comes next. Ray’s upcoming album, which is still being completed, will be approached differently. After releasing LIMBO, he now has a clearer understanding of what he wants to give listeners and what he wants to challenge himself to create.

“This next album is gonna be thoroughly through and through me. Spiritually, creatively,” he said.

That creative freedom has also changed the way Ray thinks about R&B. For him, the genre doesn’t need to return to one specific era to be considered authentic. While he grew up on ’90s R&B, he doesn’t believe the genre should be trapped there.

“Rhythm and blues is not just one thing,” he said.

He sees the current landscape as an opportunity for different sounds to coexist. R&B can evolve without losing its identity.

Ray also pushes back against the idea that R&B is dead. "There are people with, you know, 200 followers that are probably killing some of the best artists out here,” Ray said, “You just don’t know.”

For him, the problem isn’t necessarily a lack of talent. It’s that listeners don’t always look beyond what they’re being presented. Still, he doesn’t want R&B to simply recreate the past. He’d rather see artists continue to coexist while pushing the genre in different directions.

Ray points to the range of artists currently working in and around R&B as evidence that the genre is far from finished. For him, the ability for different sounds and artists to exist simultaneously is part of what makes the current moment exciting.

Arin Ray is taking LIMBO on tour through New York, Washington, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Mesa, Los Angeles and Sacramento. Performing the project gives him a chance to experience the songs differently, surrounded by the people who connected with them. Of all the songs on the EP, “Lose” is the one he’s most excited to bring to the stage.

“I really want to just catch a vibe with that groove and feel it,” he said.

For an artist who spent years unsure of whether some of these songs would ever see the light of day, hearing an audience sing them back is its own kind of release.

Ray didn’t create the project knowing exactly where he was going. He created it while trying to figure that out. He’s learning patience. Learning to stay present. Learning that he can’t control every part of his life or the actions of other people. Most importantly, he’s learning not to let the things that didn’t work define what happens next.

“I’m just trying to see life through God’s faithfulness instead of my failures,” he said.

LIMBO may have been created in the middle of uncertainty, but Ray doesn’t sound like someone who plans on staying there.

Jamari Shelton is a Chicago-based entertainment writer and pop culture enthusiast covering breaking celebrity news, television, film, reality TV, and the internet moments everyone can’t stop talking about. She recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and is passionate about telling stories that inform, entertain, and spark conversation.

Cleo Sol is returning at a moment when her music feels more necessary than ever. Her first album in three years is now here: Gentlewoman, released August 20, 2026.

R&B and soul music has been experiencing a renewed cultural presence lately, with new artists making waves while listeners increasingly gravitate toward music that feels intimate, vulnerable, and human. In a music landscape that often rewards whoever can make the most noise, Cleo Sol has built her career around doing almost the exact opposite.

With Gentlewoman, Cleo has another opportunity to show us why her approach to music has maintained such a devoted audience despite her limited public presence and the relatively long gaps between her projects.

In an interview with Zane Lowe about Gold, an album released in 2023, she explained that every song became a relationship with God and an expression of gratitude. She admitted that she wasn’t even sure she wanted to release the album because it felt so emotionally exposed, describing the project as “so heart-opening.”

Cleo Sol’s Evolution

Cleo Sol's deep, soulful talent is apparent throughout her catalog, from Rose in the Dark to Mother, Heaven, and Gold. Critics have consistently pointed to the intimacy of her work. The New Yorker, writing about Mother, described Sol’s compositions as gentle and intimate, emphasizing the album’s exploration of motherhood and the relationship between mothers and daughters.

Cleo prides herself on talking about things that are difficult to make beautiful. Trauma, parenthood, even life.

Mother, released in 2021, is perhaps the clearest example. The album examines motherhood from multiple directions: Cleo as a mother, Cleo as a daughter, and Cleo trying to understand the woman who raised her. The New Yorker described the album as a gentle and intimate exploration of the cyclical nature of motherhood and the lessons passed between generations.

But Cleo doesn’t romanticize that relationship.

On “23,” she acknowledges her mother’s sacrifices while also confronting the ways her mother failed her. Pitchfork stated it as, “One of the album’s best and most nuanced songs…” highlighting how Cleo manages to hold her mother accountable while still extending grace and understanding. The album’s opening song, “Don’t Let Me Fall,” immediately connects motherhood with inherited pain. Cleo sings about a mother who “never had time to unpack your trauma,” connecting the emotional baggage of one generation to the next.

Before Mother, before Heaven, before Gold, there was Rose in the Dark. And personally, this is the Cleo Sol album I keep coming back to. “When I’m In Your Arms” has to be one of my top favorites.

Released on March 27, 2020, Rose in the Dark arrived at a strange moment in music history. The world was shutting down, people were being forced inside, and suddenly an album built around self-love, spirituality, vulnerability, and perseverance felt almost perfectly timed. Cleo herself wasn’t even sure if it was the right moment to release it.

In a post shared around the album’s release, she explained that she had been going back and forth about putting music out that year, but ultimately reminded herself that the project was “bigger than me” and that she was simply a ‘vessel’. She wanted the album to uplift people, move them, or simply be something they could have playing in the background while everyone was trying to navigate an uncertain moment.

A New Era

With Cleo’s new album now released, she’s about to grace the world with an entirely new journey of her own. She recently revealed on Instagram that she welcomed her second child with her husband and producer partner, Inflo. In a teaser clip announcing the album, a snippet was included.

What makes this era especially interesting is that Cleo isn’t returning as the same woman who made Rose in the Dark. Since that album, she has become a mother, released Mother, explored faith and self-worth on Heaven and Gold, and continued building a body of work centered on the complicated process of becoming more comfortable with yourself.

There has always been a deeply introspective side to R&B. From Marvin Gaye asking what was happening to the world to Lauryn Hill questioning love, identity and spirituality, the genre has never been afraid of looking inward.

Heaven, for example, was described by The Guardian as a collection with “hard lessons, personal growth and ways to cope,” while Pitchfork noted that the album continues Cleo’s exploration of faith and self-love with a greater sense of ease and confidence.

Now, with Gentlewoman, Cleo is extending that conversation of healing and personal growth deeper within contemporary soul music.

What happens when you finally learn how to speak life into yourself?

Jamari Shelton is a Chicago-based entertainment writer and pop culture enthusiast covering breaking celebrity news, television, film, reality TV, and the internet moments everyone can’t stop talking about. She recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and is passionate about telling stories that inform, entertain, and spark conversation.

On August 1, 1981, MTV launched on TV screens for the first time, opening with the words, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” followed by The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” At first, the network was heavily centered on rock music, but over the next decade it became one of the most influential forces in popular culture—and eventually, a very important home for Black music.

For R&B, that transformation was huge. Because the music video wasn’t simply a way to promote a single. It became another place for an artist to perform.

You could hear the record on the radio, but MTV gave you the opportunity to see the artist’s world. What they wore. How they moved. Who they were supposed to be. What their neighborhood looked like. What kind of love they were singing about. Whether they were glamorous, rebellious, mysterious, sexy, political, funny, or all of the above.

And during MTV’s golden years, R&B artists understood that the camera could be just as powerful as the microphone.

The Problem: MTV Wasn’t Built for Black Music

It’s easy to look back at MTV now and remember it as this universal music institution, but that’s not how it started.

The network’s early programming was heavily focused on rock, and Black artists struggled to get the same exposure as their white counterparts. In early 1983, the MTV playlist reportedly had around 60 videos, with only a handful from Black artists. Even as Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” climbed the pop charts, MTV initially resisted putting the video into rotation. Michael Jackson was already a massive star, but MTV’s reluctance to embrace Black artists meant that his success on the network wasn’t guaranteed.

When “Billie Jean” finally entered heavy rotation in 1983, it became the first video by a Black artist to receive that level of exposure on the network. Jackson followed it with “Beat It,” and then came “Thriller,” which completely changed the expectations surrounding what a music video could be.

Thriller reportedly cost around $1.1 million and ran roughly 14 minutes—an outrageous investment for a promotional video at the time.

Whitney Houston’s experience with MTV demonstrates just how much the network’s relationship with R&B had changed—and how much work was still left to do.

Houston’s early video for “You Give Good Love” was reportedly rejected by MTV because executives considered it too R&B-oriented. Houston later recalled that MTV eventually had no choice but to play “Saving All My Love for You” because of the song’s enormous success.

Then came “How Will I Know.”

In December 1985, the video was accepted by MTV and quickly went into heavy rotation. It became the first music video by a Black female artist to receive that kind of immediate heavy rotation on the network. Her videos became essential parts of her career– “If I Told You That” being my absolute favorite.

That’s the larger story of R&B, Black music, and MTV.

MTV’s Les Garland later recalled that the network would promote its airings in advance, and each broadcast created a ratings spike. MTV had discovered something important: people would tune in specifically to watch a music video.

When R&B Took Over the Screen

R&B’s women started creating some of the decade’s most recognizable visuals.

En Vogue, SWV, Xscape, Total, Destiny’s Child and TLC all understood that the music video could establish an entire group’s personality before the audience even knew all of their names.

SWV’s “Right Here” and “Weak” presented the group as young, stylish and effortlessly cool. Their debut It’s About Time became one of the defining R&B records of the early ‘90s, and their visual presence helped translate that sound to television.

And then there was TLC. TLC understood MTV probably better than almost anybody. “Waterfalls” won Video of the Year at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, along with three other awards. The GRAMMY Museum has described TLC as the defining R&B act of MTV’s “second generation,” specifically pointing to the group’s ability to combine dramatic storytelling with striking performance visuals.

The MTV Video Music Awards Told the Story

Mary J. Blige’s early music videos helped establish the visual identity of hip-hop soul. “Real Love,” “You Remind Me,” “Love No Limit” and “Be Happy” weren’t trying to make Mary look like some untouchable pop star. They branded her as the relatable girl from around the way Black people of all backgrounds could see themselves in.

By the second half of the ‘90s, R&B music videos were getting sleeker, stranger, and more futuristic. “Are You That Somebody?” became one of the defining examples of late-’90s R&B video culture. The video premiered on MTV in 1998 and eventually became MTV’s most-played video for the week of September 20–27 that year. Complex later praised the video’s choreography and Aaliyah’s clothing as revolutionary for the era.

And that choreography mattered. That became one of the defining characteristics of late-’90s R&B videos. People watched these videos and immediately wanted to try the dance themselves. VH1’s retrospective of ‘90s R&B choreography specifically highlights “Are You That Somebody?” alongside videos from Usher, Monica, Next and Mýa as examples of the decade’s dance-heavy visual culture.

By the late ‘90s, MTV’s own awards were reflecting just how dominant R&B had become.

The Best R&B Video category included artists like D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Toni Braxton, Brandy, Monica, Aaliyah, Usher, K-Ci & JoJo and Lauryn Hill across the decade.

The MTV Identity

After MTV, the image became part of the song’s identity.

You couldn’t hear “Real Love” without remembering Mary J. in those visuals. You couldn’t hear “Are You That Somebody?” without thinking about Aaliyah and that choreography. You couldn’t hear “Untitled” without remembering D’Angelo staring directly into the camera.

It made the visuals inseparable from the music. MTV’s TRL and BET’s 106 & Park became staples in every millennial music lover's life. And eventually, that would change the way artists approached albums altogether. Because once artists and labels realized that a song could have a new life by having its own visual world? It was nothing but magic.

Jamari Shelton is a Chicago-based entertainment writer and pop culture enthusiast covering breaking celebrity news, television, film, reality TV, and the internet moments everyone can’t stop talking about. She recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and is passionate about telling stories that inform, entertain, and spark conversation.

Eric Aldwin Bellinger Jr. has come a long way since his career jump-started with 2014’s “I Don’t Want Her.” A Grammy-winning songwriting career and roughly 45 projects later, the crooner’s decades of hard work are about to pay off with what many will consider to be his magnum opus.

Bellinger’s eponymous new album is his Thriller and Confessions, all rolled into one. The crooner was already placed on a certain pedestal when his new album cover art featured that signature R&B lean, but pairing that with a self-titled album? None of this should be taken lightly. Bellinger peeled back the layers of himself as a father, husband, son, and artist, and it only happened because he’s now just discovering those parts for himself. The confidence that stemmed from that brave “self-healing” was boosted, thanks to his manager, Lee Villegas, who helped him “attack those different types of song concepts.”

He explained, “I’ve never had this album. Now I’m feeling like people are gonna be able to have some ammo to champion the movement.”

For the bulk of his career, that “movement” has been independent, which led to longevity and success. However, this new era comes with new partners and a new label, Berry Gordy’s legendary Tamla/Motown imprint and Rodney Jerkins’ Evolve Music Group. “I’m commanding and demanding what’s rightfully mine without saying a word,” Bellinger noted. “I didn’t wanna sign too early, but I felt like it was just the right time where I had been in rotation and still had just enough relevance. So, I was like, ‘Now let me strike while the iron is hot.’ I never looked at it like I was competing, but now I wanna go No. 1. I wanna get four Grammys. There’s just things that need to be plugged in in order for you to really maximize as an artist out here because these big artists have a powerhouse behind them.”

Despite all that’s brewing around him, he admits that he made this album for himself. “I saw an interview where Kendrick Lamar said music is supposed to be artistic expression and that couldn’t be more on the nail of what this album is,” said the father of two. “These are my experiences and my stories that I really wasn’t planning on sharing with anybody. ‘Thank You For Telling Me No,’ ‘Heavy Is The Crown,’ some of these are like burdens that maybe it’s like you wanna bury, but in making them songs and giving them life, it’s just dope because I’m getting more listeners who are connecting with me.”

THE ALBUM

Eric Bellinger (out on August 21, 2026) will arguably become the best album in his catalog, and just like his past releases, it’ll all make sense later. It’s been nearly a three-year journey, marking the longest process to make an album of his. That was because he wanted to sit with each producer when their schedules aligned. He worked with Oak Felder, Troy Taylor, Harmony Samuels, Khris Riddick-Tynes, Antonio Dixon, and more. One particular track, “Closure,” reminded us of a hybrid between Usher’s “Confessions” and Brandy and Wanya Morris’ “Brokenhearted.”

On its conception, Bellinger explained, “When we were writing it, me and Harmony actually had a long conversation. I was like, ‘Man, I have to buckle down on my truth.’ For me, when I fell in love and me and my wife got reacquainted, you just go. When you find that one, you know. There’s really no other way to say it. I had to just go guns blazing. Anybody that I was talking to or dealing with at the time, I didn’t say, ‘Hey, so I wanted to let you know.’ I didn’t do that. I guess you could say [this is] like an apology, just for leading anyone on ever. As a man, even going back and just cleansing any uncertainty.”

The hardest song to write for the 42-year-old, though, was “Just Like You,” a heartfelt tribute to his late mother. It was initially called “To This Day” and spoke to his ongoing grief. However, Villegas challenged him to go deeper, and he wound up celebrating his mother instead of mourning her.

Overall, the album will cater less to commercial success. “We didn’t go for any singles,” Bellinger revealed. “Like, normally I’m like, ‘What’s the single? We need to up the BPM. We need to make sure we got something for the radio, something for the club.’ This time it was like, ‘No. Which emotion did we not tackle? Did we tackle all the emotions? All right, we good.’”

With his emotions at the forefront, Bellinger is looking forward to connecting with fans more in depth as well when he tours the album next year. “The plan is to be able to perform the whole thing so they can experience Eric Bellinger in its entirety,” he quipped.

It’s also the first album where he has no co-writers or featured artists.

“It was almost like, to me, no one could be a part. Not this time. Maybe remixes, but this initial drop needs to be people learning me for real,” he noted, adding that his new home under Tamla/Motown had something to do with that decision. “With it being under Motown, I’m gonna do real music. I’m gonna really sing. I’m finna do everything. You think of the other artists that dropped on this label like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, and now Eric Bellinger. I’m with such perfect company for what I’m trying to do and the legacy that I’m trying to leave behind.”

Bold Enough To Plant The Seeds

In terms of his own legacy, it’s bigger than his wife La’Myia and children, Elysha and Eazy. Bellinger believes “it’s being bold enough to plant seeds, but being okay with not seeing them blossom.”

He shared candidly, “I’m in a place where I know what needs to be done, and I’m gonna do it whether I get to reap the benefits or not. That’s for the cause of music. For the betterment of artist development, I’m willing to stand in the gap and help out 45 artists, whether it’s other artists that I’m writing for, my artists signed to my label, artists that are just looking to me as their mentor, people on Instagram hitting me for a DM.”

Having a record like “Heavy Is The Crown,” Bellinger opened up about the pressure associated with being “Eric Bellinger.”

Looking back on his career trajectory, he’s grateful for a humble albeit meteoric beginning. With “I Don’t Want Her,” Bellinger attained immediate success and admittedly didn’t know what to do with it. “I had a long gap where I was actually pursuing those things again, and I was like, ‘Oh, it ain’t as easy. I thought you could just drop a song.’ It’s not how it goes,” he reflected. “So, it taught me to appreciate what I felt. God gave me a sampler of what I could expect and what was to come. I’m glad I got to feel that because it sustains you and gave me enough ammo to push to where it could become reality.”

The RNB Tour

Bellinger is currently on the road with Usher and Chris Brown for their joint R&B Tour. He’d been in conversation with both men about opening for their respective tours in the past, but it never panned out. Like most things in his career, however, this redirection was him “being preserved and being protected” because “this time with them coming together, it’s just larger than life.” It also helps promote his own wave properly because he’s got the machine ready to “capitalize and maximize” this opportunity.

He further nudged that this moment with the men of R&B is long overdue.

“We need it. We’ve needed it for a long, long time,” Bellinger explained. “I feel like rappers come together. I even feel like the ladies of R&B come together. I think right now it’s showing so much unity that it’s putting R&B in a space where it’s cool again, and everybody wants to do it. For us to be on tour? We’re the runners. We’re the soul singers. It’s been too long where people say, ‘Runs don’t matter. Soul don’t matter. You can just put a vibe-y, airy vibe on [everything.] Impress me, bruh.”

The evolution of Eric Bellinger has impressed us undoubtedly. This “honesty hour,” as he called it, will hopefully open up some hearts and allow people to understand that it’s not as “easy” as you may think to be Eric Bellinger. His legacy is cemented, confirming that his name will live on far beyond a catchy hit or viral moment.

Genia tried to make cool music in the past. Cool in the contemporary sense of I don’t need anybody, f*ck love, I’m good over here. But it wasn’t working. “I was making music with that subject,” she says, “and it just wasn’t correlating with who I am.” The problem was simple: Genia actually likes love. A lot. “I actually do care about love, and I am actually very intense with my love,” she says. “There’s no in between. I take my love to the max. It’s all or nothing.”

That realization became Intense Lover, a new EP from the Def Jam-signed singer that arrives at a moment when emotional detachment feels like a prerequisite for cool. Genia has chosen the opposite stance. She’s making records about wanting somebody, missing somebody, saying too much, feeling too much. The kind of stuff people are often encouraged to keep in journals. She put it on wax instead. “I know it may not be the most, like, cool thing to do,” she says. “But it’s the most honest thing for me.”

Honesty, as it turns out, has been pretty good for her. The song that unlocked the project, “Miss Your Touch,” wasn’t even supposed to be the beginning of anything. Genia made it on a random day last year, essentially as an emotional release, with no big strategy behind it. She sat on it for a few months, teased it, and watched it take off. Her reaction was less I knew it than Wait, what? “This is the most simple song that I’ve ever done,” she remembers thinking. The lyrics were, by her own description, “super mushy and gushy.” People loved it. That surprised her enough to change the plan. “Miss Your Touch” led to “Can’t Wait,” and the project began taking shape around the discovery that maybe the version of Genia she had been trying to suppress was the version people actually wanted.

The rest of Intense Lover expands the palette. The two released singles live comfortably in classic R&B territory, but the EP doesn’t stay there. “Oh Boy” and “No Rulesss” have the glossy, high-energy feel of 2000s radio, while “FuhYuh” digs into something more funky. Across the project, Genia moves through R&B and pop sounds without treating any lane like a permanent address. And she can actually SING over all of it. Genia isn’t interested in becoming an artist whose music works only until the lights come up. She wants the lights. She wants the stage. She wants the whole show.

“I want to be an entertainer,” she says. “I want people to come to my shows and feel like they were entertained the entire way through.” That doesn’t just mean choreography. Genia wants the moments between the choreography to matter too. She wants an audience to leave feeling like they watched a show, not simply a singer perform a collection of songs. “I’m also a creative director,” she says. “So when I make music I can see the show in my head.” The lights. The stage setting. The choreography. The budget, she knows, has some catching up to do. “It’s gonna get bigger for me to be able to do the things I wanna do.” That’s fine. She can see it already.

Her standard is Beyoncé, which you can hear in the powerful presence of Genia’s vocals and in her desire to be known as a performer. Genia grew up in Victorville, California, singing in church, and says she knew from an early age that music was what she wanted to do. By freshman year of high school, the thought had hardened into a plan: she was going to make it a career. Her musical education was partly church, partly the internet, partly obsessive fandom. She would watch Tina Turner performances “back to back” and study them. Prince sits at the top of her list of influences, followed by Beyoncé, Rihanna, Drake, Michael Jackson, Doja Cat, and SZA, among others. The common denominator isn’t necessarily sound. It’s presence. Genia doesn’t just want to make records. She wants to command a room.

That same instinct showed up in the way she approached getting discovered. Coming out of Victorville, she didn’t have a neatly mapped-out industry plan. She didn’t know which label or executive was supposed to change her life. She had a phone, TikTok, and a very specific goal:

So she posted. Every day. Covers, performances, whatever she could make happen with the resources she had. Eventually, a cover of Deborah Cox's "Nobody's Supposed To Be Here" went viral. Multiple people found her. It wasn’t the instantaneous fairy tale she had imagined, and she didn’t sign a deal the next morning. The people who found her came back around a year later, in some cases almost two years later. The delay gave her something she hadn’t expected: time to figure out what she wanted before she had to make a decision. Eventually, she signed with Def Jam at 20.

That was supposed to be the part where the story got easier. It didn’t. At 19, she thought she understood what “signing” meant. “I thought that as you sign, and then you just blow up.” A few years later, she’s a little less naive about the business.

Genia promotes her own music every day. She doesn’t have a social media manager. She pays for promotion herself much of the time. The major-label deal exists, but the fantasy that signing means “the machine” suddenly catapults your career to superstardom does not. “I promote my shit,” she says, then pauses to acknowledge the profanity. “Excuse my language. I promote my shit, like, every day, all day. It’s me on the phone.” That’s Genia in miniature: self-aware enough to know she just swore, but confident enough to mean it.

She’s similarly blunt about the economics of being signed. The advance is not an infinite pile of free money. A couple of years into a deal, some artists can find themselves “damn near independent.” And she wants people to know that. Recently, she posted about everything she’d been dealing with during the year, including losing her apartment. Someone commented on a post, ‘But she’s signed.’

“If only you knew,” Genia says.

She says all of this without sounding bitter or ungrateful. She says it like someone who has finally stopped confusing the appearance of success with the experience of it. “A lot of signed artists may not talk about it,” she says. But it’s a reality for many singers.

A similar lesson came from an unexpected place: Korea. Genia recently traveled through Japan and Korea and worked with K-pop star Mark Lee, exposing her to audiences and artists outside the American bubble. The experience reminded her that there is always another room somewhere, and another person who hasn’t heard the song yet. “There’s a whole other world out there of people that haven’t discovered you or your music,” she says. In an industry where artists are encouraged to release a song, promote it for a few days, and immediately move on, Genia wants to keep pushing. Every day. Until somebody finds it.

Which brings us back to Intense Lover. The EP is about being incapable of feeling halfway. But the more Genia talks, the clearer it becomes that the intensity isn’t limited to romance. She is intense about performing, about promotion, getting better, and making sure the music reaches whoever is supposed to hear it. She even has new music waiting after the EP, including a song she’s particularly excited about, but she’s resisting the temptation to force the next moment. She wants to see what happens with Intense Lover first—who finds it, who loves it without being told to, what grows naturally from there.

Intense Lover is a bold re-introduction to Genia as the vocally charged R&B/pop powerhouse she is—an artist who isn’t afraid to embrace vulnerability, desire and big emotions while bringing the kind of commanding presence that makes a star. She doesn’t know how to care just a little bit. So she cares a lot. She loves hard, performs hard, and promotes her music herself.

And that’s what turns good into greatness.

From Blackstreet expressing the desperation of holding onto love in “Don’t Leave Me” to the tenderness of asking for a kiss in “Before I Let You Go”, yearning has always had a place in R&B. Another classic hit that comes to mind is Tank’s “Please Don’t Go” and how it captures the feeling of begging for forgiveness, and let’s not forget Anthony Hamilton gave us one of the most recognizable examples of longing with his plea for Charlene to come home.

And yearning has never been limited to men. Women in R&B have also given us the courage to hear what it sounds like when a heart is open. Jazmine Sullivan introduced herself with “Need U Bad”, a vulnerable expression of wanting and needing her lover back. Tweet shared the same honesty in “Complain,” saying that if her lover would just return, she wouldn’t complain at all. And we can go all the way back to Anita Baker’s “I Apologize”, whose powerful vocals and lyrics reminded us that admitting mistakes and opening your heart is also an act of love.

However, yearning in R&B music is not just about begging. It’s about revealing the truth of your heart, embracing exposure, taking risks, and having the courage to say what you want and need, and even to admit when you are wrong. Openness is what allows R&B lovers to see themselves and connect it to their own experiences. Love isn’t easy, but love can be healing when two people are willing to fight for each other, remain open, and refuse to hide their true feelings.

Many feel that emotional vulnerability and yearning are becoming a lost art in today’s music. Today’s music can feel more toxic, self-serving, emotionally distant, and more closed off. It has also become more sexually driven, sometimes without the emotional connection or conversations about building intimacy mentally, emotionally, and spiritually before physically.

Caleb Minter, an R&B artist from Bolivar, Tennessee, now based in Los Angeles, believes we have lost something important: the ability to communicate with each other. For him, it’s important to create music that gives us the courage to feel our emotions, allowing it to be a bridge to a deeper understanding of one another. During my conversation with Caleb, it became clear that his purpose extends beyond writing songs and creating music. It’s rooted in his faith and his desire to help restore love's true intention. It’s evident that for him, music should reflect honesty, tenderness, devotion, and the willingness to show up fully. “People don’t go the extra mile. I want to bring back music that brings back going the extra mile”, Caleb shares.

In Caleb’s new single, “Southern Love”, he’s not just bringing us back to the art of yearning; he’s introducing the world to a culture. Southern Love is an experience. It’s a love that is generous, devoted, hospitable, protective, soulful, and reflective. It is shaped by honoring heritage, family, and community. Caleb’s rich, bold, and heartfelt vocals bring those qualities to life in this record. His voice pulls on our heartstrings and invites us into a story that moves us and draws us closer to one another. The song makes you want to slow down and be patient, like enjoying a nice glass of lemonade on a hot Southern summer day.

Tierra Whack recognized that same emotional resonance when she reviewed Caleb’s “Southern Love” NPR Tiny Desk submission. Her response echoed what R&B music lovers have been searching for: music that feels familiar, intentional, and reflective of the heart. “...he just gives me a feeling like we’ve been missing”, she shares. She compares Caleb’s artistry to Musiq Soulchild, an artist also known for creating music that encourages openness and raw emotion. Tierra adds, “the song highlights simple times, good food, and comfort. You just can’t beat that”.

Caleb’s not new to being transparent and using music to help himself and others heal, learn, and grow. Recognizing the power of his gift, Caleb shares, “I have a gift of making people feel through song”. That gift became evident in 2015 with his record “Gone Too Soon”, where he walked listeners through tragedy and the process of grieving after losing his brother to gun violence in 2014. “That’s when I felt like I had something to say”, he reflects. Caleb identifies this moment as the moment that changed the trajectory of his life.

In 2019, Caleb’s journey led him to Los Angeles, where he continued to expand his gift by joining Kanye West’s Sunday Service choir. The move challenged him in new ways, but it also revealed another layer of his purpose. While Caleb shares, “sometimes I feel like I’m on an island by myself. I miss the Southern hospitality, culture, and food”, he reminds us not to focus on the place, but to focus on the purpose.

That purpose has carried Caleb across stages and experiences, from honoring Jon B by performing his hit songs in front of the legend himself to performing during Major’s “Why I Love You” 10 Year Anniversary Tour stop in Memphis. In 2023, his hometown of Bolivar, Tennessee, honored him with Caleb Minter Day, celebrated every July 1st. These blessings and achievements also reflect Caleb’s heart and his desire to inspire youth to live wholeheartedly and with divine direction.

Following the release of “Southern Love”, we can expect Caleb to continue bringing us back to the roots of who he is: his church foundation, his soulful singing, and his deep love for R&B music that keeps us yearning. That same intentionality will continue on his upcoming EP, Love Letter from the South, with the next single, “Transparency”. The record explores the many layers people carry into love, from trauma experienced through church, America, and childhood. The song highlights that we are all layered, and to build healthy relationships, we must be willing to be transparent and to understand the layers and experiences each person brings to a relationship.

Through this EP, Caleb hopes listeners will truly grasp what Southern living and loving represent. As Caleb states, “I want people to want to go to the South. I want women to want a man from the South”.

From live performances across Los Angeles to performing at weddings around the world, you can continue to experience Caleb operating in his gift and calling people back to a place of presence and togetherness. Yearning isn’t a lost art, and through Caleb’s artistry, it will continue to live on.

Syd, Steve Lacy, and Matt Martians of The Internet, through their appearance on the NYT’s Popcast, have confirmed that the band’s next studio album is coming out next year. The excitement with the announcement, being that it would be 9 years since their last release, Hive Mind, has stirred up ideas of what the band’s new sound could be in the forthcoming project.

Continuing to build anticipation for this new project were the releases of Syd’s and Steve Lacy’s new solo projects, Beard and Oh yeah?, respectively. These two album releases can make fans feel more personally connected, as they showcase the artists’ individual growth and creativity across genres, adding depth to their discographies.

Syd’s Beard, her third studio album and first project in four years, feels like a warm sunrise. An embrace of R&B mixed with stylized production influences from smooth bossa nova, bouncy afrobeat-esque sounds, and more of a realized version of Syd’s artistry.

The first track on the album, “Walls,” opens listeners to a world of crooning and yearning that makes you feel like she is directly spilling her feelings to you from song to song.

In an NPR interview about the project, Syd says she feels like she’s now fully “blooming” in her 30s. Through the music on this album, it feels like a flower blooming into a new era and a new perspective for listeners to peek into. Some of my personal favorites on the album were “Callin” featuring Blu June, “Always Be Mine” featuring Jordan Ward, “Bad Guys”, and “Any Time” featuring James Fauntleroy.

If I had to pick a number one favorite off the project, I’d have to say “Any Time” would take that spot. The collaborative production from Syd and Raphael Saadiq, the vocal choices from Syd and Fauntleroy, and the songwriting all keyed me into my favorite soft rock-tinged R&B songs from the late 80s into the 90s.

Where Beard feels like a sunrise, Steve Lacy’s Oh yeah? feels like a sunset that’s closing out a coming-of-age movie. Fitting with the inclusion of the first track and title track on the box-office smash “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” soundtrack, leaning more toward a grounded yet psychedelic sound.

The album carries this hypnotic guitar sound and vocal layers across songs like “the feeling” and “pure color,” featuring Erykah Badu. Even singles like “nice shoes”, which got expanded in the best way with “in your world”, and “is it cool?” featuring SZA, sound more colorful in the full context of the project.

“doom”, whose subsequent music video also captures the feeling of the song perfectly, is one of the standouts on the album. A grungy and angsty-toned song with Lacy’s silky vocals across the record, a song that definitely showcases the versatile sounds the album takes listeners on.

Jumping through genres of pop, punk, and alternative r&b, among others, Oh yeah? is another notch in Lacy’s growing artistic belt.

These two projects together also give listeners a slight glimpse of what their combined styles may bring to a new Internet era.

With both artists embarking on new journeys, whether self-assured or still figuring things out as they go, this can also help lay the foundation for how a new group album will situate their sounds, energies, and stories.

Whichever way these artists and the Internet go for their new album, it’s safe to say these new projects from Syd & Steve are great new additions to our musical libraries.

There’s a bargain at the center of R&B that acts as an unwritten rule or truth.

The man sings. He comes apart while he does it. And we love him more for the coming apart — not less, never less. That’s the deal. K-Ci Hailey built a whole career with it. Jodeci put out “Cry For You,” and a generation of grown men learned that the fastest road to forgiveness was to make the begging sound expensive. Tank inherited it. Tyrese inherited it. Keith Sweat, Sisqo, Boyz II Men, the list goes on. Every live show where somebody drops to a knee is that same contract being honored in public, thirty years later, by men who were teenagers when it was signed.

Kenyon Dixon knows the contract. Kenyon Dixon is the contract, or has been, for a decade. The guy you call when you want the harmony stacked right, the writer other artists borrow their best from, the living argument that quality R&B never went anywhere.

So the most interesting thing he’s ever done is rethink it. “No Jodeci” landed a few weeks ahead of the new album EGO RUINS EVERYTHING, and it is not a hard-guy record, though it might get filed that way by people who only heard the hook. It’s a man narrating his own vulnerabilities in real time.

“It’s about saying, like, you’re admitting to wanting to be vulnerable,” Kenyon says, “and admitting to all of the things that would make you a yearner. And saying, ‘Yeah, I miss you. I miss these times. I love you. I wish things could be different. However, I’m in a space right now where I’m getting a lot of validation, and people expect me to be a certain thing. So unfortunately for the both of us, I can’t really give you what you know you deserve right now, because I prefer to be ‘the man’ and play into what other people think.’”

He pauses. Then he puts the whole album in perspective in one single sentence. “My ego won’t let me be as honest as we know that I should be.”

Somewhere online this week, somebody is arguing that R&B lost its yearning. That the men of R&B aren’t singing like they used to. Kenyon made a record about why. But he also shows you that if you pay close enough attention, everything that people are searching for is right in front of their faces.

Putting Ego In The Backseat

Here is where a lesser album would go: ego is bad, kill your ego, healing arc, credits.

Kenyon isn’t interested in that. He gave the record a title you can print on a shirt. He’ll tell you flat out that EGO RUINS EVERYTHING is “the hook,” and he says the word the way a songwriter says it, meaning the part that gets you in the door — but the thesis underneath is more complex than a t-shirt ever could be.

“I think ego has its benefits,” he says. “It protects you. It helps you navigate through a bunch of crazy stuff. So ego itself is not terrible.”

Then the line I’ve been repeating all week:

That’s not self-help. That’s a man with life experience, who has been independent his entire career, has five Grammy nominations, and has had to be his own hype man every single morning for ten years — telling you that the voice which got him out of bed is the same voice that will wreck his relationships if he ever hands it the keys.

Twenty-one tracks. Zero features. The new album follows a character who gets asked one question in the opening four seconds (“when was the last time you were happy?”) and spends 49 minutes finding out how to articulate that answer.

The Detour That Paid Off

This album was supposed to arrive two years ago. Then Terrace Martin called about making something together, and EGO RUINS EVERYTHING got put on pause. Come As You Are came out instead, and picked up two Grammy nominations, and Kenyon says in hindsight that getting delayed was the best thing that could have happened — not because of the hardware, but because of what it did to his listeners’ ears.

“Come As You Are was a lot different,” he says. “There was a very progressive R&B, jazz, hip-hop influence, which is something fans hadn’t heard from me — but it was something that I’m well-versed in. It’s just that I had never done any music like that. So following up with a project like this, they’re now already prepared for the fact that they know that I can be versatile.”

Read that again, because he’s being gracious about something that bothers him, and bothers most artists to a degree. Being the “classic R&B guy” is a beautiful cage. The audience arrives already loving you. They also arrive with a list of demands.

“People come to me for a certain caliber of R&B,” he says. “I love that they know to come to me for a certain quality of music. But then it makes you feel like you can’t explore or make anything else.”

Every great R&B singer eventually meets this dilemma. D’Angelo met it. Musiq Soulchild met it. Mary J. Blige. The ones who survive it are the ones who figure out that their audience’s loyalty is not actually to a sound — it’s to a feeling, and the feeling can be re-housed.

Doing Whatever The Story Required

The real shift on this album isn’t sonic. It’s a rule.

“I told myself that I would do whatever the story required this time.”

Understand who is saying this. Kenyon Dixon arranges vocals. He’s the guy in the room who hears the third harmony nobody else clocked. His reputation is built on craft that musicians can hear, on being unimpeachable; never once turning in something messy.

And he decided the craft doesn’t run the room anymore.

“Usually I’m all about having a body of work and a collection of quality songs that are all about being pleasing to the craft and the ear, and to those who know music,” he says. “This time, I’m not making music to appease musicians. It’s not for people who understand music theory and all this stuff. I just wanna make music that makes sense for the story.” This album is for the casual R&B fan, just as much as the musicians who grew up in church choirs as Kenyon did.

Which is how “THE MAN” exists — a record with a knock and a strut that a lot of his people did not see coming, and which is, full disclosure, the one I’ve told him about being one of my favorites when he sent me the project a couple of months back. His producer Frank Rose sent him the track, and Kenyon says he knew it was needed immediately.

“I already knew what the story was based on what I felt from listening to the production,” he says. “It just felt necessary. I don’t think EGO RUINS EVERYTHING would be the same without that track, because there is a certain swag there that sets everything up nicely.”

The one he keeps coming back to himself is “NIGHTS LIKE THESE (COME THROUGH),” and his reasoning is the most quietly radical thing he said to me. He is a nostalgia artist. He has built entire projects on the study of eras. He is also completely done with nostalgia as impersonation.

“It feels like a record from the early 2000s that’s like Little Brother, or like Slum Village, Q-Tip-esque. It’s in that hip-hop world. Even with where I’ve played around with nostalgia, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to get a record with that feeling.”

For the record, he will fight you about the “best R&B era” conversation. “Even between ‘90s and early 2000s, I’ll fight to the mill to say that I think early 2000s is better. For my own personal reasons.”

Correct answer, incidentally. But that’s a different story.

He’s Done Running

The four RUNNING interludes — a motif that recurs throughout the album, which he explains was meant to let his fans know a bad decision was coming whenever it surfaced — were built the day before he turned the album in.

The original plan was narration by G.G. Townson, an actress and one of his closest friends. She opens the album with the question that haunts the whole thing, and she was supposed to carry interludes throughout. Then he thought about it and realized he’d done something adjacent on The R&B You Love.

“So being in a rush, one, and not having much time, but also trying to be creative, I was like — I’m looking at this as a concept album, and I want it to be cinematic. What’s something that happens in movies?” he says. “I started thinking about a familiar image that you would see repeated throughout a movie. So I said, how do I do that sonically? And I’m like, oh — maybe I just take something that they’ve heard, and we just score it instead.”

But here’s the detail that actually tells you who he is, and most won’t consciously catch it on a first listen.

“It was important to know with the scoring that as that interlude went on throughout the album, the frequency of it changed,” he says. “So by the time you hear it the last time, it’s a lot brighter and lighter. Because now there’s less running. There’s more acceptance instead of running away from it.”

He was under the gun, out of time, improvising the structural spine of a 21-track album — and he still built the emotional arc into the timbre of a thirty-second cue that most listeners will register only in their chest.

That’s the guy. The panic just made him quicker.

So, When Was The Last Time You Were Happy?

The album opens with a woman asking that question. Forty-nine minutes later, the character still hasn’t answered. So I asked him.

He laughed at the contrast, because the truth is the exact inverse of what the record sounds like: he was happy the entire time he made it.

This is the part that separates a confessional record from a constructed one, and Kenyon is careful about it in a way I wish more artists were. We’ve spent a decade demanding that R&B be diaristic — that every song be a receipt, that we name-check the ex we saw on Instagram in months past. He’s pushing back, gently, on behalf of craft.

“There’s still the art of being creative, so you still have to turn that into a story and make it interesting for people,” he says. “Because not everybody’s sole experience is something that people are interested in. So you have to find ways to be like, okay — what would make somebody wanna hear this?”

And then, the line that makes the whole album communal instead of confessional: “My story might be some of your story. It’s some of everybody else’s.”

There Is No Quality Problem in R&B

Ask most people who love R&B this much about the state of R&B, and you get a eulogy. I bring up the fact that some of his peers see R&B as something they need to escape to achieve “bigger” success. Meanwhile, an artist like Kelela (who is far more alternative-leaning than some of her traditional R&B counterparts) treats R&B as home, and treats herself as a champion of the genre.

Kenyon is on the Kelela side of things.

“I think it is unfortunate, because I do think R&B is looked at as lesser than in comparison to the other genres,” he says. “But if we break it down, it really comes to the fact that it has a lack of support. R&B doesn’t get supported as much, so I think people are afraid to have to work a little harder to get the support.”

And the kicker, which every nostalgia merchant should be forced to read aloud:

“Even back in the day, when we talk about how great music was in the ‘90s and 2000s — there was bad music there too. That’s what made the good music so good. You had the contrast. Not everybody was making the music that we love.”

The prescription follows naturally. Protect the weirdos.

“I like to champion original ideas, because what I’ve learned being in this industry is the stuff that they laugh at today will be the thing that’s moving the needle tomorrow. You gotta just kinda let people be creative, because that’s how we keep the genre moving. If everybody is making the same thing, it’s not gonna go anywhere.”

So What Can You Offer Me?

The last time we spoke on the record, he was sitting in on label meetings, thinking about what a major-label future could look like for him.

Today, he is still independent and is one of the more successful independent acts in R&B, thanks to his work ethic, quality music, and willingness to promote himself. I wanted to know what he learned in those rooms.

He isn’t anti-label, and he’s precise about who the machine actually works for. “I think labels are for superstars. So if that’s what your plan is, I think it works for you. I’ve built something so specific that it can get me consistent results for the rest of my life, and I realize I might compromise it by going to a label. Because when I sit in these meetings, and they tell me what they can offer, alot of times it’s stuff that I’ve already gotten myself independently.”

He’s watched the other side of that door too many times to be seduced by it.

“Look how many dope artists we get a project from and never another project,” he says. “They sign to a label, they don’t have proper motion, they don’t understand what it looks like to have to promote their own stuff. And they don’t understand that the labels expect them to still do the work and are hoping that something pops off on its own. And next thing you know, they’re dropped from the label and uninspired, and they don’t wanna make any more music.”

A beat.

“It’s a lot of dope artists that that keeps happening to. So I’m like — yeah, I think I’m good.”

What makes EGO RUINS EVERYTHING a great album for me isn’t the concept; it’s the discipline. A man who could coast on a golden voice instead built a room with doors, put a character in it, and trusted us to notice when the light changed. That’s a harder album to make than a good one, and it’s a better one to live inside — the kind you finish and immediately restart to catch what the interludes were telling you the first time.

A decade in, still independent, Kenyon Dixon keeps earning the respect of everybody in this genre for the least glamorous reason there is. He does the work that most don’t want to do. And then he does more of it.

Hip-hop has always been regional. Atlanta shaped trap music while Chicago pioneered drill. But when it comes to the West Coast, one sound continues to stand above the rest: G-funk.

Defined by buttery synths, deep basslines, talk box vocals, and infectious grooves, G-funk transformed hip-hop in the early 1990s. It captured the sun-soaked streets of Southern California, blending the grit of gangsta rap with the smooth musicianship of ‘70s funk.

While artists like Warren G, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg helped push G-funk into the mainstream, DJ Quik carved out his own lane as one of the genre’s most gifted architects. A rapper, producer, engineer, and multi-instrumentalist, Quik’s music showcased a level of musicianship that continues to influence artists decades later.

What Exactly Is G-Funk?

Short for “Gangsta Funk,” G-funk emerged in the late ‘80s and exploded into the mainstream during the early ‘90s. The genre drew heavily from legendary funk groups like Parliament-Funkadelic, Zapp, The Gap Band, and Ohio Players, sampling or recreating their signature grooves and pairing them with rap flows.

Rather than focusing on aggressive drums or dense production, G-funk prioritized melody. The sound became recognizable through several defining elements:

• Warm synthesizer leads

• Thick, rolling basslines

• Slow-to-midtempo rhythms

• Talk box vocals popularized by Roger Troutman

• Funk-inspired guitar riffs

• Rich harmonies and layered instrumentation

The result was music that could feel smooth, celebratory, reflective, or intimidating—all while keeping listeners locked into mellow grooves.

DJ Quik: The Man Behind the Sound

Although DJ Quik earned recognition as an MC, production has always been his greatest strength.

Unlike many producers of his era who relied heavily on drum machines and chopped samples, Quik approached every record with the mindset of a musician. He played instruments, layered live sounds, and meticulously mixed his records until every kick drum, bass note, and keyboard melody sat perfectly in the mix.

His 1991 debut album, Quik Is the Name, introduced listeners to his signature style. Songs like “Tonite” blended classic funk influences with modern hip-hop production, creating records that sounded polished without losing their street edge.

As Quik’s career evolved through albums like Way 2 Fonky, Safe + Sound, and Rhythm-al-ism, his production became even more sophisticated. Jazz chords, live instrumentation, vocal harmonies, and intricate arrangements became staples of his work, proving that hip-hop production could be just as musically complex as any other genre.

A Lasting Influence

The influence of G-funk extends far beyond the 1990s.

Artists including Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, Tyler, the Creator, YG, and Blxst have all embraced elements of West Coast funk throughout their careers. Whether it’s lush synths, bouncing basslines, or live instrumentation, the DNA of G-funk continues to shape modern hip-hop and R&B.

DJ Quik himself has also remained one of hip-hop’s most respected producers, collaborating with artists across multiple generations while continuing to refine his sound. Many producers still study his mixing techniques, drum programming, and ability to create records that feel both polished and deeply human.

His influence often flies under the radar compared to some of his contemporaries, but among musicians and producers, Quik is frequently mentioned as one of hip-hop’s true perfectionists.

Essential DJ Quik Listening

If you’re just beginning to explore his catalog, these tracks offer the perfect introduction:

• “Tonite”

• “Born and Raised in Compton”

• “Dollaz + Sense”

• “Pitch in on a Party”

• “Safe + Sound”

• “Summer Breeze”

Why G-Funk Prevails

More than thirty years after its rise, G-funk continues to resonate because it was built on timeless musical foundations. Funk has always emphasized groove, rhythm, and musicianship, and producers like DJ Quik translated those qualities into hip-hop without losing their authenticity.

In an era where production trends can change overnight, Quik’s music still sounds remarkably fresh. His records are warm, dynamic, and full of life—qualities that make them just as enjoyable today as they were in the early ‘90s.

G-funk isn’t simply a nostalgic chapter in rap history. It’s one of hip-hop’s richest sonic traditions, and DJ Quik remains one of its finest craftsmen. His music reminds us that sometimes the most powerful records aren’t the loudest. They’re the ones that make you roll the windows down, turn the volume up, and let the groove do the talking.

Although G-funk reached its commercial peak in the ‘90s, its influence never disappeared. Today’s artists continue to reinvent the sound, blending classic West Coast funk with modern hip-hop and R&B.

Blxst has become one of the clearest examples of G-funk’s evolution. Songs like “Chosen” and “About You” lean into the same laid-back California vibes with a new formula for a new generation. Even Kendrick Lamar has paid tribute to the genre throughout his career. Songs from good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp a Butterfly borrow from classic West Coast production while honoring the artists who helped define the region’s sound.

Jamari Shelton is a Chicago-based entertainment writer and pop culture enthusiast covering breaking celebrity news, television, film, reality TV, and the internet moments everyone can’t stop talking about. She recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Broadcast Journalism, and is passionate about telling stories that inform, entertain, and spark conversation.

By the mid-1990s, R&B was reaching a commercial peak. The genre was polished. Vocalists competed through technical precision, powerhouse performances, and immaculate production. Record labels wanted crossover hits. Radio wanted bigger choruses.

Over 30 years ago, one woman dropped out of Grambling State University in Louisiana and dedicated herself to mastering her art full time. In Dallas, Texas, Her cousin, Robert Bradford, sent her some beats that he was working on. Turning a bedroom in their grandmother’s house into a studio, the two created magic. A demo.

That demo was taken to the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, and landed in the hands of Tammy Cobb, the then-manager of Mobb Deep.

That demo sprouted into a hit we now know as Baduizm by Neo soul pioneer Erykah Badu.

For nearly three decades, Badu has existed as more than a singer-songwriter. She’s become a curator of culture, a mentor, a tastemaker, and one of contemporary music’s most influential creative minds. Long before “creative director” became a job title, Badu was building worlds around her music—through fashion, visual art, spirituality, performance, and an unwavering commitment to authenticity.

The Woman Who Changed the Sound of Soul

When Baduizm arrived in 1997, R&B was dominated by polished harmonies, glossy production, and radio-ready love songs. Hip-hop soul was thriving, and mainstream R&B was bigger than ever.

She didn’t sound like anyone else.

More importantly, she didn’t seem interested in sounding like anyone else.

With songs like “On & On,” “Appletree,” “Next Lifetime,” and “Certainly,” Badu blended classic soul, jazz, hip-hop, spoken word, and African musical traditions into something that felt both ancient and futuristic.

When Baduizm was released in February 1997, it arrived at a time when R&B was dominated by polished vocal groups and radio-ready love songs. Then came this 26-year-old woman from Dallas wearing headwraps, burning incense on stage, singing over jazz chords and dusty hip-hop drums like she wasn’t interested in chasing anyone else’s lane.

People didn’t really know what to call it.

The term “Neo soul” was still finding its footing, used to describe a new generation of artists pulling from classic soul while blending jazz, hip-hop, funk, spoken word, and African musical traditions. But even then, Baduizm felt bigger than a genre label. It wasn’t trying to recreate the past—it was reshaping it.

Listeners connected immediately. Baduizm debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, eventually earning triple-platinum certification in the United States. At the 40th Grammy Awards, Badu took home Best R&B Album, while “On & On” earned Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. For a debut album that sounded nothing like what dominated commercial radio, it proved there was an audience hungry for something more adventurous.

Back then, people called it Neo soul because they needed a way to explain this new wave of artists. But nearly thirty years later, the “neo” feels unnecessary. Listen to Baduizm today, and it still refuses to sit still. Some moments feel rooted in jazz. Others borrow from hip-hop, gospel, funk, spoken word, or psychedelic soul. It doesn’t belong to one genre because Badu never believed music had to.

The Badu Effect

If you spend enough time reading interviews with musicians, you’ll notice something interesting. People don’t just talk about collaborating with Erykah Badu, they’ll talk about learning from her.

Long before Baduizm made her a Grammy-winning artist, those around her recognized that she approached music differently. Questlove remembers meeting Badu before the world really knew her, immediately noticing the way ideas seemed to pour out of her.

Badu has built a reputation as the person artists call when they’re stuck creatively—not because she’ll tell them exactly what to do, but because she’ll push them to think differently. Instead of giving answers, she asks questions. Instead of encouraging artists to chase trends, she encourages them to chase themselves.

If there’s one artist who embodies Badu’s philosophy, it’s Solange.

The two have shared a friendship for years, and Solange has spoken openly about her admiration for Badu, calling her an inspiration and someone who showed her what artistic freedom could look like.

“She is mother, she is sister, she is friend, she is auntie, she is chief, she is warrior of many tribes,” Solange said while introducing Badu at the 8th annual Black Women in Music ESSENCE event in 2017. “She is a beautiful reminder that you cannot put us in a box.”

That holistic approach to art echoes what Badu had been doing since the late ‘90s.

Neither artist separates music from identity. Everything matters. The visuals, the clothes, the live performances, even the silence between songs all become part of the story.

Over the years, Tyler, the Creator has spoken about his admiration for Badu and has sought her advice, while Badu has consistently praised his willingness to take risks in venturing into genres. Their mutual respect comes from a shared belief that creativity shouldn’t have boundaries.

Even in a tweet posted in 2012 to X, Tyler shared, “Pronounced Zhane; Brandy; Share My World; Baduism; Faith; Are The Earliest Albums That Shaped Me Musically Today. I Love Them.”

Tyler is known for creating new eras with distinct visual identities. Flower Boy, IGOR, Call Me If You Get Lost, and CHROMAKOPIA, just to name a few. They’re immersive experiences complete with distinct looks, fashion, stage design, and storytelling.

She Made Being “Artsy” Feel Cool

One thing I’ve always loved about Erykah Badu is that she reminded me so much of home. The headwraps, incense, jewelry, all things I saw in the neighborhood in Chicago. Long before social media made “having an aesthetic” part of an artist’s rollout, Badu did it.

I remember flipping through the channels, and I saw the live performance of ‘Tyrone’. It was so magnetic. It was the first time I ever heard of and seen her. Something about her just made me so enticed. It’s like chasing after a butterfly almost.

Maybe that’s why Erykah Badu still feels less like a distant icon and more like that artsy friend who’s always putting you onto something before everyone else catches up.

Jamari Shelton is a Chicago-based entertainment writer and pop culture enthusiast covering breaking celebrity news, television, film, reality TV, and the internet moments everyone can’t stop talking about. She recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and is passionate about telling stories that inform, entertain, and spark conversation.

Nobody in the room is resting because nobody wants to. They’re high off the work itself. This is a city, she reminds me, where if you get sick, you just book an IV drip and keep it moving. She says it like a joke. It’s also a little bit of a warning. By the time the dust settles, she’s got a name for what the making of her latest album entailed: she was romanticizing being a workaholic.

That’s the album right there, tucked inside the process. No sleep in paradise.

But the grind is only half of Naomi, and honestly it’s the less interesting half. The other half is the part where she keeps signing up to be uncomfortable on purpose. Take “Light My Soul,” a song from the new album No Sleep In Paradise. She didn’t like it when it first came together. Too clean, too radio, “too mainstream for me,” she says, and you can still catch the tiny wince in her voice. Naomi came up on music she calls vibey, dark, and ambient, the kind of song you feel in your chest before you can even hum it, so a shiny pop thing felt wrong. Jordan walked her through it. She sat with it a little longer. “Okay, you’re right,” she told him, and now it’s one of her favorites on the record. She’s got a name for that whole sensation; the one where you make the thing that scares you and want to crawl out of your skin doing it. She calls it the ego death.

So let me put you on. The cool thing about Naomi Sharon isn’t just that she can sing, though my God can she. It’s that she walks straight at discomfort, the sleepless kind and the scared kind, and calls it paradise.

Refreshing, She Calls It

First, the new album is genuinely great, and I want to be specific about why. No Sleep in Paradise is her second, out now on OVO, and it follows a debut that critics and fans obsessed over. It’s lush. A little dystopian. Completely unbothered by the genre borders everyone else treats as law.

To understand how far she’s traveled, you have to know where she started sonically. Obsidian, back in 2023, was cinematic and hushed, alternative R&B laced with ambient house and little threads of Afrobeats and Spanish guitar, all of it built to frame that voice, the deep alto that had half the internet reaching for the same comparison. Sade. She’s heard it a thousand times. On No Sleep in Paradise, she does something sly with it. Instead of parking the voice out front and letting it do the heavy lifting, she tucks it into the groove and lets the low end lead more. There’s deep-house shimmer, there’s real soul, and running under all of it is this lounge-at-3-a.m. quality that turns out to matter way more than you’d expect (more on where that comes from in a sec). She built the thing to feel like “three different EPs almost,” and that’s exactly how it plays, drifting from ambient to mainstream-ready to stadium status without ever once stopping being her.

I ask her to describe her own sound, and she doesn’t reach for a genre. She says “refreshing,” then hits you with a challenge. “Who is just R&B nowadays? Even Drake, he raps, but a lot of his songs are pop.” She’s tired of the strict boxes, basically. “We’re so opinionated sometimes,” she says. “Even when I’m dropping something that has more genres on it than just R&B, people think I’m just R&B.” This album is her rebuttal; an expanded palette.

“Try,” the Kaytranada collab, is the one I’ve had on repeat this week. She’s known him for years, ran in the same circles. Somehow, they never talked about music until they finally got in a room last year, and it clicked, Naomi and songwriter Blush chasing it down while Jordan sat in. His fingerprints are all over the groove, and it’s the loosest she has ever sounded, which is saying a lot for a singer whose early reputation was built on control. Then there’s “Miss That,” the dance record, the “this-is-a-new-Naomi” moment, and she knows it. There’s the music video where she’s dancing like a pro, which leads to a small, funny thing she volunteers up. For years, she performed in latex dresses she could barely walk in. On her recent tour run opening for Doja Cat, she essentially decided she needed to be able to move on stage and brought on two dancers. “Try” is now her favorite thing to do onstage.

And then there’s “No Sleep in Paradise” itself, the song where the record quietly says the thing out loud. It reads like an insomnia song, but the insomnia is only the symptom. The city’s asleep, and she’s not. The room clocks the fire coming off her, and still nobody actually sees her. The higher she climbs, the less the ground underneath fits. That’s the whole dystopia tucked inside such a pretty title. Paradise, and she can’t sleep in it. Once you hear how the album was actually made, it sounds less like a complaint and more like a confession.

A Mini Toronto With Turntables

So where does that rooftop-lounge-at-3-a.m. thing come from? Rotterdam, mostly. And a dad with turntables.

Naomi Sharon Webster was born in Rotterdam to an Aruban father and a Dutch mother, which means the Caribbean and the North Sea have been fighting for the aux in her head her entire life. She grew up in what she describes as a micro Toronto or New York, industrial and urban and stacked with culture, and above all with what she keeps calling talent development. Her high school let you pick a theater class or an art class your very first year. The city, in her words, “kind of allowed me to do whatever I wanted.” And early on, she wanted all of it. She was a serious track-and-field kid, convinced she was headed to the Olympics, until theater got its hooks in her.

Her home was musical in a way that creates taste at an early age. Her cousin did musical theater. Her mom sings. Her dad DJ’d: “a producer first, and a writer.” He put her on to deep house and lounge music, Buddha-Bar, Café del Mar, and that zen is still the water she swims in. It’s why she works with Alex Lustig. It’s why her records breathe. Underneath all of it sits a broad palette she rattles off when I ask about influences: Tina Turner, Whitney, Stevie, Sting, Eva Cassidy, Babyface, Richard Bona. World music. Everything, honestly.

By four years old, she was lip-syncing Stevie Wonder with zero English, “making up my own type of English,” she laughs, comparing it to Simlish. She picked up the language partly through the music, watching TV in the original audio with Dutch subtitles running under it. Before she knew what the words meant, she already knew what they were supposed to feel like.

The Ensemble Was Never the Full Plan

You do not get to Naomi Sharon, the recording artist, without going through Naomi Sharon, the theatre performer. Before OVO, she spent years on Dutch stages, deep in the machinery of musical theater. Three years in The Lion King, playing Shenzi, eight shows a week. Dreamgirls. Later, Tina. She even did a run on The Voice of Holland early on, an experience she’s since described as the thing that taught her she wasn’t ready yet, that she was so busy panicking about whether the coaches would turn their chairs that she forgot to actually be present.

Somewhere in there, she went through vocal surgery, and the way she tells it, recovery cracked something open. If she was going to do something with real stakes for her own body and her own health, she decided, it had to be a decision she made for herself, not one a theater company made for her. That’s the seed of everything that follows.

For the longest time, she assumed making your own music meant you needed a record label and permission. Then she found out you didn’t. She dropped her first song in 2019, made it in GarageBand on her phone, took it into a studio to get it done properly, and dropped it independently.

“I was kind of done with working for a company,” she tells me. “If I wanna work, I wanna do it for myself.” Then comes the line she immediately worries sounds arrogant, but it’s just honest truth. “I saw myself much bigger. I was part of something, and I wanted to have a show that was about me. You don’t wanna be part of an ensemble. You wanna tell your story.” She’s quick to add that her theater years were beautiful, that she learned a ton, but you can feel how big that decision was. She walked away from something safe to go build something unfinished. But something that was hers.

First Lady of OVO

The OVO chapter is the part everyone already knows, so I’ll keep it moving and let the details do the work. She drops her first single in 2019 independently, and Drake finds it and messages her. It was a track called “Breeze” that caught his ear, and as she’s recounted it elsewhere, she was standing in a Zara when the message came through, certain it couldn’t possibly be real. He wrote back within a few hours, wanting to hop on a call. She stayed tapped in with his camp, and the deal became official at the top of 2023, making her the first woman ever signed to OVO. When he announced it, Drake framed it as the world finally getting to see the work she’d been quietly putting in since they met.

She refuses to treat it like a lottery ticket, which I love. To her, it read like a receipt. “A confirmation of the hard work I put in,” she says. She talks about the Instagram grind especially, the years of building an image and an aesthetic and the whole visible-artist project, because, as she puts it, “nowadays we find each other on social media.”

And once she was inside, the freedom is what actually moved her. Noah “40” Shebib, the architect of the entire OVO sound, she describes as a kind of wizard, someone who never pushed her in a direction so much as pointed at things and let her choose. She brought her own producers into the fold, and met people like Alex Lustig through the label. But the relationship that reshaped her music is Jordan (of Majod Jordan). The first time they got in a room together, they made “Waiting For You” in twenty minutes.

“To find that on your own label is very special,” she says. They work like “one brain” now, sometimes talking it out, sometimes just doing. She calls it a softening, which is such a good word for it, because this is an industry she loves that also grinds you down, and she’s hard on herself, and here’s a room where she gets to be vulnerable and have fun and stop performing being okay. Most of No Sleep in Paradise came straight out of that room.

Obsidian

If you’re only meeting Naomi now, do yourself a favor and go back to Obsidian, released October 2023, because it’s where the shape of her whole approach snaps into focus. The album is named after the stone. She’s told the story before: she was wearing an obsidian necklace and felt it get heavier as the day went on, like it was absorbing the bad energy around her, and she loved that an object could confront you like that, could sit you down in your own discomfort. Rebirth, confrontation, healing. Those were the assignments. In our conversation, she puts it plainer. “The difference with me is that I just write about it,” she says. “I put songs out about it.” That’s the whole deal she’s got with her audience. The diary stays open. “Life is very real right now. I find music very healing.”

That ego death she keeps chasing on the new record? It has a prequel. On Obsidian, it was Drake himself who nudged her out of her musical comfort zone and toward something more uptempo, and she’s admitted it scared her at the time; leaving that lane felt like leaving safety. She trusted it because she figured he heard something real. That leap gave us “Push,” the Omah Lay collaboration built on a Nineteen85 beat, one of the brightest things she’d done to that point. The discomfort is the tell that she’s growing.

In 2025 she dropped an EP, The Only Love We Know, and described it as lighter, carrying the energy of moving forward, of showing more of herself. Her words: on Obsidian she was “kind of hiding.” Read that against the woman on No Sleep in Paradise who’s dancing in the “Miss That” video and singing about being wide awake in her own success, and you can watch her unhide in real time, project by project. She opened for Tems in that stretch too, another room full of strangers to win over, another rep in the gym. Nothing about the arc is accidental. She has been methodically, stubbornly turning the volume up on herself for years.

She Is the Show

The commanding presence that Naomi Sharon has, the aura on record and the command onstage, is mostly theater. Eight shows a week for years will build it into your bones. “You get so used to performing, and to failing,” she says. The nerves are always about the wrong note, the dropped ball. Theater taught her to just pick it back up and keep going, to improvise through the mess. She’ll walk offstage and flatly call it “shit,” her word, and mean it, and also have had the time of her life. Both at once. Always both. That’s the muscle that most singers may never build.

Which is exactly why she comes most alive in our whole conversation talking about Doja Cat, whose European run she just opened. She calls it her TED Talk, affectionately. She’d finish her own set, decompress, then head up to catch the last thirty minutes of Doja every night, studying. What floored her was that Doja was pulling off the stuff Naomi learned in theater school, carrying an arena with a band and backing vocals and no dancers, just being the show. On her own off nights, Naomi would watch Doja find energy in anything – a fan, a bit with the mic – and yank the entire room back. “She is the show,” Naomi says, half in awe. You get the feeling she’s describing a mountain she fully plans to climb.

Greedy, in a Healthy Way

Which is where all of this lands. She wants the arena. She says it flat out, and I love her for how little she pretends otherwise.

The Doja tour was a challenge, winning over rooms full of people who didn’t know a single song of hers. Her own No Sleep in Paradise tour, kicking off in September, she calls “a warm bath.” Her people. Her music. The high of watching a crowd lock into a song in real time. And she’s hungry for what’s next in a way she refuses to apologize for. “I’m kind of greedy for the success I want,” she says. “In a healthy way.” The small rooms are done for her. She’s had a taste of the arena air. “I’m kinda spoiled,” she admits. “So I have to work harder to get there.”

I told her the music already sounds like it belongs up there, that “Another Life” and “Definition of Love” sounded stadium-sized the first time they hit my ears. She lit up. Singing “Another Life” in an arena, she said, felt exactly as big as she’d hoped. “Let’s work and manifest.”

What she wants from you, in the end, isn’t worship. It’s patience. “I’m gonna make more albums. I’m not gonna do it in the same lane every time.” You don’t have to love wherever she goes next. “But it would be nice if people would respect the journey.” That’s the ask. Follow the artist, not just the song.

No sleep in paradise. She’s fine with that. She’s romanticizing the whole thing on purpose, and after talking with her for an hour, honestly? So am I.

Artificial intelligence has officially entered the studio.

‘AI’ as a music tool has become a mainstream phenomenon in recent years, with the release of ChatGPT, a chatbot created by OpenAI in 2022. At the time, it wasn’t as advanced as it is today, but that’s changed drastically. AI can now write lyrics, generate instrumentals, imitate vocal styles, and even create entirely virtual artists capable of landing record deals and charting alongside human musicians.

For some, it’s the future of music. For others, it’s a threat to everything that makes music human.

As tech companies race to develop increasingly sophisticated AI music models, a growing number of artists are asking an uncomfortable question: Was my music used to build these systems without my permission?

Generative AI platforms like Suno and Udio train their systems by analyzing massive datasets of existing audio, sometimes containing millions of tracks by our favorite artists. Meanwhile, AI-generated artists are beginning to find commercial success, forcing the industry to wrestle with what creativity looks like in the age of algorithms.

For R&B, a genre built on vulnerability and raw vocals, the debate feels especially personal.

The New Gold Rush

Throughout history, every technological breakthrough has sparked a race for opportunity. Like the release of the iBook in 1999, forcing other tech companies to adapt to wireless networking. And fast.

Streaming changed how artists released music. Social media reshaped marketing. TikTok transformed songs into viral moments overnight. Now, artificial intelligence has become music’s newest gold rush.

Companies developing AI music software need enormous amounts of data to make their models sound convincing. That means feeding systems thousands of existing songs so they can learn melodies, harmonies, vocal inflections, production techniques, chord progressions, and songwriting structures.

The more music the models consume, the more realistic their output becomes. But many musicians argue that this process often happens without transparency. Or consent.

Unlike a young songwriter studying their favorite album for inspiration, AI can analyze an artist’s entire catalog within minutes, learning patterns that allow it to generate songs that feel eerily familiar. Even duplicate the artist’s flow and personality.

That distinction has become one of the industry’s biggest ethical questions.

SZA’s Breaking Point

Few artists have been more vocal about AI than SZA.

Earlier this year, the Grammy Award-winning singer shared that she searched an AI music database and allegedly discovered 238 of her songs had been included in AI training datasets. According to SZA, some of those recordings may even have been unreleased.

“Just checked and music AI has trained off 238 of my songs… If you’re a musician and you support this degenerate… you’re disgusting,” the singer posted to her Instagram story.

She has previously urged fans not to create AI-generated images or songs using her likeness, writing, “Hey, I hate AI. If you f— with me, PLEASE don’t make any AI images of me or songs.” She has also criticized the environmental impact of AI data centers, arguing that the technology carries costs beyond the music industry. AI requires large amounts of electricity to power processing chips and uses tons of gallons of water to cool data centers.

Kehlani Says “I Don’t Respect It”

SZA isn’t alone.

When news broke that AI-generated R&B artist Xania Monet had reportedly secured a $3 million record deal, singer Kehlani publicly condemned the development.

In a video shared online to her Instagram account, Kehlani said, “Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me, especially… AI in the creative arts, in which people have worked hard for, trained for, slept on the floor for, got injuries for, worked for their entire lives.”

Responding specifically to Xania Monet’s deal, Kehlani added simply, “I don’t respect it.”

Her criticism reflects a concern shared by many musicians: AI-generated performers could eventually compete for playlist placements, radio spins, label investments, and audience attention without ever spending years learning to sing, write, or perform.

Meet Xania Monet

Xania Monet has become one of the first AI-generated R&B artists to achieve legitimate commercial success. The “singer” made history by charting on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart before signing a reported multi-million-dollar deal with Hallwood Media.

Unlike what many assume, Xania isn’t simply created by pressing a button. Behind the project is Mississippi poet Telisha “Nikki” Jones, who writes every lyric herself before using AI music platform Suno to generate vocal performances.

Jones sees AI as a creative partner, not a replacement. Speaking with CBS Mornings, she explained, “Xania is an extension of me, so I look at her as a real person.”

When challenged about whether AI gave her a shortcut into the industry, Jones disagreed. “I wouldn’t call it a shortcut, because I still put in the work… I look at it as a tool, as an instrument. Utilize it.”

To Jones, AI simply expands who gets to create music. Instead of replacing creativity, she argues, it lowers the barrier to entry for people who may have stories to tell but lack access to studios, producers, or even the ability to sing. That perspective highlights why the AI debate has become so complicated.

The technology itself isn’t inherently creative, but the humans using it still are. When the pain weighs too heavily on our chests and we want to scream it out, we can’t. We look to a robot to develop it for us. But is that fair to the singers and instrumentalists who have trained and studied since childhood to perfect their craft?

Where Does Inspiration End?

One of the biggest legal gray areas surrounding AI is training data. Human musicians learn by listening to their influences. Prince studied James Brown; Beyoncé has cited Michael Jackson; SZA has drawn inspiration from jazz, neo-soul, and alternative rock.

That’s how art evolves.

AI, however, studies music at a scale no human ever could. It can process thousands of recordings, identify recurring vocal patterns, analyze songwriting structures, and simultaneously generate music influenced by countless artists. Supporters argue that it’s no different than human inspiration.

Critics argue that it’s fundamentally different because machines don’t simply learn—they replicate patterns at extraordinary speed.

The lawsuits emerging across the music industry could ultimately determine where that legal boundary lies. Recently, iHeartRadio enforced a “Guaranteed Human” policy that bans AI-generated music, synthetic voices, and AI-powered DJs across all of its radio stations and podcasts.

What Makes R&B… R&B?

Perhaps no genre raises these questions more than R&B. Great R&B has never been defined solely by perfect vocals. It’s defined by emotion. By the rhythm and the heart. A computer cannot mimic that.

Whether it’s Brandy’s harmonies, SZA’s vulnerability, Jazmine Sullivan’s storytelling, or Frank Ocean’s introspection, listeners connect because they recognize genuine human experiences.

An AI model can imitate vocal runs. It can recreate lush harmonies. It can even generate heartbreak-themed lyrics. But can it actually understand heartbreak?

That’s where many artists believe human musicians will always have the advantage. The AI conversation is no longer hypothetical. More artists, day by day, are discovering their catalogs inside training databases.

At the same time, musicians continue to use AI responsibly for tasks such as vocal cleanup, stem separation, and production assistance. The technology itself isn’t going away. The real investigation is how the music industry chooses to regulate it.

Should artists be compensated when their work trains AI systems?

Should listeners know when a song is AI-generated?

Should record labels prioritize human performers over digital ones?

Those conversations are only beginning. For now, one thing is certain: R&B stands at a crossroads. The genre has always evolved—from doo-wop to soul, new jack swing to neo-soul, trap-soul to alternative R&B. AI may become the next chapter in that evolution.

Because while artificial intelligence can learn the mechanics of music, it still has one thing left to figure out: Can you teach a machine to feel?

PJ Morton’s “last album” has been a few albums in the making. He fully planned on retiring as a musical artist after he released his magnum opus, Watch The Sun, in 2022. He said the same thing in 2017. “Gumbo was gonna be my last album. I moved back to New Orleans to start a sneaker store, and I thought that I’ll do music, but I just didn’t want it to be the way I survive necessarily or do it competitively,” he recalled before noting that as the reason he “swung for the fences” on Watch The Sun.

Then, he got the dream of a lifetime to travel to Africa, which led to the creation of 2024’s Cape Town to Cairo. Yet, there were still parts of his story left untold, of which may be considered his grand finale. He’s just not quite sure.

With his latest LP (and debut double album), Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, he’s making room for new dreams to come to fruition, adding, “If I don’t say anything else, I have said all I need to say.”

In this exclusive conversation, the crooner breaks down his layered beginning, the swift process behind the album, the dichotomy of being both sacred and secular, and why he feels Saturday Night/Sunday Morning could be a storybook culmination.

When did you fall in love with R&B?

It was very early still. I mean, the irony is that my dad’s favorite singer was Anita Baker. It was Stevie [Wonder] in the house. Prince, Whitney, of course Michael [Jackson]. I’m an '80s baby, and so I fell in love with it very early. There’s a video of me when I was two years old dancing to Motown 25. That was before I was thinking about music in a real way. I think about 12 or 13, a friend of mine gave me a cassette tape. One contained Donny Hathaway live on it, and one contained Stevie Wonder’s “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer.” I hadn’t heard that Stevie before. I knew nothing about '60s or '70s Stevie, and that kinda changed my world. That’s when I started to look at it like, “Wait, this changed my chemistry.”

At which point did you start pursuing music professionally?

I guess about 14 or 15 is when I started to write songs for real. I knew secretly that I wanted to write about everything. It was more just the pressure of my atmosphere and my environment [to write gospel music]. What I’d try to do is write it as contemporary as possible, you know? That was, like, my first shortcut. My first placement as a songwriter was on Men of Standard, but I was secretly writing R&B songs. By the time I got to Morehouse, I met India.Arie and was able to place my first song outside of gospel music on that Voyage to India album. That’s really what broke me into it altogether.

Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is both the name of your album and your memoir. Which one came first?

To be totally honest, just the title itself came first. I was a marketing major at Morehouse, so I’m always thinking of presentation. Initially, it came as a potential title for a documentary that I was gonna work on, and I just knew that the name really worked. It’s like when I said Saturday Night, Sunday Morning to people, they immediately got it without me explaining anything else. And I [know] those are hard to come by. I had the name and the documentary didn’t happen, but then I was approached about doing a memoir and I said, “Well, let me just use it for that.” I wasn’t thinking of an album. I had just finished Cape Town to Cairo. My whole point was I’ve done a lot of music and it wasn’t as inspiring for me to go do another R&B album. It’s like, you know, all the marketing tricks have been used. Everybody’s heard everything I’ve had to say and I needed something that was gonna challenge me, excite me. When I thought about Saturday Night, Sunday Morning,the album version [was] where I finally do a gospel album [and] I’m actually singing the songs as opposed to just writing and producing them [but] still doing my R&B thing. And that really did become exciting and like a challenge. Before I had one song, it’s like, “Okay, what does this look like?”

How long did it take you to make the album itself?

Man, we locked in. The majority of it was done January of this year. I went faster than I thought. That’s why I [wanted] a Juneteenth release date. That wasn’t gonna happen at first. I’m like, “Well, if I’m moving this fast, let’s try to drop it on Juneteenth. It just makes sense. It’s the Black experience.” It really just started to flow so fast. Once I got inspired, I was on the move. I was done by the end of February and [handed] it in the first week of March.

Was this the fastest album you’ve ever made?

Well, aside from Cape Town to Cairo [which was made in 30 days]. It’s so crazy you bring that up though, because I think that is what released me. I used to overthink a lot. Then, I went to four countries for 30 days and said that I was gonna do this experiment and write and record a completely brand new album in 30 days. I didn’t have any time to overthink. It made me trust whatever was coming naturally, you know? So for this, I was just in that and I’ve never done a double album in my life. So yeah, per capita, this is the fastest album I’ve ever made.

Is New Orleans also part of the reason why you wanted to push for the Juneteenth release date?

Not necessarily New Orleans but, I think Black. The raw Black experience. When I started to think of this album, it was like, “Oh man, this is the complete Black experience.” Folks used Saturday [night] to party, decompress, but we were going to church Sunday to recharge and get ready for this week that we’re about to go into. I’m like, “June is Black Music Month. Juneteenth is right there. Let’s celebrate.”

Which side came easier to you?

My plan was to do gospel one day and R&B the next. [But] every time I tried to write an R&B song, it turned into a gospel song. Again, it was about not forcing. So my brain, and maybe it’s part of my OCD, was like I can’t do both at once. Part of it too [was that] I hadn’t really done a lot of gospel albums, especially as me. I think, for me, it was the newer, fresher thing. It’s stuff I just hadn’t touched on as PJ. I’ve done plenty R&B albums and it was more daunting because it’s like, “What are you gonna say that you haven’t said before? What sonically are you gonna do that you hadn’t done before that pushes you forward?” ‘Cause I always need to be moving forward in some kinda way. What ended up happening is I finished Sunday Morning first and then it freed me to go and do Saturday Night.

I did not expect you to just go that route.

Me either.

Even with Saturday Night being the R&B side, it still doesn’t fully cater to what contemporary R&B has transformed into.

It’s probably why I lean towards soul music. What Donny Hathaway was. What Stevie is, you know? It’s like that intersection where there’s some spirituality in R&B. What’s going on is probably what inspired my album Gumbo when I said, “This is the first time I wanna try to talk about things other than just love and relationships.” [On] “Sell My Soul,” it’s talking about life in a way. “Protect My Heart” is a song I’d never heard before. So I was drawn to a lot of those things that I hadn’t talked about before. But then of course, I think it’s important to have those love songs where it’s like setting the atmosphere. We’re enjoying each other; we’re enjoying life. It was bigger than just relationships.

Is the documentary still coming?

We’re working on it. It’s turned into so many things. It’s now starting to find some focus.

For you, what has been the greatest challenge and reward in balancing the duality of being both sacred and secular?

The sacrifice on the front end. It was that a lot of times I got looked over. I ain’t never been nominated for an R&B category at the BET Awards. I’ve done all of this stuff in soul music. I have six Grammys, but because I didn’t line up with a Chris [Brown] and wasn’t that edgy, I think some people put me on the other side. But then the other side were like, “He ain’t all the way us either.” I was just stuck in the middle and that was a challenge, but I started to embrace it. Now, I’m so happy it went the way it went because I stuck to who I was, and now I’ve been able to create something that is all mine. Initially, that was disheartening. It’s like, dang, y’all don’t see me as this; I don’t belong over here. I think those sacrifices are necessary [though] when you’re trying to do something that just isn’t the norm.

The reward is the fan base and the creative freedom?

For sure. I had given up on the fact that I would be able to get a Grammy or anything like that. Once I said, “Okay, this is gonna be what it’s gonna be.” I slipped into that mainstream somehow and got into that conversation. So it was almost like the cherry on top.

Would you still say this is your last album?

Oh, you tryna break news here.

You been saying that it is your last album for the past several albums.

If I’m being totally transparent, I don’t know. To me, this was kind of like a magnum opus vibe— where it’s like here is everything. If I don’t say anything else, I have said all I need to say. I watched that Billy Joel doc, and at some point he said, “I’m done writing lyrics. I’ve said everything.” For me, it’s like making room for new artists, new things. It’s like you don’t have to say something new to be relevant. Frankie Beverly and Maze is like my North Star. The way he toured for 30 years without a new album and my audience feels very similar in the fact that it’s community. It’s like family reunion every year. So, I won’t say that this is my last album, but I will say that I don’t know what’s next. I’ll always make music; I’ll always perform. I [just] don’t know that it’ll be in the traditional [sense].

I love the transparency of that answer. Has your dad reacted to the double album?

Yes. We ate at my parents’ house on Mother’s Day and I got to play them the whole album. My dad is my number one fan though. He’s over the moon. He was the one that said, “Look, you’re different from me. You gotta do it the way you do it.” On Father’s Day, for the first time, he preached and I was able to sing in Baltimore. We did a service together. That was really special on Father’s Day.

It’s like that was the culmination of who you are as an artist and a person.

It’s really special. And like, you know what I’m saying? That’s a nice end of a chapter. That’s why I don’t know. It’s like I don’t wanna mess it up. I certainly am not gonna block it. I love music. I’m a creative. I can’t not create, but I have a dream to own a hotel. I eventually plan to do a festival in Bogalusa, Louisiana. I’m still independent, and it takes so much to put into these things, especially today, to get people to pay attention, and we’re cutting through the noise. I would love to put that energy into other things. I don’t wanna be limited to music. I love music, but let’s not just box ourselves in.

Not for nothing, we’re all a little bit of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. We all have that duality in us.

Facts! That’s the whole point. I wrote this book called Why Can’t I Sing About Love? In the foreword, my dad was like, “Look, when I was courting your mother, I wasn’t listening to ‘Amazing Grace.’” Like, let’s be honest. The dichotomy of who we really are is a little bit of both, and art should reflect life.