Written by Jamari Shelton
“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.