“You who dwell in the gardens, the companions listen for your voice; let me hear it!” – Song Of Solomon 8:13

I. Da Faith

Can you hear it? This is the sound of a man playing an instrument that he’s mastered since he was sixteen years old; self-taught, a musical prodigy, the latest in a long line of artists involved in a practice that many have likened to heresy.

The Song Of Solomon is an outlier in the Bible. In a part of the text that is best known for its terrifying miracles and violent retribution, comes a section tailored with tenderness, an extended poem dipped in double entendre, blurring the line between the sacred and the sacrilegious, the profane and the profound, the ecstatic and the erotic.

It’s a tradition that has been carried into popular music for over a century. Think of Al Green and Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and Whitney Houston, Tina Turner and Marvin Gaye, Prince: divided souls accused of having split loyalties between gospel and R&B.

This is the legacy that two sibling pairings fell into. The first pair (Donald “DeVante Swing” DeGrate Jr. and Dalvin “Mr. Dalvin” DeGrate) were a couple of preacher’s kids who went down a path that their father left behind. Meanwhile, the second pair (Cedric “K-Ci” Hailey and Joel “Jojo” Hailey) hailed from a tribe so talented that, outside of the Winans and the Clarks, could possibly be considered as the gospel equivalent of the Jackson family. Together, the world would come to know this band of brothers as Jodeci.

II. Da Fame

Following the release of their first album ‘Forever My Lady’ in 1991, Jodeci started touring all around the country, enjoying the perks of being newfound celebrities. However, after every performance, they would hang out backstage and hold auditions to invite equally-talented, like-minded individuals to their crew.

One of the first people to benefit from this initiative was a young Melissa “Missy Misdemeanor” Elliott as part of an all-girl group called Fayze (later renamed as Sista). Unwilling to leave her people behind, Missy brought Timbaland & Magoo along as a packaged deal.

After that was Ginuwine, Sugah (which consisted of Susan Weems, Rolita White, and a teenage Charlene Keys who would later be known as Tweet), as well as Stevie J and Playa (which consisted of Smoke E. Diggelera, Digital Black, and a gifted singer/songwriter in Static Major).

This would form the core of the “Swing Mob”, along with soulful singers such as Renee Anderson and Virginia Williams, plus underrated R&B producers like Chad “Dr. Ceuss” Elliott (no relation) and Darryl Pearson.

By 1993, you could already hear some of this creative collective’s contributions on Jodeci’s 1993 sophomore release ‘Diary Of A Mad Band’ with Chad and Darryl co-producing a few tracks while Missy and Timbaland occasionally operated as background features.

However, it wouldn’t be until 1994 that DeVante Swing would move his mob from a house in Teaneck, New Jersey, to a studio/apartment complex in Rochester, New York.

III. Da Funk

Similar to how The Dungeon Family was formed from the red clay of Rico Wade’s Georgia basement, the “Swing Mob” was christened underground as “Da Bassment Cru” by the bass of some thumping subwoofers installed inside a renovated church vault. A melodic crucible where its inhabitants did nothing but eat, drink, and sleep music.

With DeVante bankrolling this whole endeavor, his vision was to create a record label that was synonymous with a specific type of sound: Stax, Philadelphia International, Motown. If everybody played their cards right, then the basement of Dajhelon recording studio would be the modern R&B equivalent of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue.

From the little that (officially) came out of these sessions, you could see DeVante’s dream closely becoming a reality. Da Bassment is where Missy honed the skills that would carry her to both the Songwriters and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame. Da Bassment is where Timbaland refined his drum pattern and experimented with a variety of different sounds that would usher in a new sonic future. Da Bassment is where Ginuwine, Tweet, and Static Major would learn from the best on how to become their own stars.

H-Town’s “Part Time Lover” was made in Da Bassment. Jodeci’s “Freek’n You” was made in Da Bassment. Ginuwine’s all-time strip club and baby-making anthem “Pony” was made in Da Bassment. Although, it would be that song, in particular, which would lead several members of Da Bassment Cru to sprout up from the underground and discover a different route.

IV. Da Fall

Like several figures in the Bible, the fall of Da Bassment was precipitated by at least one of the three P’s: pride, power and paranoia.

While there have been interviews with several members of Da Bassment Cru talking about where it all went wrong, Sugah’s Susan Weems seems to provide the most detailed account during her conversation with Njs4ever.com.

It can, arguably, be traced to two events: (i) Jodeci’s tour with Bad Boy in 1995 and (ii) the arrival of Suge Knight.

Although everyone seemed to have a positive experience on the tour, the success of Bad Boy artists like The Notorious B.I.G. and Faith Evans made it starkly apparent to Da Bassment Cru that (outside of a couple placements on a few movie soundtracks) they had almost nothing to show for all their ingenuity and hard work. It was also the moment when other music industry executives took notice of the sheer amount of talent within the group and started picking their favorites (such as Ginuwine, who was able to sign a record deal with Sony/550 Music based off what they heard on “Pony”).

Simultaneously, the arrival of Suge Knight signaled a noticeable shift in DeVante’s behavior, as well as allegations of a hostile and toxic working environment (as colorfully described by Stevie J during an episode of Drink Champs). Others, however, would attribute the character change to a violent robbery DeVante experienced roughly around the same time.

Nonetheless, the camaraderie that once held the crew together gradually seemed to dissipate which led to several members disappearing one-by-one. First was Sista, who were said to have been dropped by DeVante after Elektra shelved their debut (4 All The Sistas Around Da World). Next was Ginuwine who, as mentioned above, left on his own accord. Then it was Timbaland & Magoo and Playa a few years after that (signing directly with Def Soul instead of through DeVante’s production company).

Sugah was one of the last original members to leave (around the year 2000), but their contributions would later prove to be the most consequential.

V. Da Friends

A demo tape. That was all that remained from Timbaland and Missy Elliott’s time in Da Bassment. However, that was all they would need to find the person who would change their lives: Aaliyah.

After the traumatic experience and ensuing scandal that arose from the creation of her first album, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number,’ Aaliyah was in search of a new direction. Something completely different, something that she could call her own.

In comes entertainment lawyer Louise West, who sent Aaliyah’s team a copy of Da Bassment’s demo tape with Sugah’s “Sugah & Spice” being the last track. When you hear the song, it’s easy to understand why Aaliyah gravitated towards it and how it became the template for her ground-breaking second album ‘One In A Million’: the laid-back, almost G-Funk-like beat; the playful innuendos that betray the inhibitions of an innocent heart.

Out of the ashes of Da Bassment came the rise of the “Superfriends” and the foundations of the modern R&B landscape. While we didn’t get the next Motown, we got something very close. We got Missy Elliott bringing in Afrofuturism with an inflatable black bodysuit. We got Timbaland populating tracks with cricket noises and baby coos. We got classic records from Tweet, Ginuwine, Playa and Magoo.

For almost a decade, the Superfriends ruled the airwaves, dominated the TV screen, and played a significant part in what many consider to be the last golden age of R&B.

Unfortunately, it felt all too brief with the sudden and tragic death of Aaliyah, the gradual decline of labels like Goldmind and Blackground, as well as the typical in-fighting that occurs after years working together in a highly stressful and volatile industry.

But, as the saying goes, “history doesn’t repeat, it rhymes”: the unique, unpredictable nature of time.

VI. Da Future

Can you hear it? Almost thirty years after its inception, it’s the sound of Da Bassment come alive again. Originator and innovator, finally collaborating together, the epitome of a full circle moment.

In a personal essay, I likened sampling to time traveling, calling it “an infinite feedback loop of inspiration and adaptation, generating something new with each iteration”. That’s how it felt when I listened to Sonder for the first time.

Similar to Da Bassment Cru, it wasn’t a specific song that introduced me to Sonder’s music; it was a curated compilation courtesy of Soulection Radio.

Over the course of two hours, I heard the past, present, and future of R&B, playing side-by-side. I heard familiar voices take on an ethereal quality as samples sustaining the soul of a sensational sound.

If Jodeci sang with the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament, threatening to bring the house down with their horny harmonies, then Sonder soothes with the cool, calm conviction of the New Testament, heralding in a new chapter in the gospel of R&B. That transition is Da Bassment’s legacy.

Without Da Bassment, T R A P S O U L, and the sub-genre that followed, does not exist. Without Da Bassment, OVO Sound and its resounding regional influence does not exist. Without Da Bassment, trailblazing artists like Kehlani, Syd, and Victoria Monét do not exist.

Like the best songs, one can look back at all of this and see nothing more than a series of coincidences but, if you read between the lines, you’ll find something more akin to divine design.

Further Listening

[1] Da Bassment Cru, Da Bassment Demo Tape (Discovered By Static Major Is Music & Curated By Confessions Of A Curly Mind)

[2] Sonder, Show #324, Soulection Radio

Further Reading

[1] Lauren Du Graf, The Gospel Of Jodeci, Oxford American

[2] Erin Scherer, The Show, The Afterparty, Da Bassment, 585 Magazine

[3] Natelegé Whaley, ‘Aaliyah’ 25: 14 Modern R&B Songs Inspired By Aaliyah And Static Major, Scene Serene

[4] Chris Williams, Origin Stories: Missy Elliott and Timbaland, Red Bull Music Academy

Frank Ocean changed everything with a Tumblr post.

But the music did the real heavy lifting. Just a boy, a car, and the internet that was heavily anchored to the ‘Tumblr’ aesthetic.

When channel ORANGE arrived in the heat of July 2012, I still remember where I was. I was 8, but I was old enough to understand what music meant to me. I had been diagnosed with depression, and music and writing were there to save me. Track 2 - Thinkin Bout You, was on my mind every day. I played it religiously. I remember one time I forgot the name of the song and went crazy trying to sing it to my cousin to help me find it.

But the album as a whole cracked open a door: for an album to be considered genre-bending and for Black artists to be open about their sexuality.

Just six days before channel ORANGE was set to drop, instead of a standard press release, Frank took to his Tumblr page on the Fourth of July and wrote a letter under a post titled “thank you’s.” The note wasn’t a calculated PR stunt. It was a beautifully written confession about falling in love with a man when he was between 19 and 20 years old.

In a hip-hop and R&B landscape that was still deeply uncomfortable with anything outside the heteronormative lines, that missive felt like an earthquake. The internet caught fire, but the reaction wasn’t the usual gossip—it was a massive wave of support that ended up giving a whole generation of people the courage to finally tell their own stories. By the time the physical CDs hit shelves through Def Jam a couple of weeks later, that letter was printed right there in the album booklet, making it a permanent part of the art.

I knew nothing about love at 8 years old, but hearing the album made me ecstatic about having a crush. It seemed like so much fun when you’re older and can relate.

What made the album a foundational pillar for LGBTQ+ visibility in Black music wasn’t that it was loud or preachy. It was the fact that Frank allowed queer romance to exist with the same cinematic, everyday beauty that straight artists had enjoyed for decades.

Before this moment, LGBTQ+ themes in mainstream urban music were often treated as a punchline, a taboo secret, or a tragedy. For example, Detroit rapper Eminem would often throw around offensive LGBTQ+ language in his music. Songs like ‘Criminal,’ to name one.

Frank completely flipped that script. He gave queer love a soundtrack that was undeniable, forcing a historically rigid industry to nod its head to stories it used to ignore.

LA Times music writer Gerrick D. Kennedy called it “the glass ceiling moment for music. Especially Black music, which has long been in desperate need of a voice like Ocean’s to break the layers of homophobia.” For ages, Hip-Hop and R&B operated under a strict code of hyper-masculinity and rigid heterosexuality.

You couldn’t say queer love stories wouldn’t sell, because channel ORANGE was a critical and commercial juggernaut. It debuted at number 2 on the US Billboard 200 chart, with 131,000 copies sold in its first week

Yet, despite the media trying to paint him as a political martyr or a neat little symbol for a movement, Frank resisted the easy labels. He didn’t want to be a talking point. He just wanted to write about his life, noting in his letter that he wrote the album simply “to keep myself busy and sane.” By refusing to let his identity be sensationalized, he did something even more radical: he made queer desire feel normal, everyday, and deeply human.

Love Without Posture

Take Durand Bernarr. If you’re like me and have been tracking him since he collabed with Kaytranada on “Freefall” (my plane take off anthem), and you already know he’s been in the music world for a minute. On that track, he sang about the terrifying, thrilling rush of letting your guard down and just dropping into love, but he did it with an effortless lightness that felt like a breath of fresh air.

What makes Durand such a massive force for LGBTQ+ representation in modern R&B is that he refuses to give you a sanitized, radio-friendly version of queer life. He even described himself as “the version of Little Richard that religion did not get to.” It’s a heavy statement, but when you think about it, it makes total sense.

For decades, Black queer pioneers had to tuck their identities away, camouflage their lyrics, or let the industry turn their flamboyance into a spectacle while stripping away their actual humanity.

Durand is avenging that history. On tracks like “Prepared,” he’s singing about “heated fellowship” between two men, casually debating who is going to submit to whom. He’s filling a void for a community that has spent years dancing and crying to love songs that weren’t actually written for them.

And the industry is finally forced to catch up to his fly. When he took home a Grammy this year for his album BLOOM, it wasn’t just a win for an independent artist who has been grinding on the road for over fourteen years; it was a massive moment of cultural visibility. Standing on that stage, he brought his full, unadulterated self into a room that historically didn’t know what to do with artists like him.

As he told Out Magazine afterward, it was about witnessing intersectionality being celebrated.

Pleasure on Our Own Terms

Victoria Monét, who has been holding down the foundations of modern R&B for years behind the scenes before stepping fully into her own spotlight. On tracks like “Touch Me,” she’s exploring the friction of attraction, the way a specific look from across the room can make everything else blur.

Her pen captures the nuance of bisexuality and fluid desire without making it a spectacle for the male gaze, which is a tightrope that Black women in music have had to walk for far too long.

During her JAGUAR II tour, I got to see her live at the Chicago House of Blues, where she performed one of my all-time favorites, ‘(F)riend (U) (C)an (K)eep’. Her performance included a deeply intimate and sensual moment between her and another Black female dancer.

What makes Victoria a vital anchor for representation in R&B is how beautifully normal she makes fluid love feel. When she officially came out as bisexual on X back in 2018 in a rant, she just let her fans in on her truth, later telling Gay Times, “If I should be successful, I don’t want to be successful based on someone’s imaginary view of me.”

She’s been extremely open about her bisexual identity through her music. In her 2019 song “Monopoly,” featuring Ariana Grande, she sings: “I like women and men.”

Historically, the music industry has treated bisexual women like an exotic fantasy tailored for straight men, but Victoria completely strips that toxic dynamic away. When she sings about wanting a woman, it’s not for the cameras. The identity belongs entirely to her.

Look at the remix of “Touch Me” with Kehlani, also her former partner. They mapped out the heat of a connection with a level of care and mutual respect that you only get when two women truly see each other.

Even with ‘Hate the Club’ from Kehlani’s 2020 album It Was Good Until It Wasn’t. While it was long after their relationship had ended, Kehlani sang “Drunk when I call you Monet, begging you to walk me out. Say you miss, well, I need proof. I came all this way to see you.”

By the time she swept the Grammys for Jaguar II, it felt like a massive victory for the community. She wasn’t just winning for her incredible pen or her live arrangements; she was winning as a fully visible, unapologetically bisexual Black mother who refused to compromise her identity to get to the top.

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.

Baby Rose painted it herself as a kid, because she loved Elton John and figured if she was going to fall in love with an instrument, it might as well have a personality. By then, she’d already been writing poems in composition books she’d hand to her aunts, who are English teachers. Her tight-knit family was the type that threw talent shows every Thanksgiving and Christmas and expected you to get up there. Her mother started as a songwriter and then, in what Rose calls “a random side quest,” managed a hip-hop artist, which meant there were producers in the living room and Triton keyboards within arm’s reach. Her dad promoted parties in Washington D.C. and played her Roy Ayers, house music, and acid jazz on the drive to school. Her great-aunt — who she counts as a grandmother — ushered at one of the biggest churches in New York, sang in the choir, and was always, always humming hymns.

“Foundationally, all of these ingredients really formed my psyche around music,” she tells me. You can hear every one of them.

Her 10,000 Hours

When she moved to North Carolina at twelve, she brought the piano with her. Her mom started driving her to the studio to record the ideas she’d been writing in the foyer. She didn’t put anything out for the world until around 2017, on SoundCloud — but there were ten years before that. “Music the world will never hear,” she says, the stuff that got her over the fear of performing and made her fall in love with being in the room. “It’s been a long time coming, for real.”

I keep coming back to that, because that’s what separates good artists from great artists in my opinion. Some artists are cool. They make their music based on what’s trending, what’s being played on the radio or in the clubs. They are comfortable with letting a label exec or producer tell them what’s good and what’s not. But there are those who have done their research and studied the craft. They’ve got the references from the ‘60s and ‘70s and beyond in their bones — and that music is always ten times better.

Baby Rose is the second kind, and she’ll tell you who’s in her musical family tree if you ask. Donny Hathaway, Amy Winehouse, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Janis Joplin, Marvin Gaye, Frankie Beverly, and “North Carolina’s own” Nina Simone. She doesn’t just love them, she studies them — where they were, the feeling tones, the pain. “There’s a lot of pain behind a lot of that music,” she says, “but there are also stories of people who have overcome.” She looks at the already-open doors and asks what she can take and bring forward.

And then she says the thing that makes everything else make sense:

She thinks a renaissance is coming to meet the moment — pointing to artists like Thee Sacred Souls, Olivia Dean, and a whole class of musicians doing it the long way. And she’s grateful to be putting out this new album, YEARNALISM, in 2026, in that company. “God’s timing is impeccable.”

The Art Of YEARNALISM

Here’s where it gets interesting. All of her releases before YEARNALISM (multiple EPs and two albums) were, by her own account, for her. “They were all about me, and if you like it, I love it.” This one is different. “It feels like more of an offering to the whole current state of what’s happening,” she says. “Let’s not numb ourselves. I know it feels hard. But you gotta feel through it.” She’s talking about vulnerability as a kind of strength, love as ammunition — all the things that sound like clichés until you’re the one who has to live by them. “Now I feel like, dang, this feels like a deeper meaning than I intended,” she admits, and she sounds a little surprised by it, which is the best part.

The album title YEARNALISM is, for my money, the best one I’ve heard in a long time, and the origin is perfectly of-the-internet. She saw a meme that said something along the lines of “I majored in yearnalism” and dropped it in as a placeholder on her working files for the album. Her manager KJ looked at it and said, "That’s the title.”

“Yearnalism” is a play on journalism: documenting desire in all its forms, using her platform to show what yearning actually looks like. “It’s cheeky and cute and great, and an entryway into something that has more depth.” Because the bigger point is real. “Everything right now reflects late-stage capitalism if we’re gonna be real. Every man for himself. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We’re forgetting, inherently as humans, the need for community, the need for each other. For love. For our own sanity.”

And here’s the flex underneath it: these are some of the simplest, most direct, least metaphorical lyrics she’s ever written, and she’s proud of that. “When I pray, I ask God to make things extremely simple for me,” she says. “So now I’ve made things extremely simple for myself to understand. And, you know, giving that as an offering to others, too.”

Though it’s not being released until July 10, I’ve heard the entire project and can confidently say it’s one of the albums of the year. Remember that family tree I mentioned earlier? It’s a perfect concoction of those inspirations, coupled with Baby Rose’s one-of-one, smoky voice and tone. It’s bluesy, it’s funky, it’s soulful, and it’s very much needed right now. Songs like “Dressed In Metal” and “All My Love” are bound to become fan favorites upon release. This music is healing and encouraging and meant to be felt.

Analog Cousins

The two YEARNALISM features, Leon Thomas and Elmiene, weren’t random selections. They were kinship; two more people pulling live instrumentation and analog warmth back into the room. Rose and Leon first connected during a jam session for his album MUTT, and she didn’t even know the song was making the tracklist until he told her they were leaving it exactly as it was. That album went up for Best R&B Album at the GRAMMYs and won. “That’s when I really had to trust the process,” she says. “Leon is an instrumentalist, a producer, an arranger, a singer. He understands every side.” When “Friends Again” — now her biggest song to date — came back from him, she was floored. “He understood the assignment so well. The yearning, the adlibs, everything.”

She met Elmiene at Tom Brenneck’s studio, the producer behind “Friends Again.” Elmiene was working with Tom and needed help writing something. She jumped in on sight, told him to pull up the next day, and they cut music, just playing around. Months later, she asked him to try something over what became “Is This Love,” and he wrote it with her that same night. The funny part: his first instinct was to sing it as a guy defending himself, trying to end things — should it be this hard? Rose wasn’t having it. “I told him, think back…people crying in the rain…anything to save love.” Because the whole thesis of the song — of the album — is that it can’t be one-sided. “Both partners have to want love to happen, and to last, and to make it.” She laughs. “We’re trying to save some relationships here.”

That’s also why she’s created a communal safe space called Yearners Anonymous to coincide with this album rollout. A few cities, starting in London: she plays the record, opens the floor, and people just have real conversations. “A revolution isn’t started in a big wave,” she says. “It starts with small conversations and small gatherings.” She wants people to leave having made a friend, less alone than when they walked in. And the more you talk to her, the more you understand it’s not a campaign — it’s who she’s always been. “If you know my music, you know I’ve been radically vulnerable this whole time. Yearning is not a new thing for me.” Her fans aren’t just fans to her. “They’re really friends. I just haven’t met you in person yet.”

Black Soul Reigns Supreme

I asked her about something that’s constantly a topic of conversation online: the way Black singers get filed under R&B by default, no matter what music they’re actually making. She doesn’t flinch. She nods back to redlining. Then she flips it. “Soul music birthed most of these genres, rock and roll included. When you look at the origin of a lot of these genres, Black people have been the origin.” So the reclamation happening now — Beyoncé and Shaboozey in country music, Olivia Dean walking into pop like she owns the room — isn’t a stunt, isn’t a point being scored. “It’s not a thing of sticking it to anybody. We’re just fire like that. We’re boundless.”

She’s been bluesy and soulful since she was twelve, she says; she just “had to let that catch up.” Along the way, she made pop, country, rock, and R&B, and what she took from all of it was appreciation and energy.

“Take away the words, take away the melody — what kind of emotion is that bringing forward?” She’s in service of the song. If a song calls for agitation, she’ll lean into alt and rock. If it’s meant to be more sobering, she’ll lean into folk and just guitar, nothing else. She refuses the box outright: “I’m not looking at it like, ‘I’m a young Black girl, I gotta stay here.’ No. Life is short. I gotta go crazy — if not for me, for everybody before me.”

Then she runs the receipts, laughing the whole way through. Tina Turner won GRAMMYs for Best Rock Vocal Performance and Best Pop Vocal Performance in 1985, and was nominated in R&B categories that same year. “The doors have already been opened if you do your research.” But after Tina? “Brittany Howard, okay — but that’s twenty years later.” Beyoncé won Best Country Album in 2025, and the response by the Recording Academy was to invent a whole new category for “contemporary” country music. “They were like, never again.” She laughs because that’s the move. “I have to laugh at it, as most Black people do. We make jokes out of it.” When we do something, we tend to be the best in the world at it, she points out — golf, tennis, take your pick. “No shade. It just is what it is, historically.” And then, very calmly: “I gotta pay attention to what’s of service to me, not what’s gonna bring me down. God is bigger than all of that.”

Study Yourself

I asked what she hoped people would carry away from the record, and she gave me something closer to a sermon than a soundbite.

YEARNALISM, it turns out, is partly literal. She’s been studying herself: her triggers, what motivates her, the habits she’s keeping and the ones she’s letting go of, the relationships, the things worth holding on to. She’s even rebuilt her definition of success around it. “One of my markers of success is when I look at the fact that my mom is here, my brother’s here, everybody’s healthy, and I can go home to Atlanta, to Lilburn, and just be in the sunroom. I feel successful. I feel at peace. Peace is a marker of success for me.”

She wants you to study yourself, too. To question anything that makes you numb. “The opposite of love is not hate or anger. It’s apathy. When you give up, and you stop caring about things, that’s when you’re denying yourself of love.” Anger, at least, points somewhere. It means you still want something. You still yearn for more.

We don’t get a guide for any of this, she says. “We just have podcasts and TikToks, and everybody’s a therapist, and you’re like, OMG am I doing this all wrong?” So she’s offering the next best thing: a record that asks the questions out loud, and ends — like she ended our conversation — with all her love.

Credits:
Photographer: Louisa Meng
Writer: Dante Nicholas
Executive Producer: Dante Nicholas

On Tuesday, June 2, pgLang announced its first female signee. That’s Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free’s company, and the woman is Imani Imani, and the way they announced it was by just dropping her album. No rollout. Eleven tracks, called Papercut, were out on a Tuesday, which was a bold move. But it was a move that allowed the album three days of chatter and buzz before the rest of the week’s releases caught up.

For four years, the roster was basically two cousins (Kendrick and Baby Keem) and rapper Tanna Leone. So the first woman they sign, the first artist whose whole instrument is her voice, is someone no one saw coming. It’s the most interesting move I’ve seen in a while.

Try to look her up, and the trail goes cold fast. Her name is Imani Ram; she used to go by Imani Selina, and before this week, she had zero monthly listeners on Spotify. Not a few. Zero. Her Instagram technically existed since early 2024, but most of the grid was added in the last couple of days. According to what we could find online, she hails from a small town in the Netherlands, and at one point called Amsterdam home.

If the voice rings a bell, you’re either super into fashion or super into Kendrick Lamar. Back in January 2024, an unreleased Kendrick song called “I Feel Something” played at Chanel’s couture show in Paris, and that was her on it. One of her own songs, “Snatch,” also opened the presentation. So she was scoring Chanel more than two years before she had a single track on streaming under her own name. Build it in private, say nothing, wait until the work can talk – that’s a winning formula when the music is just as good as the company you keep.

“Snatch” is on Papercut. So is “Mindgames,” which got the debut music video, directed by Keanna Williams and Neal Farmer.

I’ve had the album the same number of hours you have, so this isn’t a verdict. But my early read is: this is a great alternative-leaning R&B project that slips into cool pop (“Slideee”) and electronic sounds (“Come Together”) without losing its center. Looking at the credits reveals that she's worked with people like James Fauntleroy and Sam Dew on a couple of songs. But every song lists two names as producers and writers: Imani and her close collaborator, Daan Zinkhaan.

She’ll get explained eventually. The interviews & performances & co-signs are coming. For now, R&B has something rare: a real cold intro. Papercut is out wherever you listen. Play it before everyone tells you how to hear it.

When you ask Saint Harison what makes a song good, he talks about the 20-minute ones, the ones that are easy to write because some part of him already knows what needs to be said. He talks about working alone in a room until the right feeling shows up. He talks about his grandfather, who was in a band in the 1960s called Bryan Fisher and the Radiers. He introduced Saint to music when Saint was 7 years old, and he loved Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, and Dean Martin — the kind of raw, storied voices that made you feel something before you understood the lyrics.

He grew up on those voices. He became one of them. And now, a couple of EPs and a few terrible boyfriends later, he’s still doing the same thing he decided to do as a kid: trying to have an impact on people’s lives the way a song once had on his.

Southampton Beginnings

Saint was 12 years old. He & his mother were sitting in the reception area of a safe house for women and children fleeing abusive homes when Adele’s “Chasing Pavements” came on.

“I just thought, Oh my God. I have to write songs. I have to have an impact on people’s lives in the way that this Adele song has had on my life.“

He says it quickly and matter-of-factly. The way people talk about things they’ve long since made peace with. But let’s sit with that for a second. Because that’s the story, really — the Saint Harison story — compressed into one waiting room moment: heartbreak, a voice cutting through, and a kid deciding that music was the only reasonable response.

Years later, that kid from Southampton (a port city on England’s south coast) is one of R&B’s most compelling new voices. His debut EP ‘Lost a Friend’ quietly crossed 170 million streams. His COLORS performance of “ego talkin’” sparked a TikTok challenge that racked up over 200 million views. SZA, Justin Bieber, H.E.R., and Elton John all stopped to take notice of him early on. He’s been named Apple Music’s global Up Next artist. Rolling Stone highlighted him on their Future of Music 2026 watchlist. Saint has been primed for this moment.

But before any of the music happened, he was a teacher.

After studying musical theatre as a teen — doing gigs at Ronnie Scott’s and Troy Bar on the side, half-committed to both paths — Saint moved back to Southampton with his mom when life in London got too expensive. He was 20. He started teaching, working with young people, and building a life that made sense even if it wasn’t the one he’d imagined.

“I kind of made peace with my life as a teacher,” he says. “I didn’t really think this was gonna be my reality.”

Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened. He posted a TikTok cover of Jazmine Sullivan’s “Pick Up Your Feelings.” Jazmine herself reposted it. And then Justin Bieber found him, among others. He wasn’t ready for that viral moment (who would be?). He didn’t even have an Instagram account at the time, as teachers at his school weren’t allowed to have one.

“I had to make an Instagram,” he laughs. “And then it kind of, you know, long story short, kind of led me to here.”

He says “long story short” as if it’s simple. Like going viral a few times, meeting managers on Zoom, flying to LA to write your debut project, and becoming one of the most talked-about voices in contemporary R&B is just a thing that happens. But that’s part of what makes Saint Harison so compelling to me — there’s an absence of performance around his own story. He’s not hyperbolizing. He’s just telling me what happened with a humbleness that we all love to see in our favorite singers.

Ego Talkin

The moment things truly started to break through for Saint was with the song “ego talkin’”, which wasn’t even supposed to be a single.

He wrote it on Zoom — still in the UK, still locked down — with producers Deputy and Boy Matthews. He liked it, but he was deep in making his debut EP and wasn’t treating it like anything special. Then COLORS called and asked him to perform on their platform. He chose to perform “ego talkin” because it was the most vocally demanding thing he had, and he wanted to show off his vocals. But the night before the performance dropped, he nearly killed off the whole thing himself.

“I got the video back, and I hated it. I thought I sounded so bad, and I was texting my managers — ‘I just can’t, I can’t do it.’ And they were like, ‘Well it’s already done.’”

He watches it now, three years later, and can’t figure out what he was so worried about. That’s the thing about Saint Harison and his voice — he treats it like something he’s still figuring out, while the rest of us have already decided it’s extraordinary. The riffs on “ego talkin’” aren’t just decoration; they carry weight. Every run is a feeling that couldn’t fit inside a regular lyric.

A few friends did a riff challenge to the song. Then Tori Kelly did it. Then it became a phenomenon. “It’s so random,” he says. “Ego talkin’ wasn’t even a single. I think that can give you an insight into how random it felt at the time.”

Random, yes. But also: earned. There’s something about Saint’s voice that stops people. It’s the combination of technical precision and the emotional rawness sitting right next to each other, neither one canceling out the other. When Jazmine Sullivan reposted his cover, it wasn’t by mistake. When Elton John called him one of his favorite new artists, it wasn’t hype. It was meant to be, and meant to happen for him.

Enter: Ghosted

Ghosted — the new EP that just dropped — is named after its opening track, which Saint wrote almost immediately after the ‘Lost a Friend’ EP came out. He knew sonically where he wanted to go: raw lyrics over ‘50s and ‘60s-inflected R&B sound. Less polished, less pop-leaning, more alternative. A little less structure. A little more honest.

“The songs I spend eight hours on are shit,” he says, with the certainty of someone who’s learned this the hard way. “The ones I spend 20 minutes on are the ones that wind up on the project.”

He wasn’t trying to write Ghosted the EP. He was trying to write an album. But over three years of what he describes, with a perfectly dry laugh, as having “apparently found the worst men on earth,” the project assembled itself. Eight songs that told a story. A complete chapter he didn’t plan to write, but couldn’t stop living.

The song “Panic Room” (his favorite on the project) is actually two one-minute pieces, born from a period when even writing a full song felt like too much pressure. He’d just write fragments. Release valves. “I was writing one-minute things,” he says. “I felt so pressured by the idea of trying to write a full song right then.” The fact that two of those fragments made it onto the project intact says something about what Ghosted is doing. It’s letting the shape of feelings determine the shape of the music, not the other way around.

He wrote more of this project alone and in small rooms than anything before it. No rooms with 30 people — just him, or maybe one other person, pouring it out.

“If I step into a room where there are more than five people, I want to cry. I feel more connected to it that way,” he says. “It feels more like a real child,” he says, referring to his music. And based on the results – his single “bad” just hit #1 on R&B Radio in the US – his approach works.

Queer Identity Within R&B

It’s the Pride Issue, so we talk about it. I ask, “Being a queer artist in R&B – how have you been able to navigate the industry as your most authentic self?”

Saint points to what’s happening around him. Victoria Monét being openly herself. Kehlani. Destin Conrad. There’s been a general shift in R&B over the past few years towards being more honest about who’s actually in the room, who’s actually writing these songs about love and heartbreak. He feels genuinely proud to be part of that.

“In R&B especially, we’re seeing so many more artists just be themselves. And I feel very proud to be a queer artist in R&B. It’s something that — as you said — 10, 20 years ago we wouldn’t be talking about. So it feels very special.”

When I mention that, looking at the R&B landscape right now — Saint, Sasha Keable, Kehlani, Destin Conrad, Kwn, Durand Bernarr, etc. — the queer artists are genuinely making some of the best R&B on the planet, he says something that makes us both laugh. “It’s because gay relationships are terrible. We’re horrible people.”

He means it affectionately, the way you can only mean something like that when you’ve lived it and written about it and somehow turned the wreckage into something people across the world can relate to and laugh about later.

What’s In The UK Water?

The UK R&B thing is real. Saint knows it. He’s careful, though, not to make it sound like a new discovery. Because it isn’t.

“The UK has always had fucking incredible people. Jaz Karis, Mahalia. Even before that, there were so many people. The UK’s always had incredible R&B acts.”

What’s different now, he thinks, is recognition. And also a specific absence of it back home. “The UK has some catching up to do with recognizing R&B in general — and awarding it. I think that’s why so many UK artists move out here [to the U.S.], because people out here get it.”

He singles out Sasha Keable approximately 5 times throughout the interview, each time catching himself and moving on, before eventually admitting he’d love to work with her and is a huge fan. Also on Saint’s collaborator wishlist is Lola Young — a close friend — and RAYE, who we both agree is insanely talented.

What’s next for Saint? A fall US tour is incoming. On his vision board is a Grammy or two. He’s also thinking about acting — specifically the dark, twisted, Ryan Murphy/Donald Glover lane. ”Obviously, you probably guessed from Ghosted that I love a dark, twisted sort of show.” He notes, with a kind of gleeful self-awareness, that British actors are always the villains in American productions. He seems genuinely fine with this. I, too, am here for it.

What I hear from Saint Harison – both in his music, how he talks about the greats, and in his future aspirations – is somebody who is prepared to be around for a good time and a long time. He’s only just scratching the surface. And that makes me super excited.

Credits:
Photographer: Quieto Carlos
Executive Producer: Dante Nicholas
Writer: Dante Nicholas

India Shawn says that she keeps coming back to this particular Rick Rubin quote: “Don’t play to win, play to play.” She drops it mid-conversation, in the way you mention something that has rearranged a thought you’ve been carrying for years. It stuck with her because she’d been doing the opposite for so long — grinding towards a goal, trying to break through, measuring the music against the moment it was supposed to produce. Subject To Change, her new EP via VANTA Music, is what happened when she started playing to play.

She’s unhurried when we talk, leaning back like someone who stopped checking the clock a while ago. There’s a specific kind of ease that comes from having nothing to prove to anyone – and India has that. And it makes sense once you know the road she’s traveled to get here. Writing songs for artists like Chris Brown, Monica, and Keri Hilson. Singing background for Anderson .Paak on the Best Teef In The Game tour. Working as a vocalist with Harry Styles during his Harry’s House era. The resumé goes on.

India’s voice has threaded into the mix so naturally that you may not have caught it unless you already knew to listen for her. She has been, for a long time, one of those artists that the music industry and R&B fans love quietly — the kind they keep calling “an artist’s artist” or a “slept on fave.” IYKYK. And it’s true, but it also doesn’t pay nearly enough.

Her latest project, ‘Subject To Change,’  is out now, and it hits hard. Six tracks. Every one of them sounds like an intentional decision she made for herself. The quiet chapter is over.

India’s Origin Story

She grew up in Los Angeles, with her mother as the praise and worship leader at their church. That’s where she learned to sing — not just the technical part, but the part that matters: how to mean it. When her family moved to Atlanta during high school, she carried that foundation into a city that was on its way to becoming the center of the musical universe. Atlanta gave her the work ethic, the network, and a new community of writers and producers. Everybody was figuring it out at the same time. She talks about that era with a warmth that means it impacted her greatly. “I feel like I really became a musical professional in Atlanta,” she says. “And now I’ve taken everything I’ve learned, and I’m back in LA. The environment of LA is felt in my music.”

Before Origin, her debut project, she wrote for others as part of a collective called Full Circle. She was good at it — placing plenty of songs and building a real working reputation in the industry. But writing for someone else means learning to disappear into their vision, and after long enough, that starts to feel like a trade that you didn’t fully agree to.

“Writing for others just affirmed that I wanted to write for myself,” she says. “I was providing a service in that era, and I just wanted to love what I was making. I wanted it to mean something to me. And then when I wrote those songs that meant something to me, I wanted to keep them for myself.”

So in 2012, she did. Origin arrived independently — ten tracks, with star musicians like Hit-Boy and James Fauntleroy in her corner. So if you were paying attention from jump, you know India was somebody to take seriously. The project found its people the slow way, through word of mouth and genuine feeling. Songs like “All I Have” and “Neither Do We” have that quality that the best early records have: they sound like someone telling you the truth before they knew anyone was listening. Her day ones have held those records close for over a decade. They bring them up unprompted – feeling personally responsible for introducing them and India to the world.

“That’s one of my favorite albums of mine. I think it’s a classic. I think it is me at the core.” She pauses. “If [fans] have been with me from the beginning, they see the growth. They also see that I’m the same girl in a lot of ways.”

She is. That’s the thing you notice sitting across from her. Whatever India Shawn has been becoming, she has been becoming it for a long time.

Playing The Long Game

In 2013, Solange put India’s “I’m Alive” on her Saint Heron compilation project — a co-sign from someone who appreciated the interesting thing before the interesting thing had a name. In 2015, she released ‘Outer Limits,’ her collaborative EP with James Fauntleroy. The EP mapped out a cosmic, unhurried version of alternative R&B that made it feel like trends didn’t matter. There was touring with Free Nationals, a Grammy performance with Harry Styles, and Anderson .Paak’s whole tour circuit…India was, and still is, booked and busy. She was everywhere serious music was happening, even when her name wasn’t the one on the marquee.

What kept her going, she says, was the people.

She mentions 6LACK, Anderson .Paak, and then arrives at the name that changes the whole shape of the convo: D’Mile. “D’Mile has been everything. He’s such a creative support in helping me to shape my sound and discover new sounds I want to explore.” She says working with D’Mile has been a safe space for her: to experiment, to fail, to have fun. And that’s rare for women in the industry.

“I always tell him – if it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t still be singing.”

She lets that sit. It’s not a dramatic statement — it’s a practical one. What D’Mile, whose VANTA Music label she is now signed to, has built with India isn’t just a production partnership. It’s a room where she could fail without it costing anything, where the work could be fun again. “It’s been the perfect situation,” she says. “He just makes it so easy to show up.”

D’Mile describes his approach simply: he listens. “Even before we start working, if we’re in the room just talking, I’m starting to think — is that a song?” he says to me in a conversation via Google Meet. “I try to really get to know whoever it is I’m working with.” With India, that familiarity has compounded over the years. “In some ways, it gets easier and easier to hear the music in her personality.”

To me, there are certain artists that I know instantly after hearing for the first time that they belong at the upper echelons of the “industry.” They deserve the budgets, the visuals, the awards, the fanfare. India Shawn has always been one of those people to me, though it’s been a long grind to get to the moment we’re at now.

I asked D’Mile why he thinks that is.

“I think for a while, timing wasn’t fair for Black artists doing R&B unless you were also doing EDM or pop,” he says. “People were also just set on who they loved at that time.” We both agree that the streaming era has allowed consumers to expand their palates and not rely on being told who’s hot by radio DJs or popular figureheads (like we’ve seen in decades past).

But something was shifting underneath all of it. D’Mile points to a specific moment he felt the ground move. “One of the things that started making me realize it was time for real music to come back was Childish Gambino’s ‘Redbone,” he says. That was a moment where R&B and soul music weren’t just being accepted again — they felt needed. The window that India had been patient enough to wait for had finally started to open.

Before We Go (Deeper), her 2022 project on Epic Records, was a full expression of that — with Anderson .Paak, 6LACK, Ambré, Cory Henry, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra as features, with India’s voice at the center of it all. The album got the attention it deserved from the people who knew.

She’s not bitter about the time it took. She’s also not going to pretend it didn’t sting. She made great music. The moment wasn’t ready. She kept making great music anyway.

Everything Is Subject To Change

The new EP Subject To Change started with a playlist. India sat down and pulled together everything she actually loved, and listened until she could hear what was missing from her own music. Then she brought it to D’Mile and the label. “This is what I’m chasing.”

“I wasn’t hearing it in my music,” she says. “Because I was still very much doing what people expected of me, or just what was easy to do.”

“Kill Switch” came out of that session of honesty — though not without some coaxing. D’Mile had brought in two members of Mamalarky, an alternative band whose sound he’d been drawn to, and when he walked into the studio, they were already noodling with an idea. “I think India that day kind of didn’t even want to go there,” D’Mile recalls. “She wanted to do something different. But I think she just couldn’t hear it yet.” He heard it. They stayed with it. India came back the next day with her collaborator Varren Wade, and the first lyric that came to her mind (the chorus) told them exactly what the song should be about.

“It just flowed,” D’Mile says. “Whether it took a day or two, it felt easy throughout.” The final record has D’Mile on drums, Livvy from Marmalarky on guitars, and Michael on keys — a full live session that you can feel in how the song breathes.

The song opens on acoustic guitar before dropping into a psychedelic soul-rock pocket. A groove that doesn’t announce itself, it just arrives, builds, and crashes into greatness. India’s voice sits in the center of immediately amazing lyrics. It’s about the moment before something changes between two people — recognizing the pull and choosing not to cross the line, protecting what’s real over what’s possible. A specific feeling rendered with great care. Exactly what India Shawn has always been best at.

“Kill Switch is definitely probably my favorite on the project,” she says — and the “definitely probably” is worth noting. It’s exactly how she talks; loose and precise at the same time. D’Mile agrees. I agree. “It was one of the first ones we finished and felt really, really good about.”

“Cotton Candy Blvd.” is an instant standout for its slow-burning, groovy nature. India and Lucky Daye trade verses and vocals like they’ve been doing this for years. Fans have been asking for this collaboration out loud for a while, and the record rewards their wait. You can hear the pleasure and the fun in it.

“The song is sweet, but it’s got depth. It’s the tension before the kiss, the invitation and the promise.”

The rest of the EP earns its range. “Marmalade” kicks things off as Track #1, and it’s the one that gets bodies moving — 70s warmth and dancefloor intimacy. “Til Infinity” makes me feel like I’m driving through California on a 75-degree day with blue skies and birds chirping. “Multiplicity” closes the project on a more complicated note, a sharper accounting of what it costs when someone wants too much of you. The EP covers real emotional ground without rushing any of it.

“I have been so hard on myself,” she says, “pushing toward a goal, wanting to win, wanting to break through — that I haven’t really had as much fun as I wanted to have.” Something lands in her face when she says it, less like a confession and more like a fact she’s done fighting. “Subject To Change is a lot of different sounds and emotions. It’s an experiment. And it is the first time I really played.”

She’s not playing to win. She’s playing to play. Word to Rick Rubin.

And that’s the thing about this EP that I love — you can actually hear someone who’s just making something they loved. It’s a different sound. Looser. More alive. Groovy, for lack of better adjectives.

Let The Groove Get In

Near the end of our conversation, I tell India that we’re calling this The Groove Issue. “I love that,” she says immediately. Then, after a beat: “First of all, I hear groovy music. Bops and jams.” She smiles. “But also, it feels like I’ve found this comfortable place in my career. And we’re definitely giving ‘70s, so — it’s groovy.”

D’Mile, for his part as label exec-producer-friend, wants people to see what he’s watched happen up close. “For the fans from day one, I want them to see the growth she’s had over the years,” he says. “The fact that she is still doing it. She’s not quitting.” He pauses. “She’s different from the person I knew, but in the best way!”

India Shawn has never been a mystery. The same artist who made “Be Myself” in 2012 made “Kill Switch” in 2025 — same instincts, same honesty, same refusal to make music that doesn’t mean something to her first. What changed isn’t who she is. It’s that she stopped leaving room for anyone else’s version of that.

On our way out, she mentions offhandedly that she’s been listening to a lot of 1970s soul lately — Minnie Riperton, Syreeta, the stuff that takes its time. “Music that trusts you to stay with it,” she says. So with that being said, let the groove get in.

Credits:
Writer + Creative Director – Dante Nicholas
Photographer – Breyona Holt
Stylist – Cedes Sanders
Hair – thedimeeffect_
Makeup – CHERIEBEAUTY
Video Director – Jai Casso

The British-Canadian-Nigerian is returning with a new EP entitled “Crush”, digging more into her lane within the Pop and R&B landscape and further cementing her place among the best in music.

From her influences of Michael and Janet Jackson, to Mariah Carey, and Madonna, to Kali Uchis and Kaytranada – Essosa’s music blends both old and new sounds to create a mix of nostalgic moods and new perspectives.

This sound can be felt in her first EP, Essie’s World, which spawned the viral hit “Waste My Time.” Delivering smooth vocals over production that felt reminiscent of the best of the Neptunes, Essosa started to craft her own signature sound with that first project.

“I made Essie’s World in the span of three months; it was my first time ever in the studio all the time. I just felt like the world was my oyster.” Essie’s World felt like a peek into where Essosa is going in her musical journey, while Crush is further putting her stamp on her place in pop and R&B music.

To do that, she made sure this new Crush EP was made without any outside noise. It also has a larger backing of support that should help take the rising star further beyond the scope of Essie’s World.

“I came in with a vision before, but now having a team to help execute that as well. Everyone is on board, and everyone is like how do we execute this in the best way possible?”

The Crush singles, like “Touch bby”, “Signs”, and “He’s Not All That”, dig deeper into the main ethos of her new EP.

The EP blends sweet R&B and Pop melodies, conveying the emotions of having a crush and processing the ups and downs, as in the centerpiece, “Missing U”.

Drawing on a sound similar to “Together Again” by Janet Jackson, the song tells a story of reflection and resetting after a situationship in limbo. This song, along with this EP, carries motifs inspired by Essosa’s life.

“It was really in the time when I met someone and thought, okay, this is actually a bit stable. I felt girlie, which is where the whole pink girly thing across the singles came from.”

Adding to this new EP, Essosa recently wrapped up supporting Rochelle Jordan on her “Through the Wall” U.S. and Europe tour, spreading her artistry to new listeners. One of the things she learned while on tour with Jordan was resilience and how her music can speak to new audiences.

“I noticed how songs connect with people. So, how do upbeat or catchy songs connect with people? It made me want to know how I can keep making music that connects with people, especially in the context of life.”

Having found this initial connection with “Waste My Time” (which spawned over 70 million streams and over 19,000 TikTok videos), her new EP Crush goes beyond the timeline and takes listeners deeper into Essosa’s world.

There’s a question that follows Ambré everywhere she goes, one she’s answered in interviews and probably in her own head more times than she can count: What kind of artist are you? R&B? Soul? Alternative? The label-seeking is understandable. She has a voice that could make you cry in a grocery store. She’s a Grammy Award-winning songwriter who co-wrote tracks on H.E.R.’s debut. She’s been on Roc Nation’s roster since 2019. By most conventional metrics, she fits neatly into a category. And yet…

“I’ve never been an R&B artist,” she says plainly, the kind of plainly that makes you realize she’s said this before and means it. “I have R&B songs. But you can listen to any of my projects and hear all types of sounds and genres.” She’s not being difficult; that’s an accurate statement.

Welcome To The 504

India Ambré Perkins grew up in New Orleans. She was born there, shaped there, and proud of it in a way that runs so deep it informs the titles of her projects.

When she talks about New Orleans now, she doesn’t settle on easy nostalgia. “It’s some stuff that I grew up knowing,” she says, “and then there’s stuff that I learned as an adult about New Orleans that I put into my music.” That distinction matters to her. The city isn’t a costume. It’s a continuous education, something she’s still unpacking, still discovering, still folding into the work.

The Reluctant Musician

She didn’t plan any of this. That’s the part people might not expect from someone who has quietly become one of the more compelling voices in contemporary R&B. The sheer accidental-ness of it.

“I never really made a decision to do music,” she says. “People were just telling me I was good at it.” One of the biggest among them was her sister, who kept pushing her to record, to put things out, to let people hear what she was doing. Ambré didn’t even like her own voice for a long time. “I always loved music,” she adds, and you believe her. It’s just that loving music and deciding to stake your whole life on it are two different conversations, and for her, the second one happened gradually, almost by default.

She played trombone in the marching band. Sang in the school choir and at church, which, for many Black artists from the South, is where the voice gets its first dose of real training. She taught herself production and how to record. By the time she started making real songs at 17, the foundation was well in place. She just didn’t know she’d been building it.

Her influences are the kind that tell you something real about a person. Brandy. André 3000. Frank Ocean. Prince. Stevie Wonder. Tame Impala. D’Angelo. The canonical and the niche, the feeling and the craft: it’s basically a blueprint for how she makes music today. She moves fluidly between worlds because she’s always lived in all of them at once.

The Journey to Now

Before the “blow-up," there was a writing camp. In 2014, producer Swagg R’celious found Ambré on Instagram after one of her early SoundCloud tracks started moving. He invited her to a session for a then-unknown artist named Gabriella Wilson, who the world would come to know as H.E.R. Ambré wrote two songs at that camp: “U” and “Changes.” Both made the album. That album won Best R&B Album at the 2019 Grammys.

Over the years, her pen would show up on Kehlani’s “Water” and “Honey”, Chlöe x Halle’s “Forgive Me,” and across a sprawling list of collaborators that reads like a who ’s-who of the last decade in R&B.

Pulp arrived in November 2019, the same week Roc Nation announced her signing. The EP was ten tracks of something genuinely hard to categorize: psychedelic, lush, emotionally direct, guitar-forward in a way that surprised people. Roc Nation co-president Omar Grant compared her to a modern-day Tracy Chapman. Ambré called it “a psychedelic coming of age story.”

Then came 3000° in 2022, and “I’m Baby.” The duet with Jvck James became the song her name travels with now. Confident, sensual, deceptively simple. The whole EP was a love letter to New Orleans, with her mother’s voice woven between tracks. 3000° was a direct nod to Lil Wayne and Juvenile’s classic Louisiana rap touchstones. “The name is a direct homage,” she told Rolling Stone at the time. That impulse, to honor where you come from while doing something entirely your own, is basically the throughline of her whole career.

Learning To Play

In 2025, Ambré joined Leon Thomas on The MUTT Tour, and she went to learn. Not just to perform or get her name on a bill, but to absorb something new. What she came back with was a deeper obsession with musicianship: the kind Prince had, the kind that makes an artist dangerous on stage because their relationship with their instrument goes all the way down.

“One thing I learned from Leon on tour was his musicality and stage presence,” she says, drawing a line between him and her love for Prince. “They both play almost every instrument. That’s something I’ve been wanting to experiment with and do more of myself. Leon is someone I’ve been friends with for years, so to see his journey is very inspiring. It felt like great practice for me every night. I was sharpening my skills.”

If you’ve ever seen her perform with a guitar, you know she doesn’t play around. At the Atlanta stop on the MUTT Tour, Ambre was up there making people in the front row fall in love. The guitar was part of it. The physicality of it, the way it turned performance into something lived-in and real. The instrument thing isn’t a gimmick. It’s a direction she’s been moving in for years now, and what’s coming next reflects that.

The word “genre” came up in our conversation, but only in the context of not being defined by it. “Black artists are constantly boxed into this R&B label,” she says. “If you sing, you’re just R&B.” She’s not mad about it, but she’s clear. “I’m not a person who likes to define myself by genre.”

She’s been making music that moves across sounds since Wanderlust in 2015. Her upcoming album, led by the single “She,” is a continuation of that refusal. And based on the album preview we’ve heard, it’s the fullest expression of it yet.

What Ambré Wants You to Feel

Ask her what she hopes people take from the era that’s coming, and she doesn’t give you a tidy answer. She gives you the full list.

A world she created. That framing is intentional. Ambré doesn’t talk about music like it’s a product. She talks about it like it’s a place you go…like somewhere that holds you. “I see entire images,” she’s said before. “It’s like a whole movie, and I see scenes. I’m a storyteller.”

The next chapter of that story draws from somewhere deep and specific: the spirituality of D’Angelo’s Voodoo, the way that record moved not just sonically but ceremonially. Like something you didn’t just hear, but also experienced. That energy is in the room when she talks about what’s coming. You can feel it without her having to name it.

The past few years have been a deliberate recalibration, a shift toward intention. “I’ve been focused on being intentional with my words and what I put out into the world,” she says, “and being true to the way that I see myself, not how the world sees me.” That’s the work underneath the work. The craft of it, sure, but also the harder project: learning to trust your own perception of yourself over everyone else’s.

It’s the kind of thing that sounds simple and takes years. But Ambré has put in her 10,000 hours.

When she introduced herself at the start of our conversation, there was something easeful to it. Unhurried. Like someone who has stopped needing to explain themselves and started just being themselves instead. Incredible new music (with some incredible features) is on the way. The vision is locked in. Whatever box you were about to put Ambré in before, leave it. She doesn’t need it.

Credits:

Writer + Exec Producer – Dante Nicholas
Photographer – Jhalin Knowles
Stylist – Paris Cole
Creative Director – Dante Nicholas + Jhalin Knowles
Video Director – Dale Roberson
Photo Assistant – Makayla Howard
Consultant – Cedes Sanders

All instrumentalist and producer Kaelin Ellis needs is a drumset and some time to bring an R&B track to life. His latest single, “Hello.Morning,” featuring Madison McFerrin and SWEATA, is one of many tracks that showcase his ear for simple but effective instrumentation.

The “Hello.Morning” cover art features a photo of his parents on their wedding day. His first release of 2026, Kaelin is intent on capturing his roots and journey as a musician, producer, and human being in the music he’s making.

Kaelin first found his love for music playing when his dad bought him a small CB drum kit. He spent his childhood playing while his dad was on the keys, conducting the choir in church. “Growing up in church, you play not to honor yourself, but to honor something far greater than you,” he recalled in an interview with In The Writers Mind.

Sonically, you can find rhythm and blues, funk, soul, jazz, and more in his music. Kaelin has collaborated with everyone from Lupe Fiasco, Joyce Wrice, Saba, Jazmine Sullivan, and Mick Jenkins to the K-pop group Exo. In a time where a lot of music can sound the same thanks to AI, he leans into musicianship to connect with listeners.

A Kaelin Ellis live show is full of surprises and plenty of stank-face-approved moments. He’ll go from making you swing your hips to dance tracks “Come and Get Me” featuring Iman Europe, to blowing your mind with an electrifying drum solo to Denzel Curry’s “Ultimate.”

In 2025, Kaelin released two full-length projects, OFF BEAT and Chrysalis. In the midst of releasing two projects in one year, he toured the world, playing shows in Los Angeles, New York City, France, London, and beyond.

“It’s almost like trying to shoot jump shots after not having shot a jump shot in a long time,” Kaelin said about diving back into performing. He feels both the excitement and the nervousness of performing for a live audience again.

With the release date of his next project, Vol. XI: PATH approaching, he’s been reflecting heavily during his time off the road. On his IG, you can find snippets of a much tinier Kaelin Ellis banging on a drum set as his dad cheers him on behind grainy VHS footage.

“I got disconnected from my roots a little bit, and I recognized from that video of my dad talking to me when I was a little kid that everything I experienced is not random at all. It wasn’t just because I had a couple of records that did pretty well or people bought my samples, literally, my dad spoke that over me.”

When I spoke with Kaelin, he was in London on his way to a meeting with another producer he met online through his Twitch community. On Twitch, Discord, and YouTube, Kaelin documents his music-making process while interacting with viewers through livestreams.

He plans to build up his online community, The MKRS Club, to provide even more resources for up-and-coming producers. Fostering community through collaboration and knowledge sharing has remained important to him. He credits his community as one of the main reasons he’s never done creating.

On his next project Vol. XI : PATH Kaelin looks forward to exploring more Caribbean rhythms. His partner introduced him to artists like salsa musician Willie Colón, whom he credits heavily for his approach to instrumentation on this next project.

When asked what’s been giving him hope about the future of R&B, Kaelin spoke passionately about wanting to see more collaboration. “I love seeing the older generation of R&B embrace the younger kids who actually sit and learn about how to really craft a song. It’s like that moment in the Tank and Tyrese Verzuz where Tyrese introduces Kenyon Dixon. Kenyon’s so tough.”

With a newfound trust in himself and the community he’s building, Kaelin looks forward to creating art that moves people to discover something new about themselves. “I make music and create it because I feel God gave me a really incredible thing to use to help somebody else.”

The National R&B Hall of Fame explores the evolution of R&B and highlights how, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, producers shaped an entire generation. As they state, “R&B started to become homogenized, with a group of high-profile producers responsible for most R&B hits”. This perspective accurately reflects how hits were crafted and styles were defined across eras of R&B, allowing the genre to remain both consistent and innovative.

The truth is, what was happening during this timeframe helped prepare the next generation and was extremely influential in the rise of hip-hop. The late 80s and 90s gave us producers like Teddy Riley, who had a way of merging R&B and hip hop, giving us lasting hits like “My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown, “No Diggity” by Blackstreet, and “Piece of My Love” by Guy. Babyface was a consistent hitmaker, giving lovers a space to be seen with timeless classics like “Never Gonna Let You Go” by Faith Evans, “I’m Ready” by Tevin Campbell, and “Superwoman” by Karyn White. The list of great producers continues with Darkchild, Dallas Austin, and the legendary duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, just to name a few. Let’s not overlook the fact that these greats were influenced by key figures in the R&B game: Jerry Wexler, Berry Gordy, and Quincy Jones, all of whom established a solid blueprint for many to be inspired by generation after generation.

Now, in a time where podcasting is on the rise, we have the ability to connect more with these influential figures, learning more about their stories, history, and how they contributed to the evolution of R&B and Black culture. We see these conversations on shows like R&B Money Podcast, which is hosted by Tank, a notable songwriter, producer, and singer, and J. Valentine, who is behind platinum hits; as well as Shawn Stockman’s On That Note podcast, where he is most known for being part of the legendary group Boyz II Men.

On a recent episode of On That Note, Shawn interviewed another notable R&B producer, Bryan-Michael Cox. Cox’s production career began in the late ’90s, and over two decades later, he is still contributing to the R&B landscape. He was recently recognized as one of Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Producers of the 21st century, holding the number two spot behind Jermaine Dupri. The conversation between two greats served as a reminder that R&B producers are the foundation of the genre and the translators of culture. Without the vision of producers, the genre as we know it would not exist. A producer can turn a flop into a hit, connect us to our emotions and identity, and help shape the careers of R&B superstars.

R&B production and the producers behind it do not just give us music to enjoy; they translate life experiences into words, sounds, and melodies that people can relate to, get lost in, feel deeply, and see their own stories in. It’s an undeniable gift and talent that elevates an artist’s visions and shapes an artist’s sound. They are intentional in vocal arrangements, instrumentation, layering, and timing, creating moods we can connect with while setting the tone and atmosphere. The influence of gospel music can be heard in much of what we love, as R&B producers have a way of evoking inspiration, empowerment, and hope through their work. There is a difference between a good song and a lasting song, one that continues to inspire and influence more timeless hits. The songs producers give us become part of our core memories, both individually and culturally. They orchestrate music that allows us to celebrate our loved ones, our birthdays, protest against injustice, and sing our hearts out.

R&B is not just an American genre; it influences the entire world, and producers are the driving force behind it. There are producers whose names we often hear, but we must also give flowers to the late greats and those who deserve to be amplified more. Static Major gave us timeless classics that still feel fresh today, including “Pony” by Ginuwine, “Rock the Boat” by Aaliyah, and “Cheers 2 U” by Playa. LaShawn Daniels is known for his contributions to major hits for Destiny’s Child, and the hit song “The Boy Is Mine” by Brandy and Monica. Missy Elliott creates space for women in this conversation and is notably known for her work with Aaliyah and Timbaland & Magoo. She also produced unforgettable classics, like “Free Yourself” by Fantasia and “Need U Bad” by Jazmine Sullivan. Mariah Carey is another credible producer, having self-produced major hits like “Fantasy” and “Don’t Forget About Us,” with a catalog that continues far beyond the songs mentioned.

The producers who emerged in the late 80s and 90s have evolved into the 2000s and continue to give us major hits today. We should also keep our eyes on those who are leaving a mark on today’s R&B, including D’Mile and Kaytranada, both of whom have contributed to recent work by Alex Isley, along with other notable names like Steve Lacy, who has produced for Kali Uchis, Solange, and The Internet; and Jack Rochon, who has produced for H.E.R., Kehlani, Beyonce, 6LACK, and Nija.

Today’s producers continue to show that R&B does not become stagnant or fade away. R&B sets the tone, the standard, and remains a trendsetter. When the question arises of whether R&B can last or if it is the same as it once was, we must recognize that it is not only lasting, but continuously evolving to meet the present moment while still honoring its past, and we can show gratitude to the producers and production behind it all.

Written by Courtney Clardy

Darhyl "DJ" Camper Jr. started practicing music at six. He hated it, actually. Piano lessons his parents pushed him into, and a small town in New Jersey — Mays Landing — that, by his own account, nobody comes from. “Nothing comes from it,” he told Sheen Magazine. “I’m very blessed to be one of those to come out of that.”

That was the setup, but by 11, he was all in. The rest of his story one of the steadier rises in contemporary R&B. His first placement was at 16 with Bow Wow and Omarion (“Hoodstar”), a Grammy nomination for Elle Varner’s “Refill” by his early twenties, and then a stretch of work across the last decade that includes H.E.R.’s “Focus”, Coco Jones’ “ICU,” Mary J. Blige, Brandy, Tamar Braxton, Keyshia Cole, FLO, Kehlani, and at one point, five songs charting on the Hot 100 simultaneously. Camper has been building a legacy for years. Most people are just now catching on.

Campilation, his debut album, released January 23rd, is the announcement. Eleven tracks, live piano arrangements, real bass, layered percussion — built the way that lasts. And a guest list that looks like someone threw a party and invited everyone who mattered: Stevie Wonder, Brandy, Victoria Monét, Jill Scott, Lucky Daye, Ari Lennox, Syd, Tank, Ty Dolla $ign, Tone Stith, Alex Isley, and more. He described it to us as a family reunion. “Food was definitely served,” he said. You believe it.

The Jill Scott record is worth stopping on. “OOWEE,” which also features Ty Dolla$ign, is the kind of song that sounds like it should have always existed. Scott’s warmth over a soulful hip-hop vibe that doesn’t rush itself, Ty Dolla $ign threading through. The whole thing feels like a room full of people who are happy to be in the same room. Camper talked about it like a man who still can’t quite believe it happened. “Working with Jilly from Philly was a dream come true,” he said. “The synergy was like no other.”

And then there’s “LOVE ME,” where Stevie Wonder plays harmonica. In 2012, Camper posted on Twitter: Wish I could get Stevie to play harmonica on this interlude I did, that’s the only thing it’s missing. Over a decade later, it happened — not on that interlude, but the same idea, the same dream, finally made real.

When someone showed him the old tweet recently, he covered his face with his hands. “Man, I said that?” he asked. “I was just talking to God.” That detail tells you everything about how Camper moves through the world — patient, faithful, specific about what he wants, and fully ready when the moment arrives.

For his first Grammy — Best R&B Album, thanks to H.E.R.’s debut album in 2019 — he flew his whole family from Jersey. His mother walked the red carpet with him. He still talks about it that way, like it just happened. Because some things you don’t let go of, and you shouldn’t.

What pushed him toward his own album, eventually, was watching artists he’d built move on — and sometimes stumble without the same results. “Let me keep stuff for me,” he decided. “Let me bet on myself.” That’s not bitterness. That’s clarity and vision. Campilation is the proof of concept — not just that he can make hits for other people, but that he has a perspective worth hearing directly. He sings on this one, too. Brandy is the one who cracked that open. Working with her on B7, he said, gave him confidence he hadn’t foreseen. If Brandy tells you to sing, you sing.

“Welcome to the Camp” — the tag you’ve heard on records for years without maybe knowing whose it was — turns out to be exactly what it sounds like. His studio in LA is The Camp. The community he’s building around himself, the producers he works alongside, the artists he’s carried and the ones carrying him now — all of it is the camp. “It’s no goodness of my own,” he told us. “I know who I come from. It’s not just me. It’s the camp.”

Bongo ByTheWay is that someone.

The Nigeria-born, Providence-raised, LA-based producer has been threading himself through the fabric of modern R&B for over a decade through records with Summer Walker, Ari Lennox, Jazmine Sullivan, Chloe Bailey, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, and more. And he never makes it about himself.

“I look back, and I’m like, man, I’ve been really like a heartbeat in R&B.” The realization is still fresh, even though the catalog has been building for years.

Often with music, we hear from the artist that lead the songs. But what about the producers that are bringing those classics to life? For the Producer Issue cover story, I talked to one of today’s leading R&B producers about his journey, his biggest hits, and what’s next.

Starting on Pots and Pans

Bongo’s introduction to music wasn’t through a traditional studio or a mentor with a deal. It was pots and pans, a church drum kit, and a brother who handed him Stevie Wonder records like they were scripture. “He introduced me to everything,” Bongo says. “From Stevie Wonder to D’Angelo to The Roots to Jay-Z.” By 8, Bongo was rapping. By 11, he realized that he needed beats to rap over, and couldn’t just borrow other people’s. So he made his own.

On a four-track tape recorder and a Casio keyboard, he started building music for his friends in Providence. Little neighborhood albums. No budget, all heart. That was the first version of music production for him. It wasn’t built out of being a career move, but as a necessity.

The moment it became real came later, when he started spending time at a professional studio in Atlanta with his cousin, eventually landing a placement with Musiq Soulchild. “Being around that environment,” he says, “that’s when I was like, okay, yeah…I could do this for real.”

The Texture Savant

Ask Bongo what his production signature is, and he doesn’t hesitate. “Texture,” he says. “I’m a texture savant.” He can go ‘70s soul, ‘90s R&B, contemporary hip-hop, or pop. The genre shifts, but there’s something consistent running underneath all of it. A feel. A weight to the drums when the drums need weight. A willingness to strip everything back when the song demands it.

That instinct for restraint shows up most clearly on “Girl Like Me” with Jazmine Sullivan and H.E.R. — the Heaux Tales record that he names as one of his most impactful. It arrived in the cultural moment right after Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion’s mega smash “WAP,” and it offered a different kind of anthem for women. And Bongo made a call that still surprises him: no drums.

“I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the record,” he says. “We had live strings. I just stripped it back to really let it breathe because of what they were saying, and how amazingly they were singing it.” For a producer who describes himself as being very particular about drums, that was a significant leap. It now lives on as a definitive song on a Grammy-winning classic album, and the lesson stuck.

What the World Told Him

Bongo didn’t set out to become the go-to producer for women in R&B; it kinda just happened over time. He describes his lane as wide. He swerves genres, works across formats, and doesn’t like to be boxed in. But somewhere along the way, the pattern made itself clear. Someone told him early on that the world would eventually tell you what it wants from you.

“I looked back, and I was like, man…I’ve worked with Mariah Carey. Jessie Reyez. Mary J. Blige. Lizzo. Summer Walker. Ari Lennox. Teyana Taylor. Tinashe. Coco Jones. And More. It has consistently been the vibe. So you’d be remiss to not take note of that.”

When he works with women, the approach changes — and he’s deliberate about why. “The song has to come from their perspective,” he says. “Love and relationships have always been hot-button issues, but even more so now. Whether they want to be strong and independent, or vulnerable and loving, you have to be attentive to where each person is in their life.” He’s producing the music, but he’s also holding the space. That combination, it turns out, is kinda rare in music these days.

In the Room: Four Artists, Four Stories

JAZMINE SULLIVAN

Producing for one of the most technically gifted vocalists alive could be an exercise in pressure. Bongo doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t approach it differently,” he says simply. What he does bring is gravity — the weight and intention the record deserves. The result was a creative relationship that produced one of the best records of the last decade. For a producer who once said he’s almost never released a drumless record, stripping everything back for “Girl Like Me” wasn’t a compromise. It was the whole point.

SUMMER WALKER

“Take Me Out This Club” came together with songwriter Jozzy and was recorded at the LVRN studio in Atlanta. By the time Bongo walked in, Summer had already cut it. “I walked in with favor already,” he says, laughing. “The deal was already sealed.” What struck him wasn’t just the record — it was her focus. Summer had just finished “Heart Of A Woman,” and watching her listen back to her own work, he could see it clearly. “She’s serious about her craft.” There are more records in the vault, and Bongo makes clear he wants to keep building.

CHLOE BAILEY

“Working with Chlöe was nothing short of amazing. It was literally perfect,” is how Bongo describes working on her second solo project ‘Trouble In Paradise’ — and he means it in the most specific way. They went to St. Lucia for two weeks to lock in. The work was focused, professional, and deeply collaborative. What set it apart was Chlöe’s willingness to collaborate, even though she’s more than capable of doing everything herself. “She was super open-minded and allowed herself to be produced,” Bongo says.

“Some artists don’t have the wisdom to do that. A lot of people think they know everything. I watched her promote the records herself, pour her own money into the vision, show up as a complete artist — dancing, singing, acting, directing, the whole thing. She’s mind-blowing, honestly. She’s the epitome of an artist. Working on that album was one of the best working experiences.”

​​ARI LENNOX

Bongo and Ari locked in for two weeks in LA, and out of those sessions came “Smoke” and “Wake Up” (my personal favorite from her album Vacancy). What he remembers most is what it felt like to be in the room while she was actually singing. “When she’s in the booth hitting crazy notes, it’s mind-blowing,” he says. “Sometimes artists will get in the studio and hold back, but I was able to hear her range, the things she appreciates vocally, and she’s just so dope.”

Beyond the voice, what struck him was her as a person — she showed up to the sessions with gift baskets, grabbed things for his pets, and moved through the room with the kind of warmth that makes people want to do their best work. “We’re going to keep working for sure,” Bongo says. With records like “Wake Up”, that’s less a plan and more an inevitability.

Bring Love Back

Bongo is bullish on the future of R&B, but he’s clear-eyed about what’s held it back. Marketing, mostly — the infrastructure to get these artists in front of the audiences they deserve. A lot of the artists that Bongo has worked with are amazing, but they don’t get the support they need. But he senses a shift. “Fans are starting to appreciate musicality again in real, tangible ways, and when attention moves, money follows.”

AI has been a hot topic in music lately, especially Black music. We’re starting to see artists and songs made up completely by AI prompts. Some fans (myself included) are perplexed by the thought. Bongo draws the line at craft — not technology. “AI as a tool, I can see that,” he says. “But to completely circumvent the whole process? That’s a loss for everyone. The engineers, the songwriters, the producers, the love of the thing itself.” What you can’t clone with AI, he says, is real soul. And real soul is exactly what R&B is supposed to carry. It’s supposed to make you feel. Cry. Yearn. Lust. Emote.

His vision for where the genre goes next is simple and ambitious at the same time: innovation plus love. “When Timbaland did double-time drum fills for the first time, we were like, whoa, what is this?” he says. “That type of innovation, sonically, that’s what I’m excited about. And then, substance-wise: bring love back.” He talks about rap’s dominance creeping into R&B’s messaging for years, flattening its emotional range. He wants to reclaim the space. “We’ve been down that road. We can break away.”

Recently, Bongo has worked with Lekan, Durand Benarr, and Saint Harison, artists that he says are vocally insane and bring a much-needed texture to the genre. So Operation Bring Real Soul Back is well in the works.

ByTheWay Wednesday

Beyond the studio, Bongo has been quietly building something else with his manager and business partner Cory Ford. ByTheWay Wednesday is a monthly R&B night he co-hosts in LA — live band, curated themes, a room where Stevie Wonder might perform, and A$AP Rocky might be sitting at the next table. “You could be right next to your favorite artist and not even know it,” he says. It’s become one of the most genuine R&B spaces in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t feel pretentious. It doesn’t feel like Hollywood. It just feels like a great vibe.”

That instinct – to build community around the music, not just contribute to it – says a lot about who Bongo ByTheWay is at his core. The production credit is one thing. The intention behind it is another.

What’s coming next for Bongo is a full production slate: SiR, Lucky Daye, Muni Long, Joyce Wrice, Anderson .Paak, Jeremih, and more are still tucked away. Each one is a bet on music made by people who mean it.

“Innovation is what moves the culture forward. Sonically, yeah. But also — we gotta bring love back. That’s what I want people to remember from this era.”

He’s been the engine behind records that move people. Now Bongo ByTheWay is taking the wheel - delivering R&B from the heart and for the heart.

Bonita Jalane is Brooklyn-born, but she’s been in Atlanta for a while, so she calls herself an “apple peach,” which is one of the coolest things I’ve heard all month. Music was never really a choice for her either. Her grandfather toured the chitlin circuit. She was in a choir at five years old, traveling to Japan and Canada, and already holding notes most kids her age aren’t even thinking about. By her mid-teens, she’d decided to pursue music seriously, and not long after that, she was laying hooks for the likes of Dipset. Just casually! As one does.

Fast forward to 2025, and ‘Kept Kissing Frogs’ – the album – drops. For Bonita, frogs is an acronym. Forgive, Release, Overcome, Grow. The “frogs” on this album aren’t bad exes. They’re the hard things: depression, fear, betrayal, the stuff you have to move through to actually become yourself.

She wasn’t kissing frogs looking for a prince. That was the “work” that had to be done and the process to get where she is now. That reframe alone made me want to go back and relisten to the whole thing differently.

Her influences are thee ones. Dinah Washington, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald. Bonita is pulling from people who treated singing like a calling, not a career, and you can hear that in what she does. There’s weight behind how she moves through a song. Sonically, I hear Jill Scott. I hear Teedra Moses. On songs like “Somebody”, you hear how Bonita blends modern R&B production with classic soul influence.

When I asked her which track off Kept Kissing Frogs she’d want someone to start with, she said, “That’s like separating a mama from all her kids,” which is a perfect answer. But she landed on “I Love Myself.” She talked about it like an affirmation you say to yourself when you’re running low, when you’ve been giving grace to everybody but yourself.

Her dream collab? Lauryn Hill. She reasoned that it would be healing and that a song like that could move across generations. Bonita is clearly thinking about legacy and not just virality, which in 2026 is genuinely refreshing to hear from an artist that we’re just discovering.

What she wants you to feel is nostalgia. She wants you to feel like there’s more out there for you. She’s not making music to be a soundtrack; she’s making it to remind people they have a purpose worth showing up for. Whether or not Kept Kissing Frogs does that for you will probably depend on where you are in your own process right now. But give it a real listen. Bonita Jalane is just getting started, and she sounds like she already knows exactly where she’s going.

Stream Kept Kissing Frogs now.

YAMS Magazine is built for people who take R&B personally. Keep up with Bonita Jalane at @BonitaJalane.

Listen to YAMS on Spotify or Apple Music.

Leven Kali “Starlet” (from the album LK99)

If you know Leven Kali’s name, you know ball. He has four songs on Beyoncé’s Renaissance, and a decade of songwriting behind the curtain for Tinashe, Drake, Jazmine Sullivan, Snoh Aalegra, and others. LK99, his third album of his own, is out this week, and he’s further stepping into his light.

“Starlet” sits right in the center of the project. The song confesses it can’t separate love from lust, and Leven delivers it with the kind of warmth and rhythm that disarms you before you realize what he’s actually saying. It’s very reminiscent of Sade and Miguel, and we’re fully here for this vibe. If you love musicality and live instrumentation, get into this album ASAP!

Alex Isley “Westside” (from the album When The City Sleeps)

Alex Isley’s major label debut, When The City Sleeps, drops March 20th, and she’s describing it as a love letter to Los Angeles — her home, the setting of her dreams, her triumphs, her heartbreaks. “Westside” is the second single, and it lands like exactly what it is: a record made by someone who knows a city the way you know a person. Play this one reaaal loud!

Lekan — “Safety” (Single)

This spring, Lekan is heading out on the road as a supporting act for Ari Lennox’s Vacancy Tour, a co-sign that speaks for itself. But before his bags get packed, he dropped “Safety” — and it’s the kind of song that makes you want to clear your schedule and listen closely. We’re ready for Lekan to have his big breakout moment, and “Safety” could be exactly that.

All three are already living on the YAMS Playlist among a ton of other new releases. Find it on Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal and let the weekend do the rest.

When it comes to a rebrand era, Gen Z takes the cake for the freedom and space of being fearless in starting over. And not just for the aesthetic, but for the state of their mental health. Singer-songwriter Ama, formerly known as Ama Lou, knew that to start this new chapter of artistry and life, she wanted to have a clean slate within her musical journey. Coming into our Zoom meeting, the 27-year-old tells me she’s in a space of being locked in. “I see the end of the creation of this second album, and I’m highly focused,” she said.

She released DDD, her first EP, in 2018, which showcased a diverse range of her R&B style. The London-born artist is renowned for her storytelling and songwriting, which often explores escapism and fantasy through a lens.

Her debut album, I Came Home Late, released in 2023, provided her with a crash course in what she wanted her artistry to convey and served as a wake-up call for what she envisioned for her legacy.

“After my first album, I felt a little bit shell-shocked,” she said. “The process of creating the album was so extreme, and after I made it and put it out, it just kind of sat there, and I was kind of like, oh shit, what do I do now?”

After signing with Brent Faiyaz’s imprint ISO Supremacy, she spent time figuring out who she wanted to be. Now, after a two-year hiatus, she’s starting a new chapter and revealing a new side to her fans.

“I am showing up, and writing from my actual perspective, rather than hiding behind cryptic lyrics, or characters I make for videos, [and] although the visual will always be some sort of abstract element. I found when I approached writing again after my hiatus, nothing was flowing unless I wrote the truth,” she said.

Initially, the stage name Ama Lou was a form of protection, allowing her to hide behind a persona that kept people at a distance and unknown to her. Now, as simply Ama, she’s ready to show up as the person who wrote the songs and fully be herself. “I do feel like I’m a completely different person than the person I was two years ago,” she said.

Now with her new single “Need it Bad,” featuring Faiyaz, she’s staying true to the authentic layers of herself. “It was kind of a Kismet situation, because he hit me and was like, ‘Could you try something for this song?’ and we actually went to the studio together, and I wrote it there and recorded it there in kind of one day,” she said.

The song serves as the kickoff to her new era, where she’s embracing all aspects of herself. “Coming from a perspective of a songwriter, I wanted to match his vibe adequately,” she told YAMS.

“I’ve been writing everything in truth, and so I was kind of like, okay, well, I’m gonna have to really lean into the really lean into this, and it didn’t take too much thinking.”

She’s in a new era of truly showcasing honesty through her lyricism. “The perception of me as an artist before was that I was this cool, stoic, and nonchalant,” she explained. “That was definitely a character that I built, and I wanted to rip the band-aid off.”

Though she’s usually found herself hiding behind a character or persona, she’s now finding herself grounding herself in her full essence as Ama the person, which blends into her artistry. “With these songs and this new album, there’s a lot of different parts that I’m showing, but they’re all from me as an actual human being, or in my everyday life,” she said.

As far as what this round of music (including her new album) will feel like, Ama makes it clear that we’re all being our vulnerable and authentic selves. That includes livening up her social media presence and becoming more connected with her fans.

“I looked at the reaction to the last album, assessed my career so far, and was like, ‘I don’t even know what I’m saying in this song.’ So how could someone else connect with it in the same way? So when I reapproached this album, I wanted it to be fun, digestible, easy listening, but not dumbed down. I wanted it to have through every strand the truth of what I intended and what I had lived through the songs.”

As she embraces her new era, Ama aims to connect more deeply with her fans, proving that sometimes, the most powerful art comes from simply being real. As fans anticipate her upcoming album, it’s clear that Ama is ready to take center stage—no characters, just her truth.

I’ve been paying attention to that: the instinctive stuff. What I put on when I’m driving around the city late at night, with nowhere particular to be. What’s playing when I’m at my desk trying to build something for YAMS. What finds me on walks where I leave the house thinking about one thing and come back thinking about everything else.

This is that.

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Jordan Ward — BACKWARD

BACKWARD doesn’t really announce itself. It starts, and at some point, you realize you’ve been somewhere inside it for a while, and you’re just caught in the vibes.

Jordan is doing something quieter than most people are willing to do right now — he’s looking back. Not with nostalgia, not with regret, but with the kind of honest curiosity that asks: which version of me was actually right? The production breathes. Nothing is overworked. The writing sits with discomfort without resolving it too quickly. Songs like “CHANGES OF SCENERY” keep getting played over and over in my apartment as I try to dissect the lyrics.

I’ve listened to this on walks and working sessions, where I started thinking about deadlines and ended up somewhere, reminiscing in my own head. That’s not an accident. That’s what a certain kind of music does when it’s working. It makes you think. Remember. Respond.

This early in the year, something that makes you slow down and look back feels exactly right.

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Jill Scott — To Whom It May Concern

Jill doesn’t need to prove anything at this point, and the album knows it. There’s no performance of relevance here, no self-conscious nod to what’s current. Just a legend with forty-plus years of living behind her voice, saying what she means, saying it clearly, and trusting that clarity to be enough.

It is.

I’ve had this soundtracking my mornings — the kind where I’m not rushing anywhere, I’m just sitting with coffee or water, and sunlight with that particular feeling of a year that hasn’t fully declared itself. Her voice in those moments feels like a hand on your shoulder. It’s poetry. It’s soul.

R&B remembers things. It holds things. Jill sounds like a woman super sure of herself and what she wants, and we should all strive for that.

⸻

Ari Lennox — “Vacancy”

Some songs find you at exactly the right time, and you spend a while figuring out if the timing is why you love them or if they’re just genuinely that good.

With “Vacancy,” I think it’s both.

What strikes me first is how much it sounds like her — the Ari we fell in love with during the Shea Butter Baby era. That marriage of soul music and hip-hop energy that made her feel like a direct descendant of Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, but with one foot planted firmly in the culture she grew up in. That combination was always her sweet spot, and “Vacancy” lives there comfortably. It doesn’t feel like a throwback, though. It feels like someone who’s grown into herself — same DNA, more clarity.

The Ari Lennox who made this album is the same one who made us start paying attention back in 2017. She’s just more grown now. And honestly? It shows.

I don’t think it’s an accident that these are the records finding me right now, and that they were released this early in the year. January and February do something to you. They make you take inventory — of what you’re carrying, what you’re releasing, who you’re deciding to be this time around.

R&B has always been the genre that holds that process without making it feel small. These records have been holding mine. No rankings. No definitive statements about the year. Just what’s been in my headphones while I’ve been building into this new year.

It’s playful. Disarming. Real. That’s the thing about Ebony — the mystique might pull you in, but the humanity is what keeps you there.

By now, many people know her face. Before she was building a name in R&B, she was building a résumé in fashion. Born and raised in Detroit, Riley left home with nothing but ambition and the kind of fearlessness you only have before the world tells you who you’re supposed to be.

“I had no fear then,” she tells me. “I just went.” She auditioned for America’s Next Top Model. Didn’t make it. Got survival jobs to make ends meet. Kept pushing. Two years later, she was signed. Eventually (under the name Riley Montana), she became one of the most visible Black models of the past decade — walking runways for major houses, appearing in high-fashion campaigns, gracing the pages of Vogue and beyond.

From the outside, it looked like a dream. But inside? Something wasn’t fully clicking.

“I was in rooms I never expected. Traveling the world for the first time. Helping my family. But I still wasn’t fulfilled.”

That word — fulfilled — lingered in the air between us. Because modeling wasn’t the origin story; music was. After years of being seen, Ebony Riley is finally ready to be heard.

A Girl From Detroit

Detroit isn’t just where Ebony is from. It’s how she moves. It’s the reason she laughs loudly. The reason she’ll check herself mid-sentence. The reason she’ll hype herself up with a “bitch, yeah, you did that” without apology.

Detroit is gospel harmonies in small churches. It’s Motown. It’s Mary J. Blige playing from a stereo while your mama cleans the house. It’s survival instincts paired with softness you protect at all costs.

Ebony has been singing since she was seven. Her mother kept the house filled with music: Mary J. Blige, Brandy, Aaliyah, Toni Braxton, Erykah Badu. Gospel on Sundays. R&B throughout the week.

“My favorite ’90s album? Mary J. Blige My Life,” she says without hesitation. “I didn’t even know what she was talking about. But my little ass was singing down because I felt her.”

That’s the kind of artist Ebony wants to be. Not someone you just hear; someone you feel. But growing up in Detroit, dreaming and doing are two different things. She loved music, but she didn’t believe she could be the one in the forefront.

“I never had the confidence to do it,” she admits. “I didn’t think I could be that girl.” So modeling became the stepping stone. And in hindsight, she sees the divine order in it.

“I feel like that was why God made me do the modeling,” she says. “So I could get over that part where it’s like, ‘girl, if you don’t do it, now, when will you?” The runway taught her presence. The camera taught her control. But music? Music taught her truth.

The Pivot That Changed Everything

A few years ago, something shifted. Ebony had built a solid modeling career. She had visibility. Stability. Access. But she kept feeling that quiet nudge.

“This ain’t what you here for,” she remembers thinking. “This was a stepping stone to get you in the door. But it’s not your full calling.” That realization isn’t glamorous. It’s terrifying.

To pivot from a successful modeling career — where you’re already validated — into music, where you’re starting over? That’s ego death. That’s risk and faith. She started slowly. Writing. Recording. Pulling back. Coming back again.

In 2023, she released her debut EP, ebony — seven tracks that felt like an introduction and a confession all at once. It wasn’t flashy. It was intimate. Intentional. I remember hearing the song “Deuce Deuce” from that EP and immediately having that thought of “wait, who is this?!” It quietly positioned her as an R&B artist to watch.

But Beautiful Tragedy — her upcoming debut album via Interscope Records that is due out soon — is different.

A Beautiful Tragedy

When Ebony talks about the album title, her voice shifts. Softer. Slower. “It started off beautiful,” she says of the relationship that inspired it. “Then it got real bad.” You can hear the lived-in nature of that sentence. Not dramatized. Just honest.

But instead of letting the narrative center on the ex, she flipped it.

That’s the thesis. Not victimhood. Maybe some revenge, but mainly reflection. She knows people see her beauty first. The model. The face. The silhouette.

“But they don’t really know where I come from,” she says. “My story. My upbringing. The trauma. The shit that I went through.”

Detroit is in her. A city known for its soul and its resilience. The toughness people assume. But there’s also tenderness. “People think I’m just this tough Detroit girl,” she laughs. “Like I’ll cut a bitch. And I’m like, no. I’m really emotional.”

That duality shapes the album, as she tells me about her favorite records. “Sick Of Me” is hard-hitting and empowering — checking herself, holding herself accountable. “Honest” is experimental and vulnerable — soft, open, and taking cues from early 2000s R&B stars like Aaliyah and Brandy.

And then there’s lead single “Only You”, which currently sits in the Top 20 on Urban/R&B Radio. It’s a sensual and celebratory manifestation of love that knocks.

“I don’t have a man right now,” she says with a grin. “But I’m trying to re-manifest that type of love.” “Only You” has an aura to it that’s been missing from popular R&B in recent years. We’ve been in a heartbroken headspace, a “revenge on the man that cheated on me” headspace. And so to hear the opening line of Girl, celebrate a motherfucka if he doing right” in Ebony’s gorgeous lower register made me sit up straight upon hearing it for the first time.

“That might be my number one on the album. It makes me step into my femininity.” That word femininity feels important. Because for Ebony, femininity isn’t fragility. It’s a choice. It’s softness without surrender.

The Producers, The Process, The Growth

Ebony lights up when we talk about the process of creating the Beautiful Tragedy album.

Working with heavyweight producers like Rodney Jerkins (Brandy’s “Full Moon”, Destiny’s Child’s “Lose My Breath”) and Tommy Brown (Ariana Grande’s "thank u next” & “Positions”) pushed her technically. But it’s her description of working with one of my all-time favorites, James Fauntleroy, that reveals how deeply she pays attention.

“His brain is alien,” she says. “He starts at the end of the song and goes backwards. I never seen anybody create like that.” She watches. Learns. Absorbs. There’s humility there. And hunger. And she knows her new music is hot, and it’s strong.

“I tell myself every day, ‘Bitch, yeah, you did that. You about to eat this shit up.’”

It sounds playful, but it’s also survival. When you pivot careers. When you risk comfort. When you tell the world this is the real you, you have to be your own hype woman before expecting anyone else to do it for you.

Siren Energy

For this issue, we’re calling it The Siren Issue. Not siren as seduction, necessarily. Siren as pull; as mystery and intrigue. Ebony Riley doesn’t scream for attention. She doesn’t overshare for virality. She doesn’t force the moment.

She lingers, drawing you in over time. Fashion loves control. Fashion loves stillness. Fashion loves mystery. But R&B? R&B loves confession. And confession requires you to risk being misunderstood.

Her influences make sense when she runs through them rapid-fire: Brandy. Aaliyah. Toni Braxton. Lauryn Hill. Usher’s Confessions. Ebony loves storytellers— people who paint emotional landscapes.

“I love stories,” she says about Confessions. “I wanted to be mad at him, but I was like, damn. This is good.” That’s what she’s building. Not just songs. Stories.

Feeling Seen

When I ask what she wants people to walk away with after listening to the album, she doesn’t hesitate. “I want people to feel seen.”

Not impressed. Not intimidated. Seen.

That balance — between healing and hurt, confidence and doubt, beauty and tragedy — is what makes the project resonate. She’s not presenting a perfect arc. She’s documenting her journey in real time. And maybe that’s what makes her dangerous in the best way. Because authenticity, when it’s real, always gets through.

A Beautiful Becoming

At the end of our shoot, Ebony smiles wide and says, “We about to take over with this one.” There’s Detroit in that sentence. There’s hunger. There’s joy. But there’s also peace.

She left home with no fear. She conquered fashion. She listened to the quiet voice that said, this isn’t the full story. She started again. She’s still building.

Ebony Riley is not just a model-turned-singer. She is not just a beautiful face with a tragic love story. She is not just an emerging R&B voice. She is a woman in the middle of becoming — publicly, honestly, unapologetically.

And that? That’s the most powerful sound of all.

Credits:
Writer: Dante Nicholas
Creative Director & Producer: Dante Nicholas
Photographer: Tony Bowen
Stylist: Sierra Simone
Makeup Artist: Austin Sather
Hair Stylist: Ar’tavia Harris
Videographer: Shaun Llewellyn

When I sat down with Candiace Dillard Bassett this week, she was fresh off the Super Bowl in San Francisco and mid-press run in Los Angeles. Busy? Absolutely. But grounded. Centered. And very clear about who she is.

Most people met CANDIACE through reality television on The Real Housewives of Potomac, where she was a castmember for 6 seasons. But if you ask her, music has always been the main storyline. And right now? The plot is thickening.

The Castle, The Chaos & Main Character Energy

Let’s start with The Traitors on Peacock — because if you’ve been watching this season like I have, you know it’s been a wild but entertaining ride.

“I hadn’t even heard of the show at first,” she tells me. “People kept tagging me, saying I needed to be on it. I looked it up and said absolutely not. I don’t want to run. I don’t want to sweat. I don’t want to carry hay up a hill.” Relatable.

But when NBC brought the opportunity to her as a challenge, something shifted. “I love to challenge myself. Once I signed on, I was in it. And I knew I wanted to be an actual Traitor, not a Faithful. The show is called The Traitors…I’m a main character. I need to give main character energy!”

And give it she did.

What struck her most wasn’t just the strategy — it was how much fun she had. “It was the most fun I’ve ever had in unscripted television,” she says. “No regrets.”

Even when alliances cracked (looking at you, Rob. SMH.) and trust dissolved (looking at you again, Rob), there was a theatrical intelligence to how she moved. When I asked her what she’d name a song inspired by how it all ended?

“Serpent’s Demise,” she says instantly, referring to how fellow Traitor Rob (who fans may know from Love Island) played a selfish, but smart game that aimed to take out his fellow Traitor-mates: CANDIACE and Lisa Rinna.

“Mm-hmm. ‘Serpent’s Demise’ because we’re taking him down. We're taking him down in the song. Like he tried to take us down. Yeah.”

See. That’s the thing about CANDIACE. Even her reality TV arcs sound like R&B interludes waiting to happen.

Before Housewives & Traitors: There Was Singing

What people sometimes forget is that long before reality show cameras, people had whole lives. “I’ve been singing my whole life,” she says. Church first. Then school choirs. Musicals. Pageants (where Candiace actually won Miss United States and Miss District of Columbia US in 2013). And her talent was always singing.

Music wasn’t a hobby. It was home. Her father played snare drum in college. As a baby, she’d only fall asleep to Vesta. She grew up walking around the house singing. But the real shift came when she found her voice reflected to her through the greats.

Brandy. Toni Braxton. Anita Baker. Whitney. Mariah. Early Pink (what we call “Black Pink.”) When she talks about Brandy, her voice changes. Softer. Reverent.

That image alone tells you everything. Artists like Brandy, Toni Braxton, and Anita Baker made her feel seen. As someone whose voice lives in richness rather than piercing soprano highs, she found affirmation in their restraint, their control, their texture. “It made me feel like there was space for me,” she says.

That’s the throughline. Space. Deep Space. And now, she’s claiming it.

“If Only…” & The Power of Saying It Anyway

Her new single, “If Only…,” doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t politely suggest. It addresses the elephant in the room directly. Written while CANDIACE was in the early stages of pregnancy, the song carries a specific kind of emotional clarity that comes when you’re deeply in tune with your body and your boundaries. “I just went for it,” she says about one of the song’s more direct lyrics.

“I know you been f*cking with these b*tches, I ain’t crazy.”

The Southern belle in me was like, ‘Can I say that?’ But that’s how I felt.”

The track calls out an all-too-relatable archetype: the man who thinks he’s pulling the wool over your eyes. The drama of dealing with a fuckboy.

“It’s like, how dare you try to play me?” she says. “If only you knew what I knew. Be seated. Swiftly.” There’s humor in it. There’s spice, but also conviction. She’s gearing up to release her second album, and she’s moving differently these days.

“I was very intentional about saying no and saying yes,” she explains. “Every lyric. Every piece of instrumentation. It’s all on purpose.”

She worked closely with producers Triangle Park on the project, cutting songs and then holding them for months before revisiting. If they still gave her chills? They made the album.

That kind of patience feels rare in today’s fast-food music era. But her fanbase, the ones who care about lyrics, nuance, and meaning, expects that from her. And she expects it from herself.

Live Music, Legacy & What’s Next for CANDIACE

CANDIACE lights up when the conversation turns to live music.

She’ll be joining R&B superstar Tamar Braxton on select tour dates this summer. She’s also celebrating the five-year anniversary of her Deep Space album with a DMV-area anniversary concert.

“I love live instrumentation,” she says. “Going to New Orleans and walking down Frenchmen Street on a random Tuesday, hearing somebody sing their heart out — that’s my favorite thing.”

You can hear it in her voice. She’s not chasing viral moments. She’s chasing resonance. Reality TV may have been the springboard (she openly calls it part of her “evil plan” to get her music heard), but the mission was always bigger.

“It’s sort of a double-edged sword, in that when you move into these reality spaces, people don't take you seriously as an artist, as a whole. Acting, singing, and those spaces are harder to break into. And even though I do feel like the Bravo universe is an amazing springboard and I'm really grateful for it, it did present me with like an additional challenge of having to be like, okay, I'm here. I’m not just here for a good time, I’m here for a long time.”

And in this new era, which she describes in three words as honest, brave, and intentional — CANDIACE sounds like someone who knows exactly who she is.

Sometimes the world meets you in chapters. CANDIACE is just getting to the one she’s been writing all along.

From the album’s imagery of Phabo in front of an airbrushed backdrop to its sound of quiet storm-esque slows and So So Def-styled uptempos, Ratchet & Blues reflects this current R&B era in a modern and layered listening experience.

The album’s name references Phabo’s “Ratchet and Blues” EP series, which dates back to 2017, when his ear for nostalgic R&B and the genre’s core tenets first became apparent. He creates a smooth blend of rap-sung R&B that allows for his own lane to be paved within the genre.

Speaking with Phabo about the project, the significance of the title extends beyond his own musical journey to the journey his fans have taken with him.

“I wanted to give my fans who remember me from back then something to be proud of, ultimately, like a finish line of some sort.”

The album’s racing start with “Luv On Da Floor” sets the scene for this blend of modern and throwback. Listening to it and the following few songs had me thinking of the best of Darckchild and Jermaine Dupri-produced hits, blended with the essence of Donnell Jones, Next, and Brandy album cuts.

My current favorite, Phabo’s current favorite, and fans’ favorite track off the project – “Before We Get In Here” – is one of the highlights of the project. Feeling reminiscent of R&B songs my parents played and danced to when I was growing up, and of songs people sing along to at 90s/2000s club nights, it matches the album’s nostalgic tone while pushing Phabo’s sound further.

“I wanted to get as close to the cloth as possible. I was intentional about diving into a bunch of different projects. I didn’t want to do the typical remix or trapped-out version of an R&B song. I wanted to get as close to what we were sampling as possible.”

His commitment to that closeness extended to the album’s rollout and artwork, playing into the early 2000s aesthetics that not only spoke to what I saw growing up, but also to what Phabo saw in his upbringing in California and Florida.

“I remember being 12 or 13 on MySpace, and you might follow a girl who’s 17 getting into the grown club, and she posts pictures from inside. I’m not the first to tap into this aesthetic, but with the intricacies of black culture, there are niche crevices of our community that deserve to be discussed and shown.”

This visualization is even more evident with his content for this album era, featuring women in club photos with airbrushed backdrops, the kind that stood out as a staple of Black nightlife in the early 2000s.

His intentionality in references while crafting new sounds shows through songs like “Safest Place”, “Lights Go Low”, and “Anything 4 U.”

With Ratchet & Blues being his first full album in three years, Phabo wanted to keep the project and his process very close to the chest. He opted for a more private approach compared to his 2023 and 2021 projects, Don’t Get Too Crazy and Soulquarius, respectively.

“I wanted to do this without any outside noise. I used to seek a lot of reassurance early on; this time, I just kept it between the producers and me for as long as I could.”

This creative process, which echoes similar sentiments in the song “Calm and Collected,” allows this project to live as Phabo in his element. Truly calm, collected, and contributing to the great R&B landscape that’s being built in the 2020s.

As someone who’s been listening since Soulquarius, this new album dips further into Phabo’s bag of R&B smoothness and blends elements of his past work into a more evolved and developed form.

For new listeners and long-time fans, Phabo hopes his work stirs appreciation for his artistry and sticks with them.

“I hope they feel they can grow with the project. I know the world is in a crazy place right now, and I remember certain projects and time periods and what they meant to me. I want everyone to have that moment with this project.”

Gabriel’s relationship with music didn’t begin with dreams of stardom or viral moments. It started with instinct. Before he could even fully articulate what music meant to him or even walk, he was drawn to instruments. Piano, drums, bits of guitar. “It’s always been second nature,” he tells me. He wasn’t surrounded by a family of musicians or raised in a hyper-musical household. Music simply found him early, and he followed it.

Church was part of his upbringing, but not in the usual R&B origin story way. He wasn’t leading choirs or singing solos on Sundays. Instead, his connection to music lived in curiosity — touching instruments, experimenting with sound, and eventually realizing that creating felt as natural as breathing.

By late middle school and early high school, Gabriel was producing for himself. Poetry and spoken word were already part of his world, and music became the place where everything converged. “Before I ever thought it’d be a career, I just fell in love with creating stuff for myself,” he says.

That mindset still defines him today. Even as opportunities grow, the foundation remains personal first, public second.

A Southern Sound That Refuses a Box

Trying to pin Gabriel Jacoby’s music to a single sound is a losing game, and he’s fine with that. Born in South Carolina and raised in Tampa, Florida, his music carries the weight and warmth of the South without leaning too heavily into stereotypes. Instead, it feels expansive. Blues, funk, R&B, rap, and soul all coexist without competing.

“I use my experiences and my environment to my advantage. At the end of the day, it’s just honesty and authenticity.”

That honesty comes from a wide range of influences. Growing up, he cycled through Outkast, Nina Simone, and Bob Marley almost exclusively — an unconventional but revealing trio. Later, Florida reshaped his ears. Lil Wayne, Nappy Roots, and a lot of gritty Dirty South music. Those influences don’t show up as imitation; they show up as texture. His music doesn’t sound like anyone else’s because it isn’t trying to.

That refusal to flatten his sound shows up across his catalog. Songs like “Forever” introduced listeners to a raw, arresting voice and perspective. “Hillside” revealed a completely different energy. And then, gutta child arrived in 2025 — not as a pivot, but almost as his thesis statement.

gutta child: An Alias, Not a Gimmick

For Jacoby, gutta child isn’t just a project title: it’s an identity. The name came from a session with producer Elie Rizk, who initially floated it as a potential idea. Jacoby didn’t immediately latch onto it, but as the project began to take shape, the meaning became undeniable.

“It really is who I am, in a project,” he says. “I’m speaking on me as a child.”

gutta child is about growing up close to real life, not romanticized or sanitized. It’s about kids and adults who exist outside the clouds, who understand struggle but also recognize the beauty within it. Gabriel was intentional about making a project that could speak across ages and experiences. It’s grounded in reality without being weighed down by it.

Sonically, the project leans into blues and funk as foundations, but Gabriel was clear about one thing: he didn’t want it to feel old. “I wanted it to sound timeless,” he says, noting that blues is the backbone of so much modern music. The goal wasn’t revivalism; it was continuity.

Even the simplicity of the title mattered. In an era where projects often arrive with long, abstract names, gutta child feels bold in its restraint. Gabriel Jacoby (like me) is big on visuals, on cohesion, on making sure what you hear and what you see speak the same language.

That visual language is also one of Jacoby’s strongest calling cards. His videos don’t feel like afterthoughts. They feel like world-building. Skating rinks, back roads, front yards…familiar Southern spaces. They aren’t aesthetic choices, but more so memories of life lived.

Every song that made it onto gutta child came with a clear image attached. From the skate rink in Tampa he grew up visiting, to the angles and movement of each shot, Jacoby already knew what he wanted before cameras ever rolled. That clarity allows him to take a creative lead — and it works because the people around him trust his vision.

The Co-Sign That Found Him

In 2025, Jacoby’s year quietly expanded. Touring with Khamari exposed him to new listeners discovering his music in real time. A COLORS performance of “be careful” put his artistry on a global stage. But the moment that caught a lot of attention happened without a press release or a rollout.

In early December, YAMS posted Gabriel’s music content on our Instagram page. The post started to take off, receiving likes from thousands of new fans. One of them was pop superstar Justin Bieber. 24 hours later, Justin was following Gabriel, DM’ing him, and inviting him to hang out.

What began as mutual appreciation turned into time at Bieber’s creative compound in Los Angeles — an experience Jacoby describes as organic and grounding rather than surreal. “When he hit me up, he told me how inspired he was by my music and the visuals. He was just showing love. I’m not used to that from other guys, so it was dope,” Jacoby says.

What stood out to Gabriel most wasn’t the celebrity of it all, but the energy. Bieber’s openness, his encouragement, and the environment itself. It all reinforced something Jacoby already believed. When you stay true to yourself, the right people find you.

What’s Next For Gabriel Jacoby in 2026

Despite the momentum, Gabriel Jacoby isn’t rushing toward a debut album. Instead, he’s thinking in eras. You’ll catch him back on tour soon, and he’s already deep into creating his next project — something that continues the gutta child world rather than abandoning it.

“I just want to get right into that,” he says. “That way when we look back, it’s like, okay — this was the beginning.” Expect sharper records, more blues influence, moments of rapping, and a deeper sense of confidence. Jacoby is still building, still refining, still letting the music arrive when it’s ready.

That patience is exactly why YAMS is watching closely. Gabriel Jacoby isn’t chasing the moment. He’s shaping something that’s going to last. And in 2026, the rest of the world is going to catch up.