Jordan, Jill and Ari: The Artists That Have Soundtracked My Winter
R&B is in good hands right now. Let's talk about it.
We’re two months into 2026. Spring is starting to make its way in. The sun is staying awake a little longer. Musically, there hasn’t been enough time to declare anything concrete about who’s crushing 2026. But enough time has passed to notice what I keep reaching for.
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.
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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.