Rapid Fire Reviews: R&B Catchup with Raye, Liv.e, & Aya Nakamura

R&B is one of my favorite genres out there, but it's a deep well. Pretty much every year I end up with a log of records in the genre that I've heard but haven't found the time to review properly. I'm trying to get ahead of that this year even though I know it'll happen again.

My 21st Century Blues - Raye

I was pretty interested in this record both because I'm a chart watcher and Raye's pretty good collaboration with 070 Shake Escapism had been a late riser up the Hot 100 last year and also just because she's a name I've been hearing about for a while now and it seems like it took her a long time to finally get this album released. Now that her full debut project is here I can see exactly why she's been one of the industry's secret superstars in the making for the past few years because My 21st Century Blues displays IMMENSE potential. One of the things that make the record so exciting is Raye's versatility. A song like Hard Out Here has a distinct 90s swagger to it which fits perfectly with Raye calling out the label heads who held her career back. Thrill Is Gone on the other hand is a funky switch-up right in the middle of the record that I really like and she manages to pull off both sounds equally as well. Another reason I can see Raye becoming a superstar is her charisma and personality. While Escapism is a little bit literal and on the nose, it still has a universality that helps it soar. Her charm as a storyteller is just as blunt on Oscar Winning Tears, a hilarious and confident takedown of lying men that might be my favorite of the deep cuts here. She also has a vulnerable side, getting extremely raw on the record's final single Ice Cream Man where she discusses a producer who invited her to the studio just to try and fuck but turns his shitty behavior into a pretty powerful statement on her own womanhood. One weak point of the record is that the final run feels pretty uninspired, to the point where 15 tracks may have been a bit much. After Flip A Switch which is a certified banger the record tends to fall off a bit with the only real highlight of the bunch being the classic R&B channeling Worth It. For me, this does everything a debut album can be expected to. While it doesn't necessarily aim for anything conceptual or experimental it does run through a myriad of styles showing off Raye's variety of talent along the way. While she may need some time to find what her specific sound is and hone in on it, she has a songwriting capability and charisma that you can't teach. If she goes on to release a modern R&B classic we will all look back on this record as an essential stepping stone, but it's no pushover on its own. 7/10

Girl In The Half Pearl - Liv.e

This album definitely snuck up on me. I listened to Liv.e's last record in 2020 and the long tracklist full of various sonic motifs reminded me of one of my favorite R&B albums of the past few years. Solange's When I Get Home. Though the songwriting wasn't nearly as good it was still a pretty bold experiment though in the meantime I had completely lost what was going on with Liv.e. Once I saw some solid reviews for this project it got me VERY excited, because I love experimental R&B and I thought if she leaned more into that direction she could make something great. This album similarly presents a series of many short songs with widely varying sound palettes. The 17 tracks here just barely crack 40 minutes. And the album starts off pretty much exactly how I was hoping with a hazy and unpredictable sequence going from the stuttering D&B opener into a much more playful and sensual style punctuated by cloudy synth layers. Keeping up with this record really is a marathon as soon as you're comfortable in the hazy sexuality of a romantic tune it's interrupted by an energetic beat and some blown-out vocal refrains, which don't even last that long themselves before they're replaced by something else. While I once again like the format of this record a lot, I think it falls short in a few pretty key places. Firstly a lot of the beats on the more energetic songs here sound closer to stock instrumentals than a lot of the very good watery instrumentals on the more intimate songs. Another big issue is the vocal effects which certainly make sense in concept paralleling the album's neurotic progression. But in practice, the effects are applied in a pretty sloppy way that only works to evaporate the compelling quirks of Liv'e vocals. Even with those issues though there's a lot to like about this album. With how much of a taste I have for experimental R&B I still see so much to enjoy in the constant unpredictable evolution of the styles and influences coming together on this record. I like this record conceptually a lot and while it doesn't fully live up to those expectations in practice, there's still merit in what Liv.e is doing here and fans of similarly ambitious R&B artists will want to at least give it a cursory listen and pick out what they like best. 6.5/10

DNK - Aya Nakamura

Aya Nakamura is a French R&B singer whose music I first became aware of sometime around 2018 when her sophomore album Nakamura started to pick up traction both in France and a bit in the US as well. I was never necessarily blown away by her vision artistically but I did think it was at least interesting the large pool of styles she pulled from including not just R&B and pop but also Latin music and occasionally even African music. Unfortunately, in the wake of her commercial success, it seems like she's been less willing to indulge in some of those alternative influences as her third album AYA felt like a bit of a step back artistically. Even though this one is just as commercial by comparison, I actually like it a little bit more. I guess you can credit that to the commercial rise of Latin trap, whose sound makes a return in a BIG way across this tracklist. That's a double-edged sword though. With how many artists I've heard recently interpolating Latin music influences, Aya Nakamura is starting to sound more and more nondescript. There are no doubt a handful of highlights and songs whose hit potential I believe in but this is hardly the kind of artistic step forward I was hoping for. Aya is talented, but not deploying it as well as I'd hope on DNK. 5/10