Lav's Music Corner

Review by Lavender: Drake,  what to say about Drake. The Canadian rapper and singer has been one of the biggest stars in music for well over a decade. But in case you're living under a rock, you probably know that he's coming off of one of the biggest defeats of his entire career in a beef with Kendrick Lamar that just resulted in an instantly iconic Super Bowl performance. Of course, Drake doesn't fall like the rest of us. The beef spawned multiple huge hit songs for him as well and he's continued successfully touring the entire time, but he just released his first new music since the beef concluded, a Valentine's Day record in collaboration with label mate PartyNextDoor.  If you're approaching $ome $exy $ongs 4 U  hoping for a the next cultural development in Drake's arc you're going to be disappointed. Save for a few passing mentions the album largely exists outside that sphere, focusing mainly on returning to a similar kind of songwriting about rich ...

Review by Lavender: FLO are an R&B trio that have been impressing me for a few years now with early EPs and singles that showed off their great chemistry and harmonizing, on top of a hilarious knack for crafting songs about love and sex with memorable points of view. With some more strong singles added in the lead-up to their debut album, I was hoping that Access All Areas  would show off the best of the group's potential. And despite the occasional slip here and there, that's mostly what it does.  The record is loosely split into two halves with the first being both more romantic and far hornier. It gets off to a killer start out of the gate with two strong singles in the first three tracks. "AAA" is a throwback R&B/pop jam with the trio's voices wonderfully weaving in and out of each other on a fantastic hook. "Walk Like This" didn't hit me quite as immediately when I first heard it earlier this year but it's grown on me quite a bit sin...

Review By Lavender: Tinashe is an R&B singer who took a while to warm up on me. She spent pretty much the entire 2010s releasing material consistently that occasionally flirted with critical acclaim on moments like 2014's Aquarius . But I didn't really become a Tinashe fan until a few years ago when her absolutely excellent 2021 album 333  caught me by complete surprise. The album was full of slick, infectious, and sensual R&B songs and stood out to me instantly as her best work to date. She followed that up in 2023 with the short but sweet BB/ANG3L  and dropped one of the biggest hits of her entire career Nasty  as the lead single to this new album. Unfortunately, while Quantum Baby  is a decent album, it doesn't fall in line with the momentum she's built up over the past few years.  You don't need me to tell you that Nasty  is an absolute fucking banger. One of the songs of the summer put Tinashe's name back in front of so many people who should h...

I love R&B and I've already covered a few releases in the genre this year. But I wanted to catch up with some of the records that fell through the cracks, especially those from artists I've enjoyed in the past.  u made me a st4r  - 4batz Earlier this year a TikTok about videos that don't match the energy of the song they're for launched R&B singer 4batz to virality. While that was built around the smash hit date @ 8 , which I admittedly love, it resulted in some major cosigns for the singer from artists like Drake and Kanye West. He capitalized on the rise to fame with this short project and going into it I was mostly just curious if he would be able to break the mold of his single hit so far. date @ 8  is great with its earworm refrains and pitched-up vocals, but that wasn't going to work for a full 8 songs broken up by a few sparse interludes.  The third single from the album actually served up a potentially interesting scenario. on god?  is a decent t...

Since I Have A Lover  - 6LACK Despite having a pretty diehard fanbase of R&B lovers, 6LACK's music has often received a general shrug from most critics, if they even acknowledge him at all. Maybe out of my deep love for the genre, I've been the exception. Even though nothing 6LACK does drastically stands out from the crowd, I found myself enjoying his last album 2018's East Atlanta Love Letter  and the 2020 follow-up EP 6pc Hot. So even though there was plenty of reason to be excited for this project after hearing the singles and giving it a few listens I wasn't exactly in a hurry to cover it. The record runs nearly an hour long which isn't inherently a problem given how long 6LACK has been quiet. Unfortunately, though, the length of this record is a huge problem with 19 songs that are anything but consistent.  One of the more unique elements of the record is how much it feels like a fusion of the fundamentals of R&B with indie rock styles. We see this on th...

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 Her...

Kelela is an American R&B singer who experienced a critical breakout of sorts on her 2017 album Take Me Apart  which adapted the idea of a classic R&B romance into a strange electronica-influences power fantasy featuring collaborators like Arca and The xx's Romy. The album was lauded with critical acclaim but Kelela has been relatively quiet in the years since, but re-emerged last year with a line of singles leading up to this album. Review by Lav: I was late to get Take Me Apart . In a time where I was crazy for anything Arca, I don't think the electro-R&B love stories really spoke to me but in the years since Kelela slowly, then very quickly became one of my favorite singers in experimental R&B. Fast-forward to now, 7 years later, when Kelela has been releasing a string of absolutely excellent singles that have me majorly hyped for this project. With a set of collaborators from the electronica universe, including but not limited to KAYTRANADA, Shygirl, and Jun...

Dirt Femme  - Tove Lo While you could argue that at points Tove Lo has maybe been a bit too stylistically trashy to break back into the mainstream, I've always been a big fan of her music regardless. This album Dirt Femme  definitely felt like her turning over a new leaf, not in terms of it being a more mainstream effort as her previous record Sunshine Kitty  already made that transition. But on the singles leading up to Dirt Femme  it felt like Tove Lo had the life and personality back that gave her a breakout hit nearly a decade ago. The lead-up to the record was marked by some killer singles starting with the Euphoria  soundtrack cut How Long , probably my favorite Tove Lo song in years and one that I'm very happy made it onto this record. It also delivered the shimmering relationship-examining anthem No One Dies From Love  which kicks off the record with an absolute bang. The record is further supplemented with solid singles in both 2 Die 4  and Gr...

Rhye is the R&B project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mike Milosh. The project emerged mysteriously about a decade ago uploading their earliest singles online with very little known about who was behind them. Home  is the projects 4th album and third in just the last 4 years.  Review By Lav: I ended up not doing a formal review of the 3rd Rhye record back in 2019 since it was so short and came so quickly after Blood  that it felt like an afterthought but in retrospect I wish I had covered it. Not because the record is incredible or anything but because I knew Rhye was an artist I was going to keep up with even though it took me a little to get to Home . Given my enjoyment of the first two albums from the project I was excited for what this record might offer, and while it all feels very familiar, well, it all feels VERY familiar.  The first two singles we heard from the record were obviously the most up-beat and accessible but I was mixed on the ...

Jazmine Sullivan is a Philly based R&B singer and commercially successful holdover from the 2000's era of R&B. The last time we heard from her was on her first project released with RCA records, the commercially successful Reality Show . After a 5 year absence she's returned with either her 4th studio album or her 1st EP depending on who you ask.  Review By Lav: Is this thing an EP or an album? It's 32 minutes long and 14 tracks, but half the songs are interludes. Wikipedia says its an EP but Spotify says its an album and so do most of the reviews I read on it. We're calling it an album for the moment just to fit in. I was always casually familiar with Jazmine and some of her biggest songs and I thought her last record in 2015 was solid but her back catalog is admittedly one I didn't have much familiarity with until this record came out. Given that I didn't even know this was coming out I was pleasantly surprised with the variety of R&B styles across...

Khalid is a rising R&B singer who hit it off with some successful singles in 2017 and dropped a popular debut album later that same year with American Teen . After capitalizing on his success with numerous high profile features and collaborations Khalid dropped the much maligned Suncity  EP late in 2018 and followed it up with a few singles before the release of Free Spirit .  Review By Lavender: As embarrassing as it may seem today, there was actually a point in time when I told people to look out for Khalid to put together something good. This was on account of his excellent debut single Location  a song that landed on my singles of the year list in 2017 and that I still enjoy quite a bit. Unfortunately not only has Khalid not released another song as good as Location  across his discography so far, he hasn't even come close. When his debut album American Teen  arrived it had all the signs of a young artist thrust into the spotlight. Filled with c...

Solange is an American singer and actress, and sister of pop icon Beyonce. She found herself in backup dancing and acting roles for much of the 2000's but had a critical and commercial breakthrough on the back of her spectacular 2016 album A Seat At The Table . One of its singles Cranes In The Sky  also became a huge success and ultimately took home a best R&B performance Grammy. So after two and a half years of mostly silence on the musical front Solange recorded When I Get Home  in secret and dropped two teasers for it throughout the final week of February of this year before announcing on February 28th that the album was to be released that night.  Review By Lav: I was like most people, never really a huge fan of Solange until 2016, when she dropped her fantastic 3rd studio album A Seat At The Table . Not only did it show she was capable of making a fantastic album it proved that she had huge single potential with the brilliant Cranes In The Sky  and ...