One of the great untold stories of the past decade is just how potent a cultural force R&B has been. It might not have had the wild musical innovation it did in the 2000s when the likes of Neptunes, Missy Elliot, Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins reigned supreme as producers – but through the 2010s and ‘20s, it has established a whole set of performers who are able to exhibit extreme range in subject matter, style and seriousness, held together with force of artistic personality.
Post-Lemonade Beyoncé tends to absorb the majority of critical attention, but Kehlani, Jhene Aiko, Tinashe, SZA, H.E.R., Janelle Monae are consistently making deep, complex, politicised, challenging music right in the heart of the mainstream that really does bring out the rhythm and the blues of 21st century life.
New Yorker Yaya Bey is up there with the best of them creatively. This is her seventh album in nine years, over which time she’s grown from lo-fi experimentalist to ultra-confident star – OK, not quite in the mega-mainstream yet, but getting closer with each release, yet retaining the experimental edge all the way. Just take the middle section of this record: fantastically churning dub reggae in “spin cycle” segues to the slick Eighties funk of “dream girl,” into a further nod to her roots in the self-produced synthetic steel pans of “merlot and grigio” with Barbadian vocalist Father Philis – then jazz piano chords woven into ultra modernist hip hop drum programming in “breakthrough.” And it works. It holds together, it holds your attention, and it feels logical even though tempo and mood are constantly shifting.
The effortless eclecticism matches the way lyrics flow from self-interrogation to political pride to intimacy to outright joy. Bey is explicit about wanting to deconstruct oppositions between seriousness and the pleasure principle – she has spoken at length in interviews and statements about how Black joy is both political but also worth of celebration purely in and of itself, and at a time when the world seems more dangerous and chaotic than ever the power of this celebration is really tangible. “If you want to be brave, first you got to be afraid” are the first words you hear here, and they set the tone for 18 tracks mapping out a complex battle for love, glory and just straight up enjoyment in the face of fear and anger. It’s a heavyweight record, but never difficult going – a really extraordinary achievement.
Listen to "raisins":
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