The concomitant pay-off is most evident in The Letter, nominally the album’s big ballad, in which Kehlani directly addresses the mother who abandoned her, her temptation to blame herself ('maybe I didn't deserve you' she repeatedly wonders) as cutting as her refusal to forgive. If there’s a drawback to this, it’s that Kehlani’s consistent relatability can make the album at first seem more samey than it really is, as do the arrangements' seamlessly executed stylistic potpourri cherry-picking the best R&B sounds of the past two decades (stuttering Timblaland beats, synth horns, trap snares) the songs’ diversity and range are handled so capably and unselfconsciously that they're easy to underestimate conversely, it's this which also gives the album an ease and staying power which, while it might not support breathless social media hype, makes it a welcoming pleasure to return to. She addresses her refusal to play along on Runnin’: “does it make you nervous that I’m not afraid to say what I want?” she taunts both a lover and her listeners. It’s the addressee, the listener, who changes hats depending on subject matter Kehlani’s overriding sense of personality remains constant even as she pivots from ecstatic romance on Unconditional to big-sister life affirmation on Bright to knowing dismissal on How That Taste or Jealous (the latter a kiss-off to a fling who takes photos with her to make his ex-girlfriends jealous on social media - Kehlani takes narrative detail quite seriously).

Kehlani is more classically expressive than Nivea was – you can tell she’s seen American Idol before – but she shares a hint of huskiness and, more importantly, that overriding air of familiarity, delivering her songs with the unfiltered directness of your lover, your best friend or your ex. I can’t think of another song quite like it.īut if Parking Lot stands alone, the idea of mainstream R&B delivering life-sized relatability is expertly executed on You Should Be Here, the second album from 19 year old Oakland singer Kehlani, which has been captivating me all week. Delivered in Nivea’s unaffected, slightly husky alto, the song imagines R&B as unvarnished, plain-spoken but intimate, up-close confessionals drawn from real life. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about 2004’s Parking Lot, a fantastically understated song about creeping out on your sleeping man to hook up with your side-thug: “meet me at the McDonald’s parking lot”, Nivea instructs, in what might be R&B’s least glamorous but most real moment ever. Lately I’ve been thinking about Nivea, a minor player in the millennial R&B renaissance who scored only one hit with 2002’s Don’t Mess With The Radio. Aaliyah’s lionisation reflects the opposite trend: R&B as the mysterious blank slate, the singer whose true feelings are forever denied to us, leaving a void we’re anxious to fill with our own projected fantasies (never mind that this characterisation doesn’t really capture the charms of Aaliyah’s recorded work).īut there are other archetypes, or even just character types, that get dealt out of the story by the relentless march of history. Beyonce’s appeal resides in both universalism and force, as if she is performing not just what we feel but what we want to feel, only more powerfully and with more expressive nuance than we could.

Consider the twin female pillars of social genuflection: on the one hand, the Queen Bae, and on the other, the enigmatic departed siren Aaliyah. But this orthodoxy is a limited win for the genre critically, revolving as it does around certain overfamiliar archetypes.

Indeed, a certain carefully curated appreciation of the style is necessary to establish oneself as a rounded and culturally diverse listener. Precious few serious people now maintain that mainstream R&B is manufactured, soulless pap. I wrote something about this album for my local paper column back in May:

Kehlani youtube you should be here