(Atlantic)
Across her solo releases, Oakland,
California artist Kehlani has channelled a nostalgic kind of poppy R&B. That the former America’s Got Talent star’s debut album was called SweetSexySavage in a nod to TLC’s CrazySexyCool is telling of the kind of slinky, exuberant sounds she’s best known for putting out. This second album is more pared down and feels more of its time, as much indebted to SZA as it is SWV. Some of the lyricism is a little clumsy (“We fuck and make-up like it’s Maybelline”), and the Megan Thee Stallion feature is an all-too-brief skit, but overall Kehlani sounds assured and impressive here, offering sensuality and intimacy in her candour.
Beyond the sultry, raw afterglow of balmy tracks about sex and love, she interrogates her life as entertainment news on Everybody Business (“So if you hear that rah-rah-rah about me [...] I beg you don’t listen, I beg you believe me”), while on Grieving, a duet with James Blake, she ruminates on the end of a relationship over silken beats. Sonically, it can blend a little into one, but the closing feature from the late
Rapper Lexii, a friend and collaborator of Kehlani’s, is a rousing, poignant end to a largely accomplished set.