2. Summer Walker’s “Session 33” (2021)
On 2018’s “Session 32,” Walker sings about the messy process of moving on from a failed relationship (“Threw away your love letters / I thought it’d make me feel better”). The recording has all the qualities of a home demo, down to the sequenced title and the absence of the mixing and mastering of the modern studio — a conscious choice to underscore the song’s raw emotions. “Session 33” is its natural extension, but with a difference. Still an acoustic affair, featuring Walker’s voice and guitar, the recording now offers some studio sweeteners that “Session 32” lacked: echoed vocal effects, harmonic overdubs and Walker’s cleanly miked voice. “Session 33” shares with its predecessor the sense that the artist is letting us in on her creative process — as well as on her romantic life. “Should I move on since no one’s here?” she asks herself. The song never answers.
With her 2021 concept album, “Heaux Tales,” Sullivan gave voice to herself and many other women working against the sexist conceit, sometimes perpetuated in R&B, that women are conquests and men are conquerors. On songs like “Put It Down,” “Lost One” and, most powerfully, “Pick Up Your Feelings,” she renovates the tired theme of the no-good man by centering her own — and other women’s — empowerment. The whole album is an exercise in validating female sexual desire while also acknowledging women’s equal capacity to do dirt, all while condemning the societal double standard that lets men do the same without tarnishing their reputations. But Sullivan’s not writing an essay; she’s engaged in a vocal workout session. And her peers have taken notice: “I’ve literally watched Jazmine Sullivan videos hundreds of times, slowed them down to 0.25 speed and mapped out the note transitions on sheets of paper that end up looking like infinite stairs,” says the artist Jessie Reyez. “Hearing her sing is like watching someone make a joke out of gravity.”
4. H.E.R.’s “Process” (2021)
On this song, H.E.R. flows like a rapper, layering similes (“Holdin’ it back like a slingshot / Holdin’ it back like hair ties”), slanting rhymes (Rolex / protest / progress / process / my chest / contest) and spitting ad-libs (uhs, ayes, ohs). In the R&B and soul tradition, ad-libs are the seemingly spontaneous but purposeful melodic and harmonic interjections that express themselves in words (echoing key language from the lyrics, for instance) and sounds (embellishing with moans and melodic flourishes). As the author and T contributor Emily Lordi writes in her book “The Meaning of Soul” (2020), ad-libs “loosen up sonic structures so unexpected possibilities can slip in.” The last 90 seconds of “Process,” a nearly four-minute song, feature few words, yet H.E.R. charges her runs with expressive force and beauty that language alone couldn’t achieve.
5. Tems’s “Ready” (2024)
This Nigerian singer-songwriter inflects her R&B with the rhythms of Afrobeats and a commitment to faith born of her Christian upbringing. “Ready,” like “Wickedest,” “Burning” and “Gangsta” (all songs from her 2024 album “Born in the Wild”), is about self-affirmation and personal belief. If you listened to Tems’s sensual delivery alone without considering the lyrics, however, you’d think she was singing about romantic love. In fact, she’s announcing her readiness for growth and success; she’s now ready to “put it on a song.” The sonic atmosphere brings to mind the Nigerian British singer Sade, whom Tems counts as a defining influence.
6. Victoria Monét’s “Alright” (2023)
This one’s as raw as any rap song. Over a pulsing four-on-the-floor beat produced by the Montreal-based musician Kaytranada, Monét spits a swaggy paean to her sexual prowess. The energy builds through the tension between the explicit lyrics and her sweet singing. With the synth bass occupying the low end and Monét’s vocals on the top, the result is a kaleidoscopic soundscape that renders the lyrics secondary. That’s not to say they’re irrelevant. If this song had been released in the early 2000s, it would have been cloaked in innuendo, much like Ciara’s “Goodies” (2004). Instead, it revels in its directness.
