R&B Songs Where Nobody’s Fine and the Music Is Incredible

Welcome to the weekly Soulpolitan feature, in which we pick five new R&B records and write about what’s keeping us up at night. February dumped five R&B records on us in the same week, and every last one of them is about wanting something you can’t have. The moods range from amused (Victoria Monét, teasing a man who won’t sit down long enough to be loved) to gutted (Baby Rose and Leon Thomas, standing in the rubble of a friendship they wrecked by sleeping together). In between, Alex Isley is bartering for a soft goodbye, Brent Faiyaz is doing something no one expected him to do (asking somebody to stay), and Jamie Foxx is back after a decade of near-death and game shows, singing about household objects his ex left behind. We listened to all of them too many times this week. Here’s why.

Calling somebody “athletic” for dodging their own feelings is a specific kind of flirtation. Victoria Monét drops it early on “Let Me,” her first solo release since winning three Grammys for Jaguar II in 2024 (along with releasing a deluxe), and it tells you where the rest of the song is headed. She’s amused. Monét spent the better part of a decade penning hits for Ariana Grande (“thank u, next,” “7 rings”), Fifth Harmony, and BLACKPINK before stepping to the front of the stage herself, and the patience that career required shows up in the pacing here. Camper helms the production alongside Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman, Branden “B Mack” Rowell, and Cashmere Brown, and everything hums warm and unhurried.

Monét pitches herself to a reluctant partner as a wintercoat, a ride-or-die, a steady presence. She does this with the clarity of a woman who built a career handing other people their biggest moments and now refuses to beg for permission to have her own. She carries herself as someone who knows what she’s offering and has decided the ball is in somebody else’s court. In the closing minutes she borrows from Destiny’s Child’s “Cater 2 U,” ad-libbing “baby, just let me cater to you” with the looseness of a woman singing in the car alone. She’s also joining Bruno Mars on his international Romantic Tour this summer. Monét has gotten sharp about when and how to make an entrance on her own terms. — Jamila W.

“For me, ‘Sweetest Lullabye’ is about making the bitter a little more sweet, and the lining a little more silver,” Alex Isley told Rated R&B this week, announcing her major label debut When the City Sleeps for March 20 through Free Lunch Records and Warner Records. D’Mile handled the production. The album follows her 2025 EP When and a Tiny Desk set last summer that put ears on someone the Isley Brothers’ bloodline had been quietly preparing for a decade. Growing up in that household meant she never had to prove she belonged near a microphone. She did have to prove she could do something with the proximity other than coast on the surname.

Isley sings over a guitar loop so bare it could pass for a voicemail someone forgot to hang up, asking a fading lover to make the goodbye worth remembering. That phrasing from her interview matches the tune itself, which never raises its voice and never lets go of the ache underneath. When she sings “if you’re gonna love then leave, I need one more melody,” she’s bartering. Give me one more good night and I’ll let you walk. “Sweetest Lullabye” disguises a breakup song as a bedtime request. “Kiss me twice, then let go. If I cry, I don’t know.” She sets up an exit and asks only that it be soft enough to sleep through. For an Isley, the voice has always been the inheritance. What Alex earns here is the restraint to keep it low and still make you feel it in your teeth. — Brandon O’Sullivan

Brent Faiyaz scrapped Icon the night before its original September 2025 release. He texted his team, pulled the plug, trashed the original lead track and its video, and started over. What finally arrived, executive-produced by Raphael Saadiq, carries ten tracks and the fingerprints of Benny Blanco, Chad Hugo, Dpat, and culture vulture Tommy Richman. “Other Side,” with Blanco and Itai Schwartz behind the boards and Mike Dean on the master, sits fifth on the tracklist and may outlast the rest. Very Michael Jackson-ish as we’re working on the current Lineage season.

Faiyaz has spent years cataloguing the ways men fumble devotion. He withholds, he second-guesses, he confesses and then takes it back. On “Other Side,” he does something different. He’s already in the relationship and trying to stay. “I move and breathe to make sure you feel special bein’ mine,” he offers, which is a plain and startling thing for him to say. A proto-disco arrangement pushes his falsetto toward an ‘80s register, airy and wide, and the bridge tilts into dream logic. He circles back to the same claim, that he saw her the other night, in his sleep, somewhere she wouldn’t believe. For a singer who made his name on cool detachment, directness holds weight. Faiyaz dropped an album called Icon and then buried the most open-hearted cut at track five, where only the people who are paying attention will find it. — Phil

Two toothbrushes sharing the same sink. Coffee mugs lined up like they’re still in a relationship their owners quit. A name in a phone that’s heavy to scroll past. Jamie Foxx built “Somebody” out of apartment debris, the small objects an ex leaves behind that nobody thinks to box up until it’s too late. He co-wrote and co-produced it with Jermaine Carter, Wade Albert Branch III, and Sam Pounds. It’s his first proper record in over a decade. His last album, Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses, is eleven years old. Since then he’s hosted game shows, voiced Pixar characters, survived a near-fatal health scare in 2023, turned that scare into a Netflix special, and surfaced last year on Snoop Dogg’s gospel album Altar Call with a solo turn on “Grandma’s Hands.” Foxx sings to the ceiling, which is a detail so specific it works, and asks if healing has a phone number because his is stuck on his ex’s line. His vocal has aged into something grainier and less eager to impress than the guy who recorded “Unpredictable” twenty years ago. He was honored with the Ultimate Icon Award at last year’s BET Awards alongside Mariah Carey and Snoop Dogg. Although the vocal mixing leaves much to be desired, “Somebody” belongs to a man who knows he’s earned the flowers and is too busy staring at his phone to enjoy them. The song fits the morning after more than any celebration, when the party’s over and you’re washing dishes alone. — Terryl Jameson

Everybody who has slept with a close friend and then had to sit across from them at brunch knows the question “Friends Again” is asking. Baby Rose and Leon Thomas recorded it for her Secretly Canadian release, with Tommy Brenneck and Eric Hagstrom steering the session. The two just won the Grammy for Best R&B Album for their work together on his 2024 record Mutt, which gives this particular duet a charge that goes beyond the lyrics. They already proved they can make an album. Now they’re singing about whether the personal cost of collaboration can be walked back. Rose’s contralto sits low in the mix, smoky and unwilling to rush. When she opens with “Dream, been dreamin’ all day, trying to be mature,” you can hear the effort the maturity is costing her. She wants more and knows it’s going to ruin the friendship. Thomas floats in warmer, less certain. He tried to bury the rose, he says, but it sprouted in his heart anyway. His metaphor is unsubtle and it works because neither singer is trying to be clever. They’re just standing in the wreckage of a decision they can’t undo, singing at each other in real time. — Kendra Vale

• Jill Scott: To Whom This May Concern

• Brent Faiyaz: Icon

• Tiana Major9: November Scorpio

• LeVelle: All in Love

• The Olympians: In Search of a Revival

• alayna: Set Her Free

• Victor Ray: I AM. MIXTAPE

• Lilly Aviana: Is It Love

• Donny Benét: II Basso

• Momoko Gill: Momoko

• Zo! & Tall Black Guy: Expansions

• Amindi: me rn (EP)

• Ariel: Amatoria (EP)

• Blxckie: 4LUV2 (EP)

• Dominic Scott & Ghazi Gamali: Sincerely Yours (EP)

• Emmy Meli: All About Love (EP)

• Kenny Sharp: Speakeasy (EP)

• LALA: Roses Are Blue (EP)

• Raheem DeVaughn: Quiet Storm Lover Tome Un (EP)

• Mary J. Blige: More Than a Lover

• James Blake: I Had a Dream She Took My Hand

• Leven Kali: Remedy

• Justine Skye: Thong

• Shaylin B & Ye Ali: Zodiac Sippin

• rjtheweirdo: Tricks Are for Kids

• Tink: Gang Shit (feat. G Herbo)

• Inayah: Choose

• Shaé Universe: D’Angelo’s Joint

• Adrian Younge: Portschute

• Eric Roberson: Sweeter Than You (feat. Avery*Sunshine)

• HILLARI: I’m Still (A COLORS Show)

• Modha: Good News (feat. Allysha Joy)

• FLO: Mamacitas

• Keoni Usi: Ella 4:33

• Ris: FIGURE IT OUT (feat. WESTSIDE BOOGIE)

• MALAYA & OBI ALI: BARK

• Olivia Escuyos: Wasted

• Gio Genesis: Lovely (Maxi-Single)

• Nic Dean: Supermodel

• ELIZA: Major

• Solomon Headen & Niko X: Closer

• Tia Gordon: Love

• Brenna Whitaker: Get Here

• Mönt Lee: Don’t Touch

• Kevin Garrett: No Way Out

• Dizzy Fae: Cupid’s Call

• Ebubé & Tyler Lewis: Coming Home

• Indigo Mak: Feel Me

• Tamera: Helpless

• April + VISTA: Grotto

• BODHI: Hold Me Down

• MALIA: Not a Love Song

• Gracie Ella & Benita: I.D.T.Y.L.M

• Hamo Dell: Love Letters

• Neema Nekesa: One More Time

• Marlon Funaki: Skin

• Storm Ford: Step Back (Acoustic)

• Parlor Greens: Drop Top

• Johnny Burgos & Tane: Worse or Better

• Mansur Brown: Your Heart

• Sam Pounds: You Belong to Me

• Kalisway: S.A.H (SIDE A_SIDE B)

• Ojerime: SAFE

• Mal London: Won’t Be the Same

• Pino: Under Your Spell

• TSoul: No One on This Earth Like You

• DUSTIN DAB BOWIE: MONSOON

• VScript: LOVER

• Qiuntellii: HATE2SEEIT

• Brianna Knight: Soft Place to Land (Maxi-Single)