kehlani - you should be here (2015)

"The Letter" is so brutal.

― Tim F, Friday, November 20, 2015 11:16 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally. really exemplifies what makes her songwriting so effective for me - it's so unflinching, she doesn't sugarcoat any word or emotion (and her relatively plain style of singing accentuates this), but really elegant in the way she pieces together a situation and its consequences via so many details that bring the entire song into focus

"bright" is like the exact inverse of "the letter", kehlani becoming everything she needed but never had

Voted Runnin'. I love that song.

I wrote something about this album for my local paper column back in May:

Precious few serious people now maintain that mainstream R&B is manufactured, soulless pap. Indeed, a certain carefully curated appreciation of the style is necessary to establish oneself as a rounded and culturally diverse listener. But this orthodoxy is a limited win for the genre critically, revolving as it does around certain overfamiliar archetypes. Consider the twin female pillars of social genuflection: on the one hand, the Queen Bae, and on the other, the enigmatic departed siren Aaliyah. 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. 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).

But there are other archetypes, or even just character types, that get dealt out of the story by the relentless march of history. 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. 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. 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. I can’t think of another song quite like it.

But 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. 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. 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). 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.

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.

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 you weren’t going to guide me / why bring me into the light?” she asks, her deceptive gentleness like a knife twisting in your stomach. It's strong stuff, but there's no gratuitous melodrama here, just ice cold clarity and unflinching honesty. Avoiding grand gestures, Kehlani measures her punches so that they're just sharp and powerful enough to penetrate your defences before you have time to steel yourself.

that's really great, "unselfconscious" is really key to this album. the arrangements are never striking in and of themselves - maybe this is why it flew under the radar? as well, as, yes, consistency meaning no one stand-out to rally around - they're really good frames for her songs but never the focal point

also didn't realise that this was technically sold as a mixtape rather than her debut album!

good stuff tim

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

you should vote here

I didn't discover this album until last weekend. I'm looking forward to digging in. "The Letter" is the early highlight.

"Jealous" is my favourite song not to get a vote.

Haha classic early adopter ilx poll results

i think i forgot, i woulda voted for 'be alright' : /

no wait 'bright'

the empowering one

grammy nominated

RIGHT HERE

http://www.hotnewhiphop.com/kehlani-tore-up-new-song.1967554.html

Great piece, Tim (though disagree somewhat about Beyonce as universalist: think she gives this innocent/simple country boy mind the grand illusion of seeing through *her* eyes, feeling the rush and massive skyscraper impact of *her* outsized experience, sometimes anyway). Also other comments on this thread got me going, will check alb.

didn't vote in this but i've been feeling Bright lately

Jealous is the earworm on here for me

new song "Did I" is def a step closer to the mainstream

heh i too once eagerly invoked nivea to sell this (or perhaps the prev one idk) to someone before sternly reminding myself that irlx is not a thing

looking forward to her going a bit more pop if so, feels right now. maybe someone oughta hook her up with some y2k 'he loves u not'/ 'no matta what' spazz beats just cos she can

Omg yes

almost too cruel to invoke that possibility when it will never happen

i think she'll be great at going pop in whatever era though, albeit not with this new one specifically, which feels a bit trudging compared with her own stuff

relistening to "he loves u not" now (<3) and the first girl really is a dead ringer for kehlani!

maybe the pop & oak connection is polluting my thinking here but the way the sample is used in the "did i" hook is a little too reminiscent of "say it" for me

the rap part of the verses remind me of drake's big rings hook

good bridge

which actually reminds me of "FWU"

what the fuck is going on

http://www.factmag.com/2016/03/29/kehlani-suicide-attempt/

Always so sad to hear about anyone reaching this place.

new song
https://soundcloud.com/kehlanimusic/24-7a

this one's dope, way better than 'did i' IMO

THE EAST COAST AINT GOT NO LOVE FOR KEHLANI ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRHoonuZ8og

Not as into that one as the other new one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCGky5MaSLs

something very swv about "distraction", i love it (and "24/7" is also such a necessary song)

I love it too but it's about 45 seconds too long? idk

"The Letter" is so brutal.

― Tim F, Friday, November 20, 2015 11:16 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally. really exemplifies what makes her songwriting so effective for me - it's so unflinching, she doesn't sugarcoat any word or emotion (and her relatively plain style of singing accentuates this), but really elegant in the way she pieces together a situation and its consequences via so many details that bring the entire song into focus

― lex pretend, Tuesday, November 24, 2015 12:08 PM (nine months ago)

it's kind of fucked to put it even as early as trk 9 / 8 (w/ intro), since it wrecks you and then the next few songs can just pass by in a daze

"crzy" is getting those payola spins

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CtjoPDgUEAErbq-.jpg:large

can we initiate hype proceedings for the ilm aoty 2017 or what

'undercover' is perfect

looking forward to her going a bit more pop if so, feels right now. maybe someone oughta hook her up with some y2k 'he loves u not'/ 'no matta what' spazz beats just cos she can

― r|t|c, Thursday, 17 December 2015 10:10 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Omg yes

― Tim F, Thursday, 17 December 2015 10:43 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

almost too cruel to invoke that possibility when it will never happen

― cher guevara (lex pretend), Thursday, 17 December 2015 17:48 Bookmark

lowkey close!!

I'ma save your name under somethin' else
I'ma keep your things deep in myself
I'ma tweet our inside jokes to the outside world
Forget you, go away
I'ma pick you up from the back in trains
Kept you in the world when it's all pretend
You're just you, I'm just me
There's no us, it's nothin'

'undercover' is perfect

― r|t|c, Thursday, January 12, 2017 6:02 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeh it is.

i loooove "undercover" and basically all of the other songs i've heard from this record

it's not even like chance x tlc blew my mind or anything but as soon i saw the cover and title i had this v relaxed certainty that yes this album will be a happening

now it feels like being in the airfield tower watching the career plane approach smoothly for landing

still quite opaque to locate the moment when/why her tide rose. to say it was the incident is reductively cynical but also pretty wrong i think

weirdly i think it was the grammy nom? like, them getting her singer-songwriterliness

this is her weakest to my ears

easily

I feel like if she waited a bit longer between albums and gathered up the best material she had, instead of doing random singles and mixtapes, she would have a better strike rate. Six albums (or album-length projects) in eight years is a lot.

"after hours" is ahh... hmm...

horrible

sigh.

i hated it immediately :(

i think it's fine if undistinguished and obvious

same but as a direction i like it a lot better than that last album which was by far the most forgettable of her career

this is certainly the first time I've become aware of a new Kehlani video by reading Al Jazeera:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpI7ekFG8A0

i actually like “after hours” a lot, good summer record. there is a yearning & longing that i think plays off the sample really well

the rest of the album however

I like the album better than anything she's put out since 2019. I do not like the Christina Aguilera interpolation or the Jill Scott number.

After hours is a gem, yes

new mixtape is about a billion times better than the new album, you hate to see it but it happens

i like the song named after her that she remixed lol

“folded” is her best song in years

up there with ari lennox “pressure” for me in terms of songs that evoke the sound/vocals/songwriting of early 00s r&b without bashing you over the head with it

Love this, real Nivea vibes

yes!

great song

anyone else's soty?

yes i had been meaning to bump this thread saying the same thing

if you put sza aside i think “folded” has an argument for best r&b single of the last several years

anyone have thoughts on the album? it feels weirdly lacking hits to me aside from “folded” which i think explains the single choices after, can’t tell where i land exactly in the spectrum between “like” and “love.” the production is all really masterfully done, “folded” feels like the high water mark songwriting wise perhaps. i actually think the second half is better than the first half, “call me back” thru “sweet nuthins” is my fav stretch

t-pain washes every guest on this album, his verse is incredible

ya “call me back” is a very serious song of the year contender

I like it quite a bit, though many of the guest spots (Big Sean, Clipse, for ex) don't land for me. "Cruise Control" and "Sweet Nuthins" are beautiful.

lil wayne's verse starts the album on a very strange note. not a terrible verse but idk why his voice is the first one we hear on this album after the intro. agree with j0rdan that the "call me back"-"sweet nuthins" stretch is the strength.

it's interesting that so much of the marketing (and kehlani's own touting) of the album posits her as the "future of r&b" when, 1) she is very much r&b's present lol, and 2) this is a very traditional, cd-era style r&b album

We're in mind-meld here, y'all: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kehlani-kehlani/

i'm gonna add "unlearn" to the stretch of highlights, really well-sung ballad.

lil wayne's verse starts the album on a very strange note. not a terrible verse but idk why his voice is the first one we hear on this album after the intro.

right exactly. i think the first two songs in general threw me off bcuz i think they're some of the weakest on the album -- not bad at all but just feel like they kinda map the blueprint of aughts r&b w/o adding much too it -- you get the sorta rich harrison, usher - "throwback" vibes but it feels a bit too much like vibes. i think when this gets to the brandy track it settles in tho, not sure the missy or usher tracks really slap either but the album hits a groove it rides out thru that really nice back stretch at the end

of all the songs "call me back" is the one to me that is nailing a very specific reference while also, like, accessing some depth of feeling that adds to the lineage of what it is referencing, feels like there is some deep emotional connection to the source material that brought real emotion out of the artist etc. not to say that the rest of the album fails by that rubric, there are other songs that get somewhat close, but that's the one that hits the bullseye for me

i'm loving 'call me back' too but confused as to what lead to the album having such a "retro" set of features? wayne, clipse, missy, usher, t-pain, brandy, big sean, reads like track list of a pop-rap/r&b album from 2009. the production isn't particularly throwback to that era either

It had to have been conscious. I haven't read the press release though.

idk i have to disagree that the production isn't very overtly throwing it back to early-mid 00s R&B, i think it's pretty explicit

my theory is that "folded" took off and gave her a strong sense of direction for this album -- we all were comparing it to usher, nivea etc -- but perhaps it was planned all along. i think either way it's basically a millennial version of returning to your R&B roots, which i think was very important and smart for her, she knocked herself off her axis w/ 'blue water road' (a lot of people straight up forget this album even exists) and 'crash' further felt like she was just flailing around artistically. 'while we wait 2' was bending it back in the right direction but i think leaning into the very specific pastiches of this era realigned the planets for her. i mean, the name of her debut album is one of the most specific R&B references you could make so grounding herself very concretely w/in genre confines, and even sanding the confines down further, feels like a comfort zone for her

yeah maybe you're right and it's just a bit subtle