rolling r&b 2020

Juls - ' blessed' feat mira may and donne'o

think some will like this
📹

I think there’s actually a lot of r&b-leaning West African (afro)pop people here might like. I posted Tems upthread, but there’s the whole (mostly) Nigerian alté (for alternative) scene, with people like Odunsi (The Engine) and Cruel Santino (fka Santi), and the vibe on the current Wizkid album is extremely r&b-friendly as well: check “Sweet One”, the tracks with Ella Mai and Tems, and “True Love”, another Juls jam.
Producer Juls (who’s British-Ghanaian) himself is kind of a trailblazer for this kind of sound, on his own releases, but he also worked on GoldLink’s Diaspora album, for instance.

Anyway, I actually came here to big up the Amaarae’s The Angel You Don’t Know album. She’s Ghanaian American and her music is a hybrid of r&b, rap and (alté) afrobeats. The album is basically one long netfreax & chill - and in an unexpected plot twist was selected as Best New Music in Pitchfork last month.

The current video is for “Jump Ship” (with Kojey Radical and Cruel Santino), which leans more to the afro side:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-RCIu45VIc

Last year’s slinky “Like It” got some traction on ILM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai0RgtrRGSY
(it’s not on the album and hasn’t been streamable for a long time now, presumably because of a sample clearing issue)