My Smile’s Not The Same

Cleo Sol “Fear When You Fly”

The majority of people making traditional 20th century-style R&B music today are young enough that, almost unavoidably, their frame of reference for the music has been filtered through five decades of sampling in rap. I feel like this gets filtered back into the traditional music in different ways – Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill keeping one foot firmly planted in hip-hop, or Amy Winehouse going full retro but with a post-rap attitude. This Inflo-produced track by Cleo Sol is a little more subtle – it basically sounds like a new soul song comprised entirely of the “good parts” of old songs that would’ve ended up as samples on top-shelf rap records. I’m not sure if this is a deliberate thing, if this is something Inflo is consciously thinking about in the studio. But it’s hard to imagine that on some level this post-rap filter is informing how the song is written, or how individual parts have been recorded so they feel more like a Madlib or Kanye West production than 60s or 70s soul records. It ends up sounding like a product of creative reverse-engineering.

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Lola Young featuring Lil Yachty “Charlie”

“Charlie” is, at its core, also a traditional R&B song, but the execution is much weirder. The production by Solomonophonic & Manuka makes the track sound like a Quiet Storm-era soul track with the middle torn out, leaving Lola Young sounding like she’s belting her vocal over a bigger sound that isn’t there. There’s bass and drums and guitars, but they feel slightly off and naked in the mix, like they’re deliberately drawing your ear to textures that would ordinarily get ironed out in the mixing. It sounds very cool and feels fresh to me – familiar but a little alien, and with lead guitar flourishes that have a little extra flamboyance and sparkle in this context. Lil Yachty shows up near the end to give voice to the titular Charlie, which adds some dimension to the lyrics, but given how often he’s appeared on R&B-ish songs with peculiar arrangements, it seems like he’s mostly come by to give his blessing to another artist doing something he’s into.

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