Watching Jazmine Sullivan turn herself on with her own skill is like watching Spider-Man happily swing from skyrise to skyrise, no enemy in sight. Just look at Sullivan shimmy at a recent NPR Music Tiny Desk (Home) concert as she sings, “I hope these tits can get me out of town,” her voice tickles deeply. Her eyes widen with feigned confusion as she says the words, “I don’t know where I woke up.” When she calls, “Don’t have too much fun without me”, out Heaux Tales’ excellent single ‘Lost One’, she throws her head, arms and palms back, as if she’s offering herself to something bigger.
Heaux Tales himself also looks at something bigger, outside of Sullivan as his subject or star. Her fourth album is comprehensive and inclusive, and embodies so many women’s insights into love and sex (read “HeauxAs “ho”) as 32 minutes could reasonably allow. About eight songs connected by spoken word interludes of different women, Heaux Tales unfolds a patchwork quilt of origins, results, sensations and disasters of coital indulgence in her most cohesive work to date. Sullivan strategically activates her royal voice with stories that are sharp, intimate and addictive.
One of Sullivan’s breakthroughs in popular R&B was with the 2008 revenge tango “Bust Your Windows.” The scorned lover in the song is one of many personas Sullivan would play over the course of three albums of drama and drama. camp. Her music has transitioned from reggae to disco, to boom-bap to fanfare and more, as she explored the lives of women and men struggling with crime, passion and addiction. Heaux Tales, on the other hand, is committed to simpler, more timeless soundscapes, such as the snaps and synths of ‘Bodies’ or the striking guitars of ‘Lost One’ and ‘Girl Like Me’. Above the relatively minimalist production and instrumentation, the stories of the album are central.
There is a direct line between the archetypal portraits Sullivan painted in the past and the more dynamic stories here. On “Mascara”, from her 2015 album Reality Show, Sullivan personified a proud prospector with an attitude to match. “We all want to be that confident person,” Sullivan said of the song at the time. And it’s hard to be like that. Because you always feel like someone is judging you. ” During Heaux TalesBut the motivations and merits of women who do or want to earn material things through love and sex are viewed more gently and clearly. In one of the spoken pauses, a woman named Precious Daughtry says that a childhood of hardship is pushing her away from men without money. Her words are followed by Sullivan’s blistering performance of “The Other Side,” a vivid daydream about moving to Atlanta to be with a rapper who can take care of her. “I just want to be looked after / because I’ve worked enough,” she reasons.
The perspectives of the album sometimes contradict themselves. On songs like ‘The Other Side’ and ‘Pricetags’ supported by Anderson .Paak, sex is a daring means of empowerment, financial or otherwise. Then, in the meantime, Sullivan’s 20-year-old girlfriend, Amanda Henderson, dejectedly admits that seeking sex for power makes her feel insecure. “Amanda’s Tale” is followed by “Girl Like Me,” in which Sullivan and HER sing about the hos in Fashion Nova dresses that take their love interests away from them. Ho-ing goes from a source of pride and abundance to a source of shame. Sullivan’s songwriting is nimble: these conflicting judgments and desires live in women – and both can live in one woman at the same time.
Beyond Heaux Tales, Sullivan struggles with what can be lost and gained through sex, out of a secure sense of self (“Come on, bitch,” she says to herself on “Bodies.” “You’re getting sloppy.”) To insane pleasure (“I give my last one out because the D-bomb, ”she proudly admits to“ Put it down. ”) The informal bursts of specificity in these vignettes are a feat of songwriting, and the restraint a power vocalist like Sullivan displays in her episode is just as important. Sometimes her voice is choppy and jovial, sometimes it sounds like rapping, and it’s almost always a pleasure to sing along. On this album she is both Deena Jones and Effie White, she can easily listen or consume everything From the crinkly opening round on ‘Put It Down’, her most powerful vocals are blended into the background, as if trying to make her a little less superhuman.
R&B has long allowed women to express their sexual appetite, from basic dirty blues songs like Lucille Bogan’s 1935 ‘Shave’ Em Dry ‘(‘ Say I fucked all night and all night before, baby / And I feel like I want to fuck some more ‘) on Adina Howard’s 1995 hit’ Freak Like Me ‘. After six years between projects, Sullivan joins contemporary R&B and R&B adjoining stars like Summer Walker and SZA, who updated the genre with music that complicates desire with a messy reality. Old archetypes like The Gold Digger and new ones like The Instagram Baddie are starting to crumble, leaving fuller women in their wake. Sullivan’s friend Amanda Henderson told me Philadelphia Inquirer that she was nervous to take in her revelation Heaux Tales, but has since found relief in the number of fans who have associated with it. Even in the way Sullivan’s Tiny Desk was arranged – with luscious instrumental breaks, opportunities for her backing singers to be in the spotlight, and a guest appearance from HER – it’s clear Heaux Tales is common.
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