Jazmine Sullivan, Heaux Tales (RCA, 2021)
Soften, streaming platforms – and Spotify en premier – want to impose the idea that to exist in the current world of music you have to pull in all directions, get out of music constantly, occupy the field until exhaustion. The reality is much more complicated than that, fortunately, and the new album of Jazmine Sullivan comes to remind us. Because the American, brilliant singer and songwriter of a genre that is filling up everywhere on the internet, modern R’nB, could play this little game and multiply the releases. But none of that. Heaux Tales is his fourth album since 2008, patient marker of a remarkably thrifty and waste-poor career. Jazmine Sullivan, it’s a handful of records all remarkable – this new not doing exception – and select collaborations that navigate between demanding R’nB, literate hip-hop and curious pop, with Anderson .Paak, Kindness, Frank Ocean (Blond), Mary J. Blige or Monica.
Jazmine Sullivan, 33 today, is a low key. Daughter of a chorister for the great Afro-American label of the 1970s Philadelphia International, purveyor of lush soul that also heralded house and R’nB, she learned to sing very early before doing her school training and to debut in various choirs in his city, Philadelphia. This is where his grainy, clear but not smooth mezzo-soprano voice was quickly spotted.
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