Kehlani - It Was Good Until It Wasn't

The Guardian 60

(Atlantic)

Across her solo releases, Oakland, California artist Kehlani has channelled a nostalgic kind of poppy R&B. That the former America’s Got Talent star’s debut album was called SweetSexySavage in a nod to TLC’s CrazySexyCool is telling of the kind of slinky, exuberant sounds she’s best known for putting out. This second album is more pared down and feels more of its time, as much indebted to SZA as it is SWV. Some of the lyricism is a little clumsy (“We fuck and make-up like it’s Maybelline”), and the Megan Thee Stallion feature is an all-too-brief skit, but overall Kehlani sounds assured and impressive here, offering sensuality and intimacy in her candour.

Beyond the sultry, raw afterglow of balmy tracks about sex and love, she interrogates her life as entertainment news on Everybody Business (“So if you hear that rah-rah-rah about me [...] I beg you don’t listen, I beg you believe me”), while on Grieving, a duet with James Blake, she ruminates on the end of a relationship over silken beats. Sonically, it can blend a little into one, but the closing feature from the late rapper Lexii, a friend and collaborator of Kehlani’s, is a rousing, poignant end to a largely accomplished set.

Sun May 10 14:00:27 GMT 2020

The Guardian 0

(Atlantic)
The singer whose personal life has become a public spectacle drowns out the noise with these bold yet subtle R&B tracks

By anyone’s standards, Kehlani Parrish has experienced a pretty tumultuous rise to fame. She pulled off the not-inconsiderable feat of emerging from a TV talent show with her musical credibility intact. While still a teenager, her cover band PopLyfe reached the final of America’s Got Talent – on YouTube you can still see her belting out We Will Rock You for the edification of Piers Morgan – but when they failed to win, she quit the band, declined an offer from the show’s host Nick Cannon to join a rap group he was assembling and rescued herself from a life of penury by releasing her own mixtape.

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Thu May 07 11:18:12 GMT 2020