JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 81st anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s birth.
Category: R&B
Throwback: R.I.P. George “Funky” Bell
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of Kool and the Gang’s George “Funky” Bell.
New Video: Fabien Gravillon Shares Breezy Pop Confection “Je t’attends”
Fabien Gravillon is a Paris-born singer/songwriter, pop artist and actor, who may be best known in France for starring in the smash-hit soap opera Plus belle la vie. As a singer/songwriter and pop artist, Gravillon has specialized in a sound that draws from Zouk, Kizomba and Afro pop.
After the release of his debut album through Because Music, Gravillon went to Los Angeles and appeared in several videos by internationally acclaimed artists including Macklemore and Patrick Stump‘s “Summer Days,” Collapsing Scenery and others. He also participated in several projects filmed at Fox Studios in Hollywood and for The Jim Henson Company.
Gravillon’s latest single “Je t’atends” is a slickly produced bit of hook-driven pop that meshes elements of reggaeton and chanson in a way that’s crowd-pleasing and accessible. Much like his previously released material, “Je t’attends” is an earnest plea of devotion to a lover that feels and sounds sweetly old-fashioned.
Directed by Roger Artola and Griffit Vision, the accompanying video for “Je t’attends” was shot on a gloriously summer day in Los Angeles and tells a classic tale of deception, cheating and devotion.
New Audio: San Francisco’s LYV Shares Atmospheric “Haunted”
LYV is an emerging San Francisco-based, Mexican-American singer/songwriterand marketing manager at EMPIRE. The emerging San Francisco-based artist comes from an R&B and gospel background — but she has writing and co-writing credits for artists across a variety of genres.
Over the past year, LYV has been steady releasing new material, including her latest single, the slow-burning and sultry “Haunted,” which pairs her sultry pop starlet vocal with an atmospheric, Quiet Storm-inspired production featuring skittering trap-like beats, ethereal synths. But at its core is an earnest expression of yearning and desire.
New Audio: TANSU Shares Bittersweet Ballad “Easy Love”
Deriving her artist name from a Turkish term for the sun’s radiant touch on ocean waters just before sunrise, the emerging pop artist TANSU has a diverse and global cultural background with roots in Turkey and Ireland. She spent her formative years in London and Connecticut, had a stint in Boston for college, and has called NYC home for the past 13 years.
During that period, TANSU has carefully balanced her life between music and fashion, which she personally defines as performing arts. While working in fashion PR, she lent her vocals to numerous projects as a session and featured vocalist, most recently releasing The Wash Up EP co-produced with Lars Viola. She also performs extensively around both lower and Manhattan, including a monthly residency at Lafolia Restaurant, every first Thursday.
Back in 2015, the emerging pop artist reconnected with American Authors‘ Dave Rublin, a college acquaintance. Since then, they’ve been writing and recording music together, which has included sleek and slickly produced “DOWNTOWN,” and simmering soul-pop ballad “Got 2 Me.”
The New York-based artist’s latest single “Easy Love” continues a run of sleek, slickly produced 90s and 2000s-inspired R&B built around a minimalist yet percussive production featuring glistening synths paired with her effortlessly soulful vocal expressing a bittersweet and heartbroken farewell to a relationship.
“’Easy Love’ is a soft goodbye,” TANSU explains. “It is a song about letting go of a friend while respecting the life and beauty the relationship once shared. A loving tribute to someone you can no longer be there for, the song helps us all tell our former friends to take it easy, love.”
Formed back in 2010, the acclaimed Toronto-based outfit BADBADNOTGOOD — currently Alexander Sowinski (drums), Chester Hansen (bass) and Leland Whitty (guitar, woodwinds) — can trace their origins back to when its founding members met while attending Humber College‘s jazz program. Since then, whether with three or four members — and more currently with three — the Toronto-based outfit has firmly centered a reputation for consistently crossing and blending genres and genre boundaries. Although jazz trained, they first gained attention for drawing from hip-hop and other contemporary genres to create a unique, difficult to pigeonhole sound.
Besides their own critically applauded releases, the members of BADBADNOTGOOD have collaborated with a eclectic array of internationally renowned artists across hip-hop, neo-soul, dance music and more, including Ghostface Killah, Kaytranada, Little Dragon, and Kendrick Lamar.
Back in 2021, the acclaimed Canadian trio signed to XL Recordings, who released their critically applauded fifth album Talk Memory. The album’s material saw the trio collaborating with an array of internationally renowned and acclaimed multi-instrumentalists including Arthur Verocai, Laraaji, Terrace Martin, Brandee Younger, and Karriem Riggins, and was inspired by their live shows. They’ve supported Talk Memory with some extensive touring with stops at some of the world’s best venues and festivals.
Since the release of Talk Memory, they’ve released an EP with Turnstile and a standalone single “Open Channels.”
Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past handful of years, you might already be familiar with acclaimed JOVM mainstay and frequent BADBADNOTGOOD collaborator Charlotte Day Wilson. Throughout her career, Day Wilson has developed a sound that draws from and features elements of folk, gospel and Quiet Storm R&B.
Her critically applauded sophomore album, 2021’s ALPHA served as a metaphorical coming out, that found her openly and honestly tapping into her queerness for the first time as a storyteller/songwriter. A few months after the album’s release, Drake sampled the Babyface co-written “Mountains” on the chart-topping hit “Fair Trade” featuring Travis Scott. Adding to a growing profile, she received praise for the supergroup remix of “Take Care Of You” featuring Syd, King Princess, Amaarae and the legendary and incomparable Meshell Ndegeocello.
Recently she collaborated SG Lewis and Channel Tres on “Fever Dreamer.” And back in August, Day Wilson signed with XL Recordings, who released “Forever,” featuring Snoh Aalegra, which was released to praise from The Fader, The Line of Best Fit and others.
The frequent collaborators joined forces yet again for their latest collaboration “Sleeper.” Recorded at legendary Los Angeles-based Valentine Recording Studios on analog tape, “Sleeper” pairs Day Wilson’s dreamy and effortlessly soulful delivery with a lush and breezy 70s AM rock-meets-soul arrangement that sounds inspired by Carole King’s legendary Tapestry and 70s Motown soul. The song evokes someone dreamily going through their life, avoiding conflict and upset — and never quite getting anywhere or anything that they desired.
“Sleeper wrote itself…we were in the studio just messing around and the guys came up with the colorful instrumental while I freestyled the lyrics,” the JOVM mainstay says of the new single. “The song portrays someone who chooses the path of least resistance and finds themselves in a lifeless, loveless relationship.”
Throwback: R.I.P. Rudolph Isley
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of The Isley Brothers’ Rudolph Isley.
New Audio: Black Yacht Rock Club Shares Sleek and Soulful “Wishful”
Black Yacht Rock Club is a New York-based emerging supergroup of songwriters/musicians/producers and artists — Jerome Jordan (vocals, guitar), Justo Ontario (vocals), Phearnone (vocalist, emcee and violin), Ramsey Jones (drums, songwriter, arranger) and Entrfied The God of Sound (production, songwriting) — that specializes in blending a number of classic genres simultaneously with a contemporary twist.
Their latest single “Wistful” is a two-step inducing bit of synth-driven R&B and funk that will remind listeners of the likes of The Whispers, The Gap Band and contemporaries like Dam-Funk, Tuxedo and others, complete with a remarkably catchy hook and soulful crooning.
New Audio: TANSU Shares Sultry “DOWNTOWN”
Deriving her artist name from a Turkish term for the sun’s radiant touch on ocean waters just before sunrise, the emerging pop artist TANSU has a diverse and global cultural background with roots in Turkey and Ireland. She spent her formative years in London and Connecticut, had a stint in Boston for college, and has called NYC home for the past 13 years.
During that period, TANSU has carefully balanced her life between music and fashion, which she defines as performing arts. While working in fashion PR, she lent her vocals to numerous projects as a session and featured vocalist, most recently releasing “The Wash Up,” co-produced with Lars Viola. She also performs extensively around both lower and Manhattan, including a monthly residency at Lafolia Restaurant, every first Thursday.
Back in 2015, the emerging pop artist reconnected with American Authors‘ Dave Rublin, a college acquaintance. Since then, they’ve been writing and recording music together, including her latest single “DOWNTOWN,” which has been released through Rublin’s Little Planet Records.
Featuring skittering, trap-like beats and glistening synths serving as a silky bed for the emerging New York-based artist’s self-assured and sultry delivery. Seemingly indebted to the likes of The Weeknd, SZA, Beyoncé and others, the anthemic and hook-driven “DOWNTOWN” marks a new sonic direction for the emerging artist, while being informed by the bitter hurt of lived-in personal experience, so the song sees its narrator expressing confusion, hurt, pride and then forgiveness within a turn of a phrase.
“I wrote this song on the heels of ‘The First Big Fight’ with, who was then, my new boyfriend,” TANSU explains. ” It was weird, because I was treating the fight with one-night-nonchalance; kind of a, ‘don’t worry baby, I never liked you that much anyway’ type of feeling. Because that’s how you were SUPPOSED to feel when dating in the late 2010’s. ‘Grabbing my scars/ and then deciding just to walk out’ is a very intimate line. It questions how we can be intimate with someone, touch each others’ bodies, our scars, our souls, and then pretend that we can just move on. It’s hard to justify an intimate fling with your soul. ‘DOWNTOWN’ speaks to the juxtaposition of that mind fuck,” TANSU shares. She continues, “fresh from the fight, I needed some glorifying attention from someone else. So I went to the studio to go write something. Luckily my producer was also going through a situational something, so we came up with a sexy song while both sexually frustrated. We ended up going out to Three Diamond Door in Bushwick that night after that session. The bridge is an interpretation of what happened after Three Diamond Door. We were buzzed, music made us dance, I got the attention I thought I wanted… but as soon as I stepped outside, I knew who I was calling.”
The couple eventually recovered from that argument, and they got married this past weekend.
