Reading this on mobile? Click here to view video SZA The Cut 4 Me mixtape will be released in September. We know in our bones there was a time when this kind of weird shit was on the radio, and I would like to recreate that moment. "Fuck the underground! I don't care about the underground, even if that's where I'm currently residing, sonically. I want people to be, like, 'What the fuck is going on?' If nobody likes the mixtape, I'll be pretty comfortable with that, honestly, because I finally got out what I meant to say."ĭespite aiming to make music to baffle people, Kelela – who has a jazz background, singing along to Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald – has every intention of becoming a mainstream success. Producers for the project included Girl Unit, Jam City, AraabMuzik and Nguzunguzu. "The music's not just weird, it's deliberately offputting," she adds. No wonder Kelela wants to go back to that future. "I'm coming from the zone of Faith Evans, but with weird production," says the Washington DC performer who has just recorded a mixtape for Fade to Mind, sister collective of the Night Slugs label. The Aaliyah/Timbaland brand of R&B was sonically audacious yet hugely commercial. Photograph: Shareif Ziyadat/FilmMagic Kelela Timbaland at the Kanye West album listening party in June. So while the world waits for a new Cassie album (she released her one official album in 2006, and despite numerous mooted followups, she has yet to put out a second, with just a mixtape issued earlier this year to satisfy her cult fan base), here are some of the superb young performers occupying the space with their gossamer, glitchy R&B. Aaliyah, Brandy, Ciara – these are the touchstones for their dreamy yet subtly dislocating dance music. More than anyone, though, it is Cassie Ventura, known simply as Cassie, who has become the figurehead for this new scene, perhaps because she is regarded as the last of an era (what Rihanna et al make is something quite different). SZA, Phlo Finister, Kid A, Jhené Aiko, Twigs, Jessy Lanza and Kelela have different influences and approaches, but what they share is a love of R&B at its most forward-looking and futuristic, the sort that was prevalent between the mid 90s and the mid-noughties, when Timbaland, the Neptunes and Rodney Jerkins were in their heyday.
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Over the past few years, male stars such as Drake, the Weeknd, the-Dream, Frank Ocean, Miguel, Autre Ne Veut and How to Dress Well, have stretched the definition of soul and taken the music to unexpected places. But now the pendulum is swinging back towards women. I remember where I was and what I was doing. I remember the day I first heard what Timbaland and Aaliyah did – that intersection of her pretty voice and his weird, resonant production. "I n the most direct way, we're trying to be post- Timbaland," says Kelela Mizanekristos, one of several new female artists operating in the realm of what could be termed experimental R&B.