FEATURE: Spotlight: Jazmine Sullivan

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Malike Sidibe for New York Magazine

Jazmine Sullivan

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A lot of my Spotlight features…

concern artists who are just starting out and do not have a massive fanbase. Jazmine Sullivan has established quite a big fanbase already and, whilst she has not been in music for that many years, she has already achieved so much. That said, there are so many people who do not know about it – hence why she is in Spotlight. I am going to bring in a couple of reviews for her fourth studio album, Heaux Tales. Released in January, it is one of her most accomplished works. If you do not know about Sullivan, then here is some information from Wikipedia:

“Jazmine Marie Sullivan (born April 9, 1987) is an American singer-songwriter. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, her debut album, Fearless, was released in 2008 to commercial and critical success. The record topped Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It spawned four singles, including "Need U Bad" and "Bust Your Windows", both of which peaked in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the former of which became Sullivan's first and only number one on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.

Sullivan followed this with her second studio album, Love Me Back, in 2010, which was received favorably by critics. After taking a three-year break, Sullivan signed with RCA Records and released her first studio album under the label, Reality Show, in 2015, and it became her second album to peak at number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart”.

I am a fan of all of her work but, as Heaux Tales is new and, in my view, the best representation and strongest work from Jazmine Sullivan, then I am going to focus on that. Before I introduce some positives reviews for that album, there are a couple of interviews that caught my eye. Sullivan spoke with The Guardian recently - and we learned more about her background and music progression:

“Her first two albums, 2008’s Fearless and 2010’s Love Me Back, strongly bore this out while extending her range into disco, tango and reggae. Critical respect and 12 Grammy nominations have followed in the years since, and though household name recognition has not, several of Sullivan’s songs became R&B standards. Her 2010 single Holding You Down (Goin’ in Circles) was given a new lease of life a decade on when Megan Thee Stallion used it is the foundational sample for Circles, the opening cut from the Houston rapper’s hit 2020 album Good News.

In 2011, she announced her retirement from the music industry in a series of emotional tweets, later admitting that her confidence as an artist had crumbled to the extent that she would not accept show bookings. But since her return in 2014, Sullivan has morphed into the finest songwriter and storyteller in R&B. On 2015’s underrated masterpiece, Reality Show, her focus was on sharply constructed character studies, and this month’s Heaux Tales EP further examines sex, money and the mediated image of modern Black womanhood in Sullivan’s most confident work to date. “I want to kind of get to the root of why people do certain things,” she says. “That’s more important than the outcome. As a society, we focus on the outcome, and we label people based off that, but we don’t really know the meat of the story of why people are the way they are.”

She comes from a lineage of female creators – her grandmother was a poet and church evangelist, and her mother wrote plays (“always very Bible-based and Christian-based”) – and her childhood was spent growing up in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion, a historic museum where her father gave guided tours. It was a private and restricted upbringing: Sullivan remembers only seeing other children at school, and spending much of her time at home watching Disney and making up stories to entertain herself.

“It was an interesting process we went through as kids,” she recalls. “Where we actually lived was on the third floor, pretty much all the way up in the attic – where the slaves lived. Whenever my dad was doing tours we kind of had to retreat, and we pretty much only came down to eat. And usually the people on the tours were, you know, white people. And we had to hide and retreat up to the slave quarters!”.

I must admit that Heaux Tales is the first Jazmine Sullivan album I have truly immersed myself in. I love the combination of those spoken word portions and the fuller songs. In a way, it has a feel of a mixtape, but it more conversational and expansive. I do think that Heaux Tales is an album everyone needs to listen to. Just before getting to some reviews, I was captured by an interview from Vulture. Sullivan discussed why Heaux Tales was quite challenging to make:

“Heaux Tales was harder to make than the albums that preceded it. Sullivan’s not quite sure why. “I’m not gonna lie. I had a hard time even singing,” she says. “Creatively, things didn’t come as natural this time. It’s natural that artists will have droughts sometimes as writers, but I don’t know. I just know it was not as easy this time.” She’s also butting up against some fans’ expectations. “I read something earlier today where [a commenter] was adamant, like, ‘I’m not getting this project! I don’t know who this woman is,’ ” she says. “And I was just like, Okay, it’s not for her. That’s cool. But some other people will be able to relate to it. Everybody won’t get it.” Many R&B listeners aren’t likely to be disappointed. The album fuses the messy and the tender and the insecure the way SZA did on Ctrl four years ago and Lauryn Hill did on Miseducation. Sullivan’s voice is bigger and broader than both of theirs, capably teasing out whines with bravado. Heaux Tales is already a New York Times critic’s pick and topped NPR’s list of most anticipated 2021 albums.

I wonder aloud if this album was trickier because she’s in love now. Her early music, including and especially her breakout single, “Bust Your Windows,” made heartache her signature. Is it harder to write to that expectation when you’re happy? Sullivan’s boyfriend is a musician-writer-producer. The day we talk, he woke up early to shovel the snow in front of her house so her band could come over. “We moved fast,” she says of the relationship. “But we were probably just on the same page. We don’t mind talking things out. We know we don’t know everything, and that’s where a good relationship starts. You’re open to learning.” But make no mistake. “If I choose,” she adds, laughing, “I can write about heartaches because I could just pull from the many heartaches I’ve had in my life”.

I am keen to wrap things up but, just before, I really had to bring in some reviews. When they sat down to listen to Heaux Tales, this is what CLASH had to say:

“Utilising spoken word segments to align each chapter within the album’s framework, Jazmine aims to explore “today’s women standing in their power...” Linking together sexual openness with a frank take on materialism, ‘Heaux Tales’ bristles with independence, from the opening words of ‘Bodies’ through to those closing notes.

The peaks have an Alpine quality. ‘Pick Up Your Feelings’ is sensational, while Ari Lennox features on the wonderfully infectious ‘On It’. A record that stakes a claim to its own pasture, ‘Heaux Tales’ dares to be different, with Jazmine’s perfectionist streak balanced against occasionally raw, intimate use of sonics.

As such, Anderson .Paak’s raucous appearance on ‘Pricetags’ is offset by moments of genuine tenderness, such as closing track – and previous single - ‘Girl Like Me’, a soothing meditation on femininity that allows Jazmine’s vocal styles to pirouette against H.E.R.

The spoken word segments act as much more than mere skits, with those prose elements illuminating key thematic aspects of her work. A record whose internal structure feels both delicate and immediately engaging, ‘Heaux Tales’ thrives through its proclamation of the unexpected, with Jazmine leading her assembled cast on to fresh ground.

Ending such a lengthy wait for new material was never going to be easy, but Jazmine Sullivan makes her Everest-like task look deceptively simple. A woman speaking her truth in poetic, soulful fashion, ‘Heaux Tales’ could be her defining chapter”.

I have been listening to Heaux Tales a fair bit the past few weeks, and I can recommend it to pretty much everyone. I am looking forward to seeing where Jazmine Sullivan heads next. In their review of Heaux Tales, this is what Pitchfork observed:

“All over Heaux Tales, Sullivan contends with what can be lost and gained through sex, from a secure sense of self (“Get it together, bitch,” she tells herself on “Bodies.” “You gettin’ sloppy.”) to crazed pleasure (“I spend my last ’cause the D bomb,” she proudly admits on “Put It Down”). The colloquial bursts of specificity in these vignettes are a feat of songwriting, and the restraint a power-vocalist like Sullivan shows in her delivery is as important. Sometimes her voice is choppy and conversational, sometimes it sounds like rapping, and it’s almost always a delight to sing along to. On this album, she’s both Deena Jones and Effie White; she can be an easy-listen or an all-consuming one. From the crinkly opening run on “Put It Down,” her most powerful singing is mixed into the background, as if to render her a little less superhuman.

R&B has long offered women space to voice their sexual appetites, from the foundational dirty blues songs like Lucille Bogan’s “Shave ’Em Dry” in 1935 (“Say I fucked all night and all the night before, baby/And I feel just like I want to fuck some more”) to Adina Howard’s 1995 hit “Freak Like Me.” After six years between projects, Sullivan joins the ranks of today’s R&B and R&B-adjacent stars like Summer Walker and SZA, who have updated the genre with music that complicates desire with messy reality. Old archetypes like The Gold Digger and new ones like The Instagram Baddie begin to crumble away, leaving fuller women in their wake. Sullivan’s friend Amanda Henderson told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she was nervous to include her revelation on Heaux Tales, but has since found relief in the number of fans who have connected to it. Even in the way Sullivan’s Tiny Desk was arranged—with lush instrumental breaks, opportunities for her background singers to take the spotlight, and a guest appearance from H.E.R.—it is clear Heaux Tales is communal”.

Go and investigate one of the finest artists in music right now. I think Jazmine Sullivan has a long career ahead of her - and, when things settle down regarding the pandemic, I hope she gets to the U.K. and can do some touring here. One only needs to listen to her music for the shortest time to understand that Sullivan is…