Review Summary: Jazmine Sullivan may not make her more recent influences a secret, but the ambition of this mini-project is what carries her one step further.
The first time I listened to
Heaux Tales, I was immediately reminded of the wide shadow cast by H.E.R. in the modern R&B market. Low-key, hip-hop inspired beats and soulful-yet-reserved singing are basically commodities in this corner of the pop world. And it’s not like I can’t see why this is the case; a more introspective approach to love and sex is nice to hear when you know there’s some real passion and experience behind it. Even the aforementioned H.E.R. seems wise beyond their relatively young years, and setting an atmosphere is often the central goal of her work; you know, pillow-talk music. On a surface level, Jazmine Sullivan seems to be operating within the same ballpark with the lax and dim-lit mood of the music on offer here; hell, the closer even features H.E.R. and rips off the style of her biggest hit! However, dig a bit deeper and there’s also a lot of inspiration from more flashy contemporaries such as Ella Mae. Just listen as Sullivan offers lushly harmonized soul vocals over vaguely jazzy hip-hop beats, such as on the beautiful waltz-like crawl of “On It” or the smooth and tasteful vocal runs of album highlight “Pick Up Your Feelings.” Then, somewhere between H.E.R. and Ella Mae, you’ll find songs like “Put It Down” which seem to be influenced by both singers’ respective approaches and fuse neo-soul stylings with a brooding trap-like feel.
Yet, there are some things that really make Sullivan stand out on her own as well, and I feel as though this is because she started her career before the current contemporaries I mentioned (her first album was in 2008). Despite the fact that
Heaux Tales is just an EP, I really appreciate the ambition in making it a mini concept album with dialogue interludes. Every song is separated by small snippets driving home themes of feminism, classism, and sexuality; while the themes could perhaps have been explored in greater detail (maybe she could expand this into a full concept album someday), the great flow of the record means that none of them get too heavy-handed or wear out their welcome. At 32 minutes the whole thing flies by, and the decision to use the track-interlude-track-interlude approach means the album always has a sense of variety and momentum about it. Honestly, it would be great to hear more artists like Jazmine Sullivan in the R&B world today. She may have recently taken a lot of notes from more current acts, but she tends to take the best aspects of those influences and inject a healthy dose of early-2000s neo-soul flair to them Alicia Keys-style. In fact, based on the jazzy keyboard chords and urban R&B feel of opening track “Bodies,” I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Keys eventually got a feature credit on a Jazmine Sullivan album - or the other way around. Let’s just hope the promise of
Heaux Tales leads to a more fleshed-out concept album that expands even more on its themes.
