When it comes to romance, we often detach our thoughts from reality. Naturally, the dream comes first. Love begins as a fantasy.
In music, especially the R&B genre, romance maintains a fairy tale sensibility. Club dance floors will suddenly become a place for lovemaking. Obsessive passion becomes a drug-like addiction. We live in laps, shea butter helps to make babies, and every night could be The Night. There is no better escape for hopeless romantics than love-struck albums like Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book or Whitney Houston’s I’m Your Baby Tonight.
With love-enthusiasts like Daniel Caesar, Sabrina Claudio, and Leon Bridges giving contemporary R&B their slice-of-life, the genre has maintained a fresh kind of romanticism that teeters between the real and surreal. For example, Caesar’s “ Who Hurts You?” is about a magical evening at a strip club; he’s as captivated with a pole dancer named Priscilla as Ella Mai is with her love interest on her GRAMMY-nominated, 5x platinum single “ Boo’d Up.” It’s how these artists document infatuation with stories of faultless interactions that make their songs dream-like.
Such is not the case for 6LACK. The R&B playboy from East Atlanta is a writer, but he isn’t idealistic.
