Heaux Tales (Vinyl)＜完全生産限定盤＞

第64回グラミー賞で「Best R&B Album」 を受賞!
Jazmine Sullivan(ジャズミン・サリヴァン)4th アルバム『Heaux Tales』のアナログ盤

フィラデルフィア出身の実力派R&Bシンガー=Jazmine Sullivan(ジャズミン・サリヴァン)が2021年に1月に配信リリースしたアルバム『Heaux Tales』のアナログ盤を発売。2015年に発売された『Reality Show』以来6年振り4枚目のリリースとなったこのアルバムは、ゲストにアンダーソン・パークやH.E.R.を迎え、彼女の圧倒的な唄声とオーガニックなサウンドが絶妙にブレンドされた快心作となり、Pitchforkの2021年の年間アルバムチャートで1位を獲得するなど各方面より絶賛を浴びた。
2022年4月に行われた第64回グラミー賞では「Best R&B Album」 を見事に受賞し、ジャズミン・サリヴァンは名実共にUS音楽シーンを代表するアーティストとなった。

Jazmine Sullivan appeared to be nearing the release of a follow-up to Reality Show in August 2020 with the arrival of Lost One, a welcomed disturbance in a post-Reality Show string of featured appearances, songwriting commissions, and compilation contributions. The bare and forlorn ballad was trailed three months later by the sneering and swaggering Pick Up Your Feelings, another lean and efficient number with lyrics that read like straight talk and vocals that raise goose bumps. Heaux Tales, classified by Sullivan as an EP, landed the following January. The first two singles fall into the sequence with preceding spoken segments that relate to the lyrics in frank, uninhibited style. Almost all of the five other proper songs are similarly introduced with women discussing matters such as sexual and materialistic desire, power dynamics, rejection, and negative body image. Sullivan and her fellow writers likewise approach each of them from the perspective related in the interludes. Heaux Tales accordingly contains some of the singers boldest verses. Ari Lennoxs poetic revelation seems to impel her through Put It Down, a sleek and tongue-twisting ode to a partners bedroom prowess, and On It, a Lennox-assisted soul-blues duet in which the curse words arent half as strong as the threats and instructions. Talk about financial insecurity leads to the downcast and aspirational The Other Side; just when Sullivan couldnt sound more despondent, she turns on the subtle humor with Soccer mom gettin wasted/Hermes tennis bracelet/Bora Bora for vacation/Ill be anything but basic, sung like the thoughts of a suburbanite who escapes her unfulfilling life by listening obsessively to Rick Ross. Sullivan also throws an unapologetic pity party with H.E.R. on Girl Like Me, a cathartic if down way to finish it off. The one male role is filled by Anderson .Paak, who in the low-key Southern funk of Pricetags cant resist getting played (a scenario rather different from the tryst illustrated on .Paaks Sullivan-supported Ventura track Good Heels). Given the brevity and makeup -- just over half an hour, with only 27 minutes of music -- Heaux Tales doesnt have the heft of Fearless, Love Me Back, or Reality Show, but few contemporary R&B LPs twice its length are as substantive. ~ Andy Kellman