Singer, songwriter, and producer Cautious Clay has become mysterious in the modern music pantheon. His list of songwriting/producing credits is brimming with A-listers, and each addition’s solo discography is becoming more impressive and expansive. What started as an earnest career for an R&B hopeful quickly became a colorful exploration of the human experience set to a range of pop balladry and freeing takes on modern jazz. Clay seems only to be getting started. On April 16, the artist released The Hours: Morning, a quick yet emotionally dense look at Clay’s pop prowess and his ability to craft infectious, poetic pieces of modern music.
These eight songs are a far cry from Clay’s KARPEH LP, his 2023 release that saw the artist…
Category: R&B
Dywayne Thomas Jr., aka MonoNeon, marches to his beat and can take any direction. We seen him burn up the stage at Newport Jazz with a decibel-breaking, raucous performance. That same MonoNeon, though, as he did on his 2024 Quilted Stereo, delivers a batch of highly accessible songs on You Had Your Chance…Bad Attitude!. In his own irreverent and thoroughly modern way, MonoNeon represents his hometown, Memphis, which has long embraced a confluence of genres. Both of these albums argue that we should take this fellow, who arrives on stage in a knit green mask and neon splattered jumpsuit, seriously. That eccentric onstage posture is amplified by the fact that he purposely plays a right-handed electric bass upside down. This flamboyant persona is…
By day, Erika de Casier deals out soft-spoken come-ons and kiss-offs via throwback R&B. By night, she’s an incognito hitmaker. Last year de Casier lent a steely edge to Floridian producer Nick Léon’s heady summer club cut “Bikini,” and in 2023 she got in the studio with K-pop group NewJeans, co-writing several songs from their Get Up EP — among them the winningly naive “Super Shy.” The Danish singer has quietly left her fingerprints all over pop’s ongoing Y2K revival, but sometimes at the cost of Erika de Casier the solo recording artist. While her last album, 2024’s Still, could often stun and delight, a spate of unnecessary guest features diluted its creator’s singular talents. Entirely self-written, self-produced, and released on her own label, Independent Jeep Music,…