Exclaim!'s Top 10 Soul and R&B Albums of 2017

Until a late flurry of percussion arrives, doleful guitar and bass are Solána Rowe’s only accompaniment on opener “Supermodel,” a stinging kiss-off to an adulterous ex. It doesn’t prepare you for the inventively abstract production that follows—disembodied voices haunting the airy trap-soul of “Broken Clocks,” “Anything”’s stuttering video-game sonics—but it instantly establishes the emotive power of her rasping, percussive vocal. Whether she’s feeling empowered by her physicality on the Kendrick Lamar-assisted “Doves in the Wind” or wrestling with insecurity on “Drew Barrymore,” SZA’s songs impact quickly and deeply.

The album that finally reveals a superstar. Sampha Sisay spent his nascent career becoming music’s collaborator à la mode—his CV includes impeccable work with the likes of Solange, Drake, and Jessie Ware—and *Process* fully justifies his considered approach to unveiling a debut full-length. It’s a stunning album that sees the Londoner inject raw, gorgeous emotion into each of his mini-epics. His electronic R&B sounds dialed in from another dimension on transformative opener “Plastic 100°C,” and “Incomplete Kisses” is an anthem for the broken-hearted that retains a smoothness almost exclusive to this very special talent. “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano,” meanwhile, makes a solid case for being 2017’s most beautiful song.

“I feel weird,” repeats Stephen Bruner on “Captain Stupido”. That’s encouraging because the leftfield moments have always lent his jazz/funk/soft-rock fusions singular charm—even here when he meows through “A Fan’s Mail (Tron Song Suite II)”. By those standards, the melancholy “Walk On By”, with its pensive verse from Kendrick Lamar, and “Show You the Way”—co-starring soft-rock icons Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins—feel irresistibly straightforward, but their velvet melodies are as beguiling as Bruner’s falsetto harmonies.

R&B singer Kelela’s deeply personal debut LP does just what it says on the label. Over beats from Jam City, Bok Bok, Kingdom, and Arca—which swerve from warped and aqueous to warm and lush to icy and danceable—Kelela turns her emotions inside out with a sultriness and self-assuredness that few underground artists can muster. She’s tough and forthright, tender and subdued on songs about breakups (“Frontline”), makeups (“Waitin”), and pickups (“LMK”)—and the way she spins from one mode to the next is dizzying in the best way possible.

“When I got kicked out of school, music saved my life,” Daniel Caesar told Beats 1. “I’m trying to live my hero\'s journey.” Caesar’s own journey found him questioning God, leaving home, finding love—and later, heartache—and ultimately penning *Freudian*. This gripping debut LP earned him a spot in the Apple Music Up Next program and eventually a GRAMMY® nomination for Best R&B Album. An exquisite mix of R&B, soul, and smoothed-out rock, it includes his breakout single “Get You (feat. Kali Uchis)” and intimate collaborations with Syd, H.E.R., and Charlotte Day Wilson.

Since emerging onto the scene in 2014, Moses Sumney has ridden a wave of word-of-mouth praise, hushed recordings, and dynamic live performances. It's an organic, patient ascent all too rare in today's musical climate. In a voice both mellifluous and haunting, Sumney makes future music that transmogrifies classic tropes, like moon-colony choir reinterpretations of old jazz gems. His vocals narrate a personal journey through universal loneliness atop otherworldly compositional backdrops. Following the self-release of his debut cassette EP, Mid-City Island, and 2015's 7", Seeds/Pleas, Sumney has performed around the world alongside forebears like David Byrne, Karen O, Sufjan Stevens, Solange, James Blake and more. With his 2016 Lamentations EP, The California and Ghana-raised troubadour widened the spectrum of his heretofore "bedroom" music, incorporating songs that feature more elaborate production and evocative songwriting. Now his inspired ascent continues. His proper debut album, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the social constructions around romance. The debut will include the devastating, billowing synths of "Doomed,” which in a way serves as the album’s thesis statement, as well as new versions of standouts "Lonely World" and "Plastic.” It’s a deliberate, jaw-dropping statement that can leave you both enlightened and empty.

On the face of it, Donald Glover’s *“Awaken, My Love!”* is a museum-quality rip of early-’70s funk and soul: the faded vocals, the fuzzed-out guitars, the collective sense of chaos and exuberance. But it’s also more than that. Glover said he’d started with childhood memories of his parents playing Funkadelic and The Isley Brothers on the stereo: specific sounds and songs, but more importantly, a general feeling—one that Glover wasn’t quite old enough to grasp. Like a funhouse mirror, he stretches his influences into weird shapes: The freak-outs are exaggerated to the point of comedy (“Me and Your Mama”) and the ballads romantic to the point of creepy (“Terrified”). It makes for a tonal fluidity that also marks his work on the television show *Atlanta*, which he created. Coming from an artist known for taut wordplay and manically constructed similes, the broad strokes of *Awaken* are a shift: You’ll think eventually, but mood comes first. And in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that followed the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and so many more, Glover’s choice to echo a period in Black music when artists took on an explicitly revolutionary cast is a canny complement to albums like Kendrick Lamar’s *To Pimp a Butterfly* and Solange Knowles’ *A Seat at the Table*, both of which explored Black identity with new urgency. The result is an experiment in time travel: Through sounds of the past, he captures the tensions of the present.

After the introspective reflections of 2015 debut *Ibeyi*, twins Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz set their focus on the volatile political landscape. The spare, percussive “Away Away” clings to the hope of a better tomorrow with an uplifting, hymnal hook before Kamasi Washington’s saxophone underscores a gripping mood of defiance on “Deathless,” an account of wrongful arrest. However, “No Man Is Big Enough for My Arms” best encapsulates the album’s blend of bold expression and entrancing, experimental R&B, striking at misogyny with a fierce punch wrapped inside a velvet glove of beautiful harmonies.

Syd, of The Internet and Odd Future fame, shows another side of her musical persona. *Fin* takes a carnal R&B turn with all the complex emotions it brings. Her demure voice gives strong vapors of Aaliyah and *Velvet Rope*-era Janet Jackson on “Drown In It,” “Body,” and “Know.” Syd gives herself a pep talk on “All About Me” and gets lit on “Dollar Bills” and “Nothin to Somethin.” And this being Syd, the tracks glisten with futuristic shine.