Teyana Taylor Breaks Free On Our New “R&B Season” Playlist

Welcome back to our R&B Season playlist, where the best new music releases of the week come together for your convenience. Folks deciding on their albums of the year so far now have a couple of new contenders to consider, including Teyana Taylor‘s latest body of work, Escape Room.

Like the title implies, a lot of the lyrical content on the record goes over her insecurities, personal struggles, relationships, and all the other things that can overwhelm her. But through gentle melodies, soulful instrumentation, collaborative chemistry, and peaceful moments of reflection, listeners find a way out. “Hard Part” alongside Lucky Daye is a particularly resonant highlight when it comes to this healing factor.

But elsewhere on R&B Season, other artists found gold by looking back, not forward. Mariah The Scientist just unveiled her new album HEARTS SOLD SEPARATELY to the world, and it hopes to inspire more fearless love in its admirers.

“Sacrifice” is one track that uses ’80s drum aesthetics and synths to root a romantic roadblock in a sense of nostalgia. More importantly, though, it just sounds really nice with Mariah’s vocal tone and allows her to shine.

Beyond new albums on R&B Season, we’re also anticipating the upcoming albums in the genre’s orbit that will feed us in 2025’s last third. Daniel Caesar just dropped another single for his upcoming Son Of Spergy album, “Call On Me.”

This new cut blazes through the speakers with a sharp and crunchy guitar tone, which the singer offsets nicely with his falsetto. It’s a pretty minimal cut, but the drum and Caesar’s performance inject it with a lot more fire.

Meanwhile, hip-hop fans also ate this week with some killer new drops on our Fire Emoji playlist update. We got a new Joey Bada$$ single “DARK AURA” ahead of his Lonely At The Top album and tour, and it’s as passionate as you’d want.

Earl Sweatshirt, Offset, and Ghostface Killah also dropped new albums this week that are captivating all sorts of rap corners. We’ve gotten a lot of great music so far this year, and hopefully it keeps up.