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Though Jordan Ward\u2019s debut album Forward<\/em><\/a> won critics over with its earnest and optimistic hodgepodge of the background-dancer-turned-foreground-artists dreams, roots, and quirks, in the two years since, Ward tells Rolling Stone <\/em>the darker sides of striving have helped him deliver his equally ambitious sophomore album, Backward<\/em>. Speaking exclusively with Rolling Stone<\/em> to announce the LP set to drop January 30 and available for pre-order now, Ward says, \u201cI just turned 30 this year. Later on in life, consequences start hitting harder. Those little mistakes that you let slide along the way, all of a sudden, in these little moments, they cost so much. You start to question, you know, am I doing the right thing?\u201d<\/p>\n Taking the call over Zoom from Los Angeles, Jordan explains his forthcoming album title became literal for him as he tends to a right ACL tear and lateral meniscus tear from a new athletic hobby (one he\u2019s keeping under wraps until he\u2019s better at it). \u201cI\u2019m literally walking backwards and reverse engineering my run so that I can actually heal and move forward the correct way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Back in 2023, Rolling Stone<\/em> named Forward <\/em>one of the best albums of that year, an innovative and refreshingly diaristic take on R&B with that molded the typically romantic genre into a more personal one, performing songs about normalized violence, financial hardship, and complicated family dynamics \u2014 each with a unique bounce and couched in Ward\u2019s vision for his future and that of his family name. With approaches ranging from the groovy throwback \u201cFamjam4000\u201d to the high-tech, lo-fi vibe of \u201cWhite Crocs,\u201d Ward proved himself\u00a0 eclectic and charming \u2013 so much so that when we spent time with SZA for her 2023 Rolling Stone<\/em> Grammy Preview cover story<\/a>, she had \u201cWhite Crocs\u201d in particular on repeat.<\/p>\n While Backward<\/em> sees Ward reuniting with Forward<\/em>\u2019s executive producer Lido (Halsey\u2019s Badlands<\/em>, Chance the Rapper\u2019s \u201cSame Drugs\u201d) in the same role, also finds him in new company. The \u201cSmoking Potna,\u201d out now, features buzzy Florida R&B upstart Sailorr<\/a>, who Ward recently became a fan of and connected with through mutual friends. \u201cAs somebody like myself, who\u2019s trying to tell stories within songs, and sometimes trying to tell a greater story with groups of songs, I feel her project did a very good job of introducing herself, how she feels, and where she stands in the world.\u201dFor his own songwriting on Backward<\/em>, Ward says he channeled greats like Donny Hathaway, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley, James Taylor, and Roberta Flack. \u201cThey wrote really good, simple songs,\u201d says Ward. \u201cComing up the last project, I felt I just had a lot of room to grow with the songwriting, as far as structuring [it and] having more clear takeaways for the songs and just also expressing things that I haven\u2019t yet and wanted to, or even expounding on things I\u2019ve talked about before, just to keep the story evolving.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Though Jordan Ward\u2019s debut album Forward won critics over with its earnest and optimistic hodgepodge of the background-dancer-turned-foreground-artists dreams, roots, and quirks, in the two years since, Ward tells Rolling Stone the darker sides of striving have helped him deliver his equally ambitious sophomore album, Backward. Speaking exclusively with Rolling Stone to announce the LP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2092243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[394668,314737],"class_list":["post-2092242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-jordan-ward","tag-rolling-stone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/\u2018These-Little-Moments-Cost-So-Much.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2092242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2092244,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092242\/revisions\/2092244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2092243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2092242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2092242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2092242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}