It was there on Kaleidoscope Dream, too, but on Wildheart, from the patiently strobing deep riff of “a beautiful exit” that opens the album to the dirty squelch of “.goingtohell” to the martial riff that closes the album on “damned,’ the guitar takes center stage. Where so much of urban music centers on synths and colder sounds, Miguel has built Wildheart around his guitar. Miguel, like Prince, treats love and sex as a spiritual experience (just check out the cover) and he has made his own lane that taps into the great romantic tradition of R&B in a way that is sexy, funky and unfailingly original.

Wildheart may not have a new song to match “Coffee,” but it’s still filled with love songs of depth and beauty. Everyone in R&B is bragging about kicking women out of bed after sex Miguel built his lead single around the morning after. So it’s a relief to find “Coffee” on Wildheart in a new, finished form with the rap verse replaced by more of Miguel’s beautiful chorus. It isn’t that Miguel is a prude-as he famously told us on his last album, the masterpiece Kaleidoscope Dream, he “likes drugs, too,” or as he puts it on “Coffee” “The thrill of no shame, drugs, sex and polaroids”-but, as Miguel also told us, he likes love, too. They’ve produced some undeniably great songs, but that style just hasn’t been Miguel’s game so it was a little worrying to hear Wale, with his “My stroke is a scone/I let that soak in her bean” fucking up Miguel’s vibe. Those guys are making hedonistic party music that could be rap if it weren’t for the pretty singing. The dominant strain of R&B at the moment is the LA ratchet & b of Ty Dolla $ign, Chris Brown and DJ Mustard, whose production influence has become ubiquitous.

It was a perfect way for Miguel to build anticipation for his new album.īut then, a couple months ago, Miguel released a version of “Coffee” with a ham-fisted and charmless verse from the ham-fisted, charmless rapper Wale tacked on at the end. On the EP version, the song, which sounded like an instant classic, ended abruptly in a way that made it feel like a demo.

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