"In the most direct way, we're trying to be post-Timbaland," says Kelela Mizanekristos, one of several new female artists operating in the realm of what could be termed experimental R&B. "We're taking that sound and pushing it. I remember the day I first heard what Timbaland and Aaliyah did – that intersection of her pretty voice and his weird, resonant production. I remember where I was and what I was doing. It was a major situation. We're trying to continue that legacy."
Over the past few years, male stars such as Drake, the Weeknd, the-Dream, Frank Ocean, Miguel, Autre Ne Veut and How to Dress Well, have stretched the definition of soul and taken the music to unexpected places. But now the pendulum is swinging back towards women. SZA, Phlo Finister, Kid A, Jhené Aiko, Twigs, Jessy Lanza and Kelela have different influences and approaches, but what they share is a love of R&B at its most forward-looking and futuristic, the sort that was prevalent between the mid 90s and the mid-noughties, when Timbaland, the Neptunes and Rodney Jerkins were in their heyday. Aaliyah, Brandy, Ciara – these are the touchstones for their dreamy yet subtly dislocating dance music. More than anyone, though, it is Cassie Ventura, known simply as Cassie, who has become the figurehead for this new scene, perhaps because she is regarded as the last of an era (what Rihanna et al make is something quite different). So while the world waits for a new Cassie album (she released her one official album in 2006, and despite numerous mooted followups, she has yet to put out a second, with just a mixtape issued earlier this year to satisfy her cult fan base), here are some of the superb young performers occupying the space with their gossamer, glitchy R&B.
Kelela
The Aaliyah/Timbaland brand of R&B was sonically audacious yet hugely commercial. No wonder Kelela wants to go back to that future. "I'm coming from the zone of Faith Evans, but with weird production," says the Washington DC performer who has just recorded a mixtape for Fade to Mind, sister collective of the Night Slugs label. Producers for the project included Girl Unit, Jam City, AraabMuzik and Nguzunguzu. "The music's not just weird, it's deliberately offputting," she adds. "It's designed to interrupt the space. I want people to be, like, 'What the fuck is going on?' If nobody likes the mixtape, I'll be pretty comfortable with that, honestly, because I finally got out what I meant to say."
Despite aiming to make music to baffle people, Kelela – who has a jazz background, singing along to Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald – has every intention of becoming a mainstream success.
"Yes!" she exclaims. "Fuck the underground! I don't care about the underground, even if that's where I'm currently residing, sonically. We don't want it to be obscure music. We're not trying to be indie. We want to be popular. We know in our bones there was a time when this kind of weird shit was on the radio, and I would like to recreate that moment. It's not on there right now. But it's not far from what is."
The Cut 4 Me mixtape will be released in September.
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SZA
Solana Rowe aka SZA (it rhymes with RZA) is a St Louis native raised in a Muslim family whose sheltered upbringing offered zero exposure to pop culture. This may explain her music: its abstract titles and extravagantly pretty melodies – like chillwave meets Quiet Storm soul, according to New York's Village Voice – suggest someone escaping reality into a rarefied realm. "That's actually spot-on," says SZA. The former marine-biology student turned bartender in a strip club is, however, uncomfortable with being narrowly defined as a new version of something old.
"I love the comparison with Aaliyah and Timbaland," she says, "because Aaliyah is a legend and there is a large cinematic feel to Timbaland's sound, but what I do is different."
Her next EP, she insists, will be a departure from her first two EPs, See.SZA.Run and S. "It's less boxed-in," she says, "more Björk, Florence and Animal Collective. 'Ethereal' and 'R&B' won't do it justice. There is a whole new wave of music, involving massive changes. Look at Frank Ocean, Miguel and Solange, or Twig and Jhené Aiko. Is that R&B? Or are you just using that term because it's comfortable?"
Like Kelela, SZA is becoming increasingly involved in production. Unlike her contemporary, she doesn't think that what she – together with Clams Casino, Holy Other and Emile Haynie – has created is necessarily destined for a huge audience: "The added pressure of wanting to be accepted by a massive amount of people [means] you end up watering down what's in your head. That's not to to say the masses wouldn't like it, and it's not that I lack hope, but you can't make things with that in mind. You have to be honest."
SZA's Z EP will be released in September.
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Jessy Lanza
"We're living in a post-Cassie world, for sure," says Jessy Lanza, the Hamilton, Ontario, singer and songwriter whose debut album for Hyperdub is what might have resulted had Cassie worked with a producer aware of developments in dubstep. That album, Pull My Hair Back, was co-produced by Lanza and Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys and was designed to reflect their mutual love of mainstream black dance music, from late-70s disco and early-80s electro-funk to turn-of-the-century avant garde R&B.
"We love all kinds of R&B," she says. "When I was growing up, I loved Aaliyah, Missy [Elliott] and Cassie, but also there's this junk store in Hamilton where I've found old disco records by people like Evelyn King, Patrice Rushen and Melba Moore."
From disco to R&B, this music has traditionally been among the planet's most popular genres. Lanza, like many of her peers, is on an independent label. But don't call her "indie".
"I don't think of myself as 'indie R&B'," she says. "That wasn't the goal when I was writing the music because what I listen to is really mainstream."
She acknowledges the difference between herself and Cassie/Aaliyah – she is a self-confessed gadget freak who relishes her co-operative studio relationship with Greenspan – but is happy for her music to be considered part of that continuum.
"I want people to think of it as an R&B record. But as a continuation rather than a revival."
Pull My Hair Back is released by Hyperdub in September.
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Phlo Finister
This Oakland, California, singer, born Elijah Finister, is as into early-90s US industrial (especially Nine Inch Nails) and UK trip-hop as she is late-90s R&B. And whereas Aaliyah and Cassie were basically vehicles for their producers' ideas, Finister is more involved in the studio. "I've dived into sound, head-first," says the former stylist at Def Jam, her raspy speaking voice at odds with her sugary singing one. On her debut album, Youthquaker (she's a follower of the 60s art/fashion Youthquake movement), there will be input from Andrew Dawson and Illangelo, both of whom have worked with the Weeknd, as well as collaborations with Waka Flocka Flame and Azealia Banks. Although the music may billow beautifully, the lyrics will reflect her ballsy character.
"I'm so masculine," she laughs, perhaps thinking of the line in her song Coca Cola Classic ("You fuckin' with a real bitch/Gonna put you up on game"). "It's the kind of thing a pimp would say. There's a lot of vulgarity in my music. I'm so opinionated and fearless when it comes to saying what I want to say."
She also claims Youthquaker, far from comprising her usual exquisite downtronica, will reflect her obsession with "feelgood music". "The point is, no one's got me figured out," she says. "As soon as you have, I'll be somewhere else."
Youthquaker will be released in spring 2014.
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Kid A
Ann Alexander Thweatt has made records with Dan le Sac and Scroobius Pip, as well as with LA electronica whizz Daedelus, Dutch DJ Joris Voorn and rising Brit teen wonder Alex Burey. The 25-year-old has even found time – in between caring for her ill grandmother at home in Chesapeake, Virginia – to record the imaginary soundtrack for a Japanese movie, with her on vocals. But it's her track as Kid A, BB Bleu – compared by the Guardian to "Ciara if she had been on the 4AD label in 1985" – that brings her closest to Aaliyah and Cassie's orbit.
"Yeah, I think so," she agrees. "Maybe some things I do are more jazz, but R&B is still the root of everything I do." Like SZA and Finister, she felt alienated as a child, with a sense of "infertile loneliness".
"I was very sheltered," she recalls, surrounded by "a lot of elders – grandparents and great-grandparents", and only her beloved post-punk (New Order, Cure) and disco (Shalamar, Midnight Star) records for comfort.
"I love the early-80s," she says, admitting to being deeply nostalgic.
She also admits to the impact, growing up, of having Timbaland, Pharrell Williams and Missy Elliot as neighbours. You might even say her emergence as a purveyor of stunned, stoned dream-pop R&B, with idiosyncratic rhythms and vaporous, etherised vocals, was inevitable. Not that her next release will necessarily be in that vein.
"No," she chuckles, as defiantly as she can in her childlike voice. "It's going to be something completely different."
Kid A's next release will be in September.
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