The Virginia crooner reintroduces himself with a set of sumptuous, retro R&B that’s a soothing, dapper fit for his impressive vocal range.
In 2016, Shelley FKA DRAM captured his essence up to that point on the joyful cover of his debut album, Big Baby D.R.A.M.: a tightly framed shot of the “Cha Cha” rapper cheek to cheek with his Goldendoodle, beaming with a signature toothy smile. Like his inescapable hooks and elastic approach to R&B and hip-hop, the image was contagious with genuine and overwhelming goodwill. But behind the scenes, the Hampton, Virginia artist sank into a battle with addiction, leading to a life-altering stint in rehab last year and a larger reassessment of his artistry. “[“Cha Cha” and “Broccoli”]... they brought me immense success and many, many spoils,” he admitted. “But also, I feel as though the core of what I do was being totally overlooked.”
On his self-titled second album, Shelley seeks to rectify that problem by reintroducing himself under his birth name with a set of sumptuous, retro R&B from a newly peaceful state of mind. Shelley FKA DRAM swaps in his trademark dizzying hooks for the smooth neo-soul and funk he found a groove with on previous highlights like “Sweet Va Breeze” and “Caretaker.” It’s a soothing, dapper fit for his impressive vocal range as Shelley ponders variations of romance through a pensive lens.
The record focuses primarily on the phases of love that make him feel more balanced and secure, but where other men in pop and R&B are prone to cheesy wife-guy platitudes, Shelley is refreshingly old-school about it. He promises a California King size bed and silk sheets to a lover on “The Lay Down,” delivered in his resonant baritone and filled out with lush electric guitar. On “Married Woman,” he warbles melodramatically about an extramarital affair in the horny spirit of “Me and Mrs. Jones,” maintaining traces of the comical energy that lit up his biggest songs. The album’s laid-back sexiness easily suffuses whatever room you play it in, even if Shelley wants to rib you a little as he sets the mood: “Let’s stop trying to pull the wool over each other's eyes/Besides, we only get like this when we horny.”
Featherlight songs like “Beautiful” and “Exposure” drift into a lovesick headspace to explore the first moments of a new connection. “Let me touch your soul just like I touch your skin,” he urges on the latter over heart-filling vocal runs, keys, and a tugging bassline. Later, Shelley teams up with Erykah Badu again for “’93 Acura Vigor,” introduced with a long, spoken intro on the power of collaboration. It’s one of several interstitials meant to guide the listener through his thought process. But here, over a lethargic club beat and sample, the two make eyes at each other in a coy back-and-forth that loses the sly, memorable alchemy of “WiFi.”
Shelley’s mellifluous voice keeps the tone light throughout, even as his lyrics prove more introspective than his previous album. “All Pride Aside” recruits Summer Walker for a rework on the “addicted to love” trope that feels more personal in Shelley’s hands: “Since we not stoppin’ ourselves/I’ll keep lettin’ you if you keep lettin’ me,” he pleads against a wall of stacked background vocals, making the unhealthy codependency clear. “Cooking With Grease” pulls off a similar trick in the opposite direction, with a pared-back, downcast beat to serve his vulnerable side: “I feel used and abused, so I started doing it, too/But I never did it to you,” he croons wearily, at his most unsure of the relationship and working through it with swooning breath control.
As earnest as the album can get, Shelley’s lyrics sometimes tread into mushy territory (“Beautiful as stars lit up by the moon,” while it sounds angelic over gentle piano, is also nonsensical). The relaxed production tends to blend songs, too, which isn’t altogether unintentional; Shelley has said he wants the album to be so easygoing you can throw it on while cleaning the house. But he holds on to a roguish element of surprise: On a cover of Daft Punk’s 2001 heartbreaker “Something About Us,” he makes a natural compromise between his former bubbly exuberance and newfound sincerity. Shelley’s restrained vocals embody the song’s loungey mood, only climbing up to a dreamy falsetto for the bridge. He then mimics the song’s dancing synth line in a high-pitched, meowing ad-lib, a joyously improvisatory moment that captures his present identity: doing whatever he wants and at ease with his new self.
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