Let's All Start Listening to Kehlani Though

Kehlani’s a 19-year-old R&B singer-songwriter from Oakland, and although she’s been releasing sunny, hard, soulful jams online steadily over the past year (see her Cloud 19 tape from last fall), she’s been coming in extremely hot over the last month with some new stuff, in advance of her upcoming and independently released album You Should Be Here. First, she dropped “How That Taste”—a very relaxed stunt anthem, Kehlani letting loose over Jahaan Sweet’s big synth cascade, which sort of sounds like a My Little Pony version of “Trophies.”

Then, she released “Down For You,” a classic I Like You But Are We Ever Really Gonna Get Together R&B duet—then, over the weekend, “Jealous,” an excellent Fuck Your Instagram Behavior diss track that has her singing lines like “But don’t forget to post a pic of you with yo bae/ and by the way, I see right through it” over a Next Episode-lite backdrop.

Finally, a couple days ago, she put up “Alive,” which sounds like India Arie meets Justin Bieber—in a great way, if that weren’t obvious. Put this over a best-friends-at-the-beach montage at the end of a Disney Original Movie, if they still make those. Oh, they don’t? Well, at least we have this picture of Kehlani hanging out with Rick Rubin. I’ll be awaiting her album on the 28th of this month with interest.