DeAndre Washington, Staff Writer  

There’s something beautiful about music when it reminds you of a time you never got the chance to experience. When it pushes you to feelings of nostalgia that you’ve always wished to feel during the proper age. Outside of the Pandora R&B stations and Twitter threads of 2000s throwbacks, somewhere between reminding us that love can still sound the same way it feels.

“Shea Butter Baby”, the debut album by Dreamville’s first lady Ari Lennox creates a world within 45 minutes that sounds exactly as the title. With features from Dreamville labelmates J. Cole and J.I.D, the album is a reflection of Lennox’s desires to appreciate the little things that come with intimacy. Telling us that’s it’s okay to share ourselves with someone without fear of losing the moment.

In saying that, Ari Lennox opens the album with “Chicago Boy” – a name fitting for what you’d expect from an intro track to do in setting the scene.

Lennox details what we all experience during those love at first sight moments. She sings “Saw you in the corner, I was looking a mess/I wanna bring you closer, Tired of waiting”. That first sight of love happens for the listener just as it does for Lennox.

Over the course of the album, there’s a story of a relationship. Lennox makes romance sound good in the simplest way. “I’ve been low before/You know I’ve been low before/I’ll bring cups/You bring the smoke” Lennox sings on “Broke”. Saying that isn’t to assert that Lennox is a simple writer, but that as complicated as love can be. Sometimes it’s the simplest moments we forget that keep relationships together in the long run.

While this album encompasses what loving someone else feels like at the core of one’s emotions, “Shea Butter Baby” also serves to remind us of how important it is to nurture that love within ourselves.

Sometimes that care comes in the form of finding new ways to feel beautiful; and for Lennox, self-care comes in the shape of “New Apartment”. Spending time alone in the house doing errands you’ve neglected. “A girl just bought some lights for decoration/Ain’t nobody cookin’, nobody bakin’/Leavin’ my curls in the shower/And no more missing’ the hot water”.

The world has a way of making us forget to do things for ourselves. Lennox reaffirms that no matter the work that will get done if your home isn’t intact then you can’t be either when locking your apartment to start your day.

To make R&B music is to have a responsibility at conveying feelings in a way that isn’t expressed often. Moreover, to say that R&B music has always fulfilled this role is to ignore that awkward period where R&B trap music was uncomfortably popular. Yes, an artist talking about love and discrediting it at the same time with nuances of 808s was a thing.

But that’s long gone, and the tide has shifted in favor of loving someone in the moment you feel it again.

“Shea Butter Baby” is a reminder that you can talk about R&B music without bringing up what was before.

This isn’t Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, or even Lauryn Hill. This is a product of today’s age of music; and if you know Shea Butter, it’s rough on the surface, but once you rub a little into your skin, that same rugged exterior comes undone into a soft glow in your skin.

Say all that to say, “Shea Butter Baby” treats the feelings we don’t get to express often due to the preciousness of them with care.

Lennox puts them on front street for us to see we all want the same things out of love; but who’s willing to speak up and say that they do?