Imagine a Groundhog Day sequel where each day is another doomed re-run of your significant other's birthday. "It's the best day of the year, girl," you mumble for the thousandth time, fumbling for a Cialis. No one gets older, and nothing changes. That's been the unfortunate majority of Jeremih's career—somewhat bafflingly, considering the singer and multi-instrumentalist has racked up three platinum singles and features on hits from half the rap game. Since "Birthday Sex"—his 2009 debut single, recorded in college classmate Mick Schultz' makeshift studio—took hold of Chicago radio and then the world, he's tried in vain to politely distance himself from the song. And meanwhile, he obsessively adjusted and readjusted Late Nights, his third studio album: the one that officially renders his early career a distant memory and establishes himself as one of R&B's most singular voices.
The Late Nights universe pays no mind to the swagless Gregorian calendar, abiding instead by the hours of Patron shots and wanton DM slides. Each day begins at dusk and ends at sunrise, eyelids gently twitching from leftover molly. It is a purgatory in the best sense, a retreat from reality for discerning hedonists. Jeremih seems to zone out a lot: two separate instances on Late Nights find him coming to the realization that he is the only clothed person in the room, as if he'd absentmindedly stumbled into a drunken orgy. Above all else, he needs room to breathe. Late Night's guiding principle is space—for his weightless upper register to float, and for the album's barely-there production to echo off itself. "Man, my whip's so big when you in it," he crows to his beguiling passenger on "Planez", this year's best radio R&B single in spite of J. Cole's paraphiliac trainwreck of a guest verse. It's a small sentiment that gestures at something grander: When you're with me, my world opens up. And that's exactly how Late Nights feels.
There is almost no continuity between this album and Jeremih's last, 2010's paint-by-numbers All About You. With its dim-lit crackle and delicate suggestions of beats, Late Nights' only real predecessor is his 2012 mixtape of the same title—one he released for free against the guidance of Def Jam, who seemed unwilling to give Jeremih the benefit of the doubt. To be fair, no one could have seen it coming: impeccably produced, subtle, and hot as fuck, it showed Jeremih like no one had seen before. Parts of Late Nights, the album, feel like direct continuations of that tape's sound: third single "Oui" builds on the delicate doo-wop of "Rosa Acosta" like a gently-traced impression of a Terius Nash creation. But then the bottom drops out, and Jeremih slips into a momentary interpolation of Shai's "If I Ever Fall in Love". It's easy to see what draws him to the 1992 hit: a wisp of a backdrop, over which the quartet's harmonies defy gravity.
But Late Nights' most stunning moments take the mixtape's best ideas and strip them down further than seemed possible. "Pass Dat" is little more than suggestive synth echo and bass tremor; "Woosah" rations percussion like there was a drought, sustaining itself off muted finger-snaps and the flick of a lighter. More than ever, Jeremih—who taught himself the drums at three years old—has learned to use his own voice as a rhythmic element, redefining the idea of "flow" for the R&B set. It's the logical reverse of the direction rap's been moving in for most of the 2010s, blurring rapped and sung delivery to indistinguishability; on "Drank", he skips nimbly from rap-inspired staccato to half-chanted dancehall melodies, the R&B equivalent of Young Thug's "Stoner". Late Nights' most overt hip-hop crossovers ("Giv No Fucks", "Royalty") feel less essential, but to watch Jeremih approach rap and R&B's midpoint from the opposite direction as rhythmic innovators like Future, Migos, and Twista is a fascinating study in contrasts.
It feels like poetic justice that the high point of Late Nights—an album about patience, space, the agonizing tease of perfectionism—is saved for its final track. Over nothing more than an acoustic guitar, Jeremih yawns blearily at his beachside paradise, kind of faded, the only one still awake. He pops some Tylenol, revisits the preceding night's debauchery, smiles. "Sooooo fuckin' wasted," he harmonizes like a delinquent angel choir. It's a derelict canticle, a lullaby for the perpetually hungover, a deep breath. It took him long enough to get here, and he's going to savor the moment for as long as he possibly can, in the little universe he's carved out because the industry didn't have space for him. Late Nights, in its subtle seduction, feels all the more special in an era that increasingly rewards artists who shout the loudest. Jeremih makes you shut everything else out so that you can hear him whisper in your ear. It was worth the wait.
