In the five years since Jesse Boykins III last released a solo album, R&B has mutated as much as any genre in music, perhaps with the exception of house. We could list off all the ways in which R&B looks different than it did in 2008, or we could look at Beyoncé’s newest album, which more or less encapsulates the zeitgeist: dance club beats, disco revival, smeared atmospherics, stuttering bedroom production, Drake, and Frank Ocean. The world Boykins returns to looks much different than the one he left.
But Boykins is an active participant in changing the rules of R&B, too. In 2012, he released a collaborative album with a New York multimedia artist named MeLo-X, who describes himself as a “sonic creator.” Titled Zulu Guru, the record filters Boykins neo-soul classicism through the glitchy motherboard of Flying Lotus. With Love Apparatus, which is billed as his second solo album, Boykins teams up with Machinedrum, a polyglot electronic producer whose own beats shift like a man trying to wiggle his way out of handcuffs.
Boykins tabbing a junkyard instrumentalist like Machinedrum as his producer is left-field and interesting, and emphasizes his willingness to further break down whatever barriers may still exist between R&B and the rest of music. But the pairing is better than a mere thought experiment: Love Apparatus is a warm, dreamy album that easily allows you to get lost in its glow.
It’s a quality of Boykins’ music that has carried over from his debut, which would have sounded right at home soundtracking a bossa nova club. But what’s impressive is that Boykins and Machinedrum have managed to maintain that atmosphere while distinctly digitizing his music. Now, you are eased into zoning out not by acoustic guitar strums and shakers, but by soft synth pads, misting keyboards and bass that feels like it burbles. This is the slow melting of neo-soul, as practiced similarly by newjacks (Toro Y Moi, Frank Ocean) and old heads (Om’Mas Keith, Bilal).
As such, Boykins’ songwriting is not exactly one of Love Apparatus’ selling points. When the album is at it’s worst, Boykins moves songs along like a car with a booted wheel. These are, uncoincidentally, often the tracks that up the tempo: the stilted “B4 the Night is Thru", or “Tell Me", or the amelodic “Live in Me." The best tracks are the dewdrops suspended in midair: the soothing opener “GreyScale,” “Show Me Who You Are” and its muted horns and “I Wish", a longing track that would be equally at home on his debut or an early Robin Thicke album.
There is one song on the delightfully free-floating Love Apparatus that does hold weight, though. Wedged into the middle of the album is “4 U 2 B Free", a sweeping track that in the hands of another songwriter might become a song like Coldplay’s “Lost!” It is out of step with the album, but its chorus also describes its new age-y appeal: “I’m lost in the world/ Lost in the world, made for you to be free.”
