When Atlanta singer Jacquees crowned himself the King of R&B last year, his self-coronation was met almost entirely with jeers and dismissals. Despite his vague caveat (“for this generation”) and its clear intentions (for Jacquees to psyche himself up), haters, talking heads, and all the once and never Kings gathered en masse to dogpile the poor guy. It was only The-Dream, a singer-songwriter who can stake his own claim to the throne, that came at the comments with any sense: “That’s how you gotta talk, man,” he told Beats 1. “I did the same thing before I wrote ‘Single Ladies.’ ... Everybody took that as me being asinine at the time. They didn’t know like ... No, he’s trying to psych himself out to do some great shit.”
Jacquees makes a similar clarification on “King,” the opener to his sophomore album, which he dedicates to all the kings that came before: “Every day, a star is born/And if we talkin’ kings, there’s more than one/You should clap for ‘em,” he sings, reworking the hook from JAY-Z’s “A Star is Born” to reframe himself as just the latest in a long line of R&B royals. King of R&B, an hour-long, 18-track practice of the genre’s techniques, is Jacquees’ job application. He doesn’t write any songs as great as “Single Ladies,” but his ambitions are crystal-clear.
Of the R&B singers under 30 that Jacquees could feasibly call his competition, he is the most well-rounded. He might not have the massive crossover appeal of Bryson Tiller, or the experimental range of Daniel Caesar; his music isn’t as rap-infused as the alternative R&B of 6lack, and he’s nowhere near the songwriter the Internet’s Syd is, but he is as fundamentally sound as any of his peers: he understands R&B songs at their basic components and he is easily the most gifted singer of the bunch. In his clash with one such contemporary, Tory Lanez, on the album cut “Risk It All,” Jacquees steamrolls the Canadian mimic with bigger melodies and bolder come-ons. Throughout, he tries on Trigga-era temptations, Usher-sized confessions, and nearly everything in between.
He is still more reliant on mood than actual scene-setting, but his songs are broadening in scope. His debut album, 4275, was all about the anticipation of sex—trying to connect with someone after coming home from a long tour, yearning for a lover during a late night at the studio, the final moments just before sealing the deal. There was a song called “House or Hotel” that focused primarily on sneaking around with women in relationships. Titillation was all he could muster.
The new album fills out these vignettes, not just rolling around in the sheets (“Round II”) but also navigating the interpersonal exchanges that come with it. On the apologetic “Cross the Line,” he finds himself renegotiating boundaries after getting caught cheating. “Warning” proposes an entirely new construct for him, one where he is not in control: flipping the “one that got away” trope on its head. Past Kings of R&B have always negotiated a fine line between raunchy pleasure-seeker and hopeless romantic, and Jacquees is learning how to balance that emotional equation. From the sleek, body roll enticements of “Come Get It” to the starry-eyed Summer Walker duet “Superstar,” these are carefully crafted totems from an admirer of the form.
In a bit of irony, Jacquees sounds most comfortable on King of R&B among melodic rappers. He sucks Young Thug and Gunna into his orbit on “Verify,” their raps serving as accents for his croons. The strobing, synth-led “What They Gone Do With Me” sponges up some of Future’s bravado. Alongside Lil Baby, on closer “Your Peace,” he turns the throwback bounce of hip-hop soul into a middle ground. On “New New,” he filters down Thug and Travis Scott-ish vocal takes into a serenade, basically purifying a rap song into an R&B one.
Even straddling the hip-hop world, he never loses the smoothness R&B requires. At a time when so many pride themselves on being genre-benders, he remains a formalist. There may be room to debate who the King of R&B is or what that even means, but with King of R&B, Jacquees formally accepts his place within a storied lineage.
