More than a decade into a zigzagging career, JMSN still oozes the determination of an artist with something to prove. After fronting the band Love Arcade as a teenager and aborting a solo career on Universal Motown, the Detroit singer emerged with 2012’s Priscilla, a self-produced album of pensive crooning and electronic beats. This was the era of How to Dress Well, Autre Ne Veut and Trilogy-era Weeknd, back when Tumblr feeds could still generate buzz and “alternative R&B” could reasonably stake a claim as “alternative.” He’s been a guest vocalist for various rappers (Kendrick in 2012; Babyface Ray in 2025), a regular during the heyday of millennial tastemaker Soulection, and an apprentice of R&B jam history with a wide-ranging, formalist streak. His big break finally arrived last year: “Soft Spot,” a snazzy club throwback from 2023, went viral, and more songs from his back catalog have followed. On ...it’s only about u if you think it is., he sets his sights on a different alternative, mining the trendy ’90s moodboard of Radiohead, Portishead, and the Smashing Pumpkins while maintaining his practiced cool. The results, though occasionally compelling, are a mixed bag.
Essential to the pull of “Soft Spot” was its director’s-cut music video, in which JMSN—a spindly, buzz-cut, sweaty white man—gyrates unapologetically to the song’s Atlanta-bass beat on a packed dancefloor, staring right through the camera. With a pitched-up falsetto that mirrors other hyperreal TikTok R&B hits, the song wants to whisk us back to an era when the fleshy pleasures of pop music hadn’t yet been smothered by the passivity of streaming and kinetic male charisma could speak for itself. JMSN’s youthful timbre can recall Justin Timberlake, so his quest to bring sexy back is intuitive, at least, and the seedy corners of Clinton-era MTV rock offer a good testing ground for sleaze. The single “Dirty Dog” goes for something like Trent Reznor circa “Piggy,” with visceral, self-debasing lyrics over an interlocked mesh of beats. But it sounds too slick to convince you of the flickering intensity of desire. “By sunrise, I automatically get turned on,” he sings, exuding the sense of someone going through the motions.
This performance points to a recurring problem for JMSN, who has always sought star power while trying on thrifted vintage outfits from our musical past. He’s a versatile vocalist and producer who knows how to streamline any song into its most functional elements, and the album’s emphasis on crisp bass and drums makes it easy to latch onto. But behind their punchy, competent surface, the songs often lack the subtler details that allow their pop modes to be memorable or emotionally believable. “Everyone” is adequate Smashing Pumpkins emulation, with quiet-loud dynamics that are too obvious to feel either intimate or grandiose; the same goes for the cinematic buildup of “Love the Things You Hate,” with its Thom Yorke moan. JMSN often seems too caught up in the novelty of these forms to complete them with lyrics that reveal much beyond rhyming cliche. He claims he’s “a sad sack of bones”, then cries “just leave me alone”; a true loser would find something more pathetic to say. When he tries to capture the cryptic thought-streams of his predecessors, it’s simply contrived (“Swallow my thumb/Suck on my gun”).
The challenge of adapting to new styles sometimes produces an interesting friction. JMSN’s bundle of influences is obvious, but the way he combines them brings out the intrigue—he’s like an alternate-universe Beck for whom the rock cues, instead of the hip hop ones, are the unexpected choices. His years spent making slow-burning neo-soul bear fruit in the album’s full-bodied leads, careful moods, and attentive rhythm sections; the slinky, rugged beats have the feel of trip-hop played with live percussion. There’s something daring about how “Click Bait” appropriates the grunge skronk and shouted refrain from “Heart Shaped Box” into its poised, skeletal frame—it’s all taut rhythmic pressure, barely letting guitar riffs or a vocal melody come up for air, until everything’s doused in a gaudy wash of strings. The album’s sharpest musical moments come when bursts of hair-raising energy are inserted into more composed surroundings, synthesizing JMSN’s curation of both vibes and brawn. “Blow the Spot Up” breaks open its groove with a desperate, offbeat scream of a chorus, while “I Don't Even Think About U” escalates from the album’s closest thing to trip-hop into its closest thing to emo.
These heights make it frustrating that, for all of JMSN’s gifts, his experiments don’t add up to a memorable creative identity. He might be the perfect artist for a music landscape where short-form vertical video is king, and any morsel of pop can freely disseminate from its source to audiences with their own priorities. (JMSN’s other viral moments since “Soft Spot” have hardly featured his lead vocals at all: 2023’s “Love Me” is clipped for an overdone gospel choir to, among other things, make fun of Drake; and 2014’s “Bout It” gets points for its background millennial whoop.) Maybe next time, he’ll tweak his palette of references to shock us out of complacency. Then again, maybe he doesn’t need to.
