Toshiko Tanaka
Contributing Writer
Jhené Aiko has always enthralled me as a songwriter and singer (I’ve been told I look like her *insert eyes emoji*). Her ethereal voice really reverberates through you; to me her sound is almost unique. This article has been in the works and I am so excited to be finally writing this.
She has been silent for almost three years since her debut album “Souled Out” in 2014, with only features on other artists’ tracks, but she really came back with a more personal sound and amazing features of her own inspired by the likes of Brandy, TWENTY88, Big Sean, Swae Lee, Kurupt, Dr Chill and more adorably her daughter Namiko (you HAVE to LISTEN to this track).
Just to provide a little context, her new album “Trip” (with 22 songs) is part of a three-part project called MAP; movie, album and poetry. The whole project is psychedelic and emotional, a raw illustration of her struggles dealing with the death of Miyagi, her best friend and brother, in 2012.
She takes us through a personal journey filled with self-exploration and her experience with drugs as a remedy. We are compelled to view her as this amorous soul, distraught and filled with grief and yet seeking her own kind of therapy. Many of us know her from her love ballads but this album is different — cathartic.
If you haven’t listened to it, you should do yourself a favour by watching the short film for the album as well. Her songs apparently started as poems, and she recorded the songs over the timeline of three years.
Surprisingly, with such sensitive and heavy subject matter, the songs are creative, especially in their cinematography alongside her film. The album is very much in sync with the R&B vibe, yet expansive to an extent in its ambience; melodious and rhythmic but in a dream-like format with a lightness in her voice and the beat.
Her lyrics are candid and stimulating, but the songs are more than being on a temporary high; they are her confessionals about being in her own solitude and awakening. I appreciate her interludes in her short film because they are poetic and personal.
“I am looking for a brother’s love in every single man but you’ll never see me like my brother did, you’ll never need me like my brother did. There’s a black hole in my soul,” she says in an interlude. “It’s beginning to show through my dilated pupils behind lids half-closed. I thought that I would be fine by now, but suffering doesn’t die, it grows.”
You are confronted by her mourning and emotions that are relatable and part of the human experience of loss and love, of grappling with personal tragedies and falling into bad habits time and time again.
But all and all, the album is a documentation of vulnerability, healing and hope. Some of my favorite songs are “Sing to Me,” “Trip,” “New Balance,” and “Ascension,” — basically the whole album. Again, go watch the film (11:53 to 12:17 is my favorite scene, by the way).