W” and transforms the string-plucked soul of “MUTUAL FRIEND” into a slasher-flick soundtrack with each lacerating one-liner. Even the album’s most soothing beatscapes are littered with lyrical landmines, as she lays into a cheating ex amid the breezy, finger-snapped backdrop of “QUEEN ST. Her second album, YESSIE, wastes no time drawing lines in the sand: “I get along with most men more than I do with some women,” she declares at the start of “MOOD,” before taking down fair-weather friends with her machine-gun flow, pitch-shifted hooks, and a skin-thickening mantra-“life ain’t easy!”-that she wears like armor. But the Toronto singer’s proximity to pop’s A-list has done little to buff away the jagged edges of her open-diary confessionals.
In her first half-decade as a recording artist, Jessie Reyez’s strikingly unvarnished voice and take-no-prisoners candor earned her collaborations with the likes of Beyoncé, Eminem, and 6LACK, and a Top 10 spot on Billboard’s R&B charts for her 2020 debut LP, BEFORE LOVE CAME TO KILL US.
