The Californian singer keeps the R&B faith with Flora + Fana, an introspective new album of heartbreak and weirdo funk
To read the headlines it might seem as though R&B is in crisis. Some say it’s dead. Others say it has lost its identity. Critics hymn so-called “alternative” R&B, a minimising tag that every artist shoved under that umbrella seems to loathe. But Fana Hues is keeping the faith. “For me, R&B is the foundation of pop music today,” the California songwriter has said. “It could never be dead!”
Certainly not with Hues pumping blood through its heart. You may know her woozy vocals from Tyler, the Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost, where she voiced his unattainable love interest. Her new full-length, Flora + Fana, occupies a more introspective headspace as she treads water after a broken relationship: the opening song, Moscato, about drowning her sorrows, swirls as sweetly as the last drops of wine around a long-stemmed glass.