Adi Oasis Puts on a Nuanced Exhibition of Roots, Shine, and Soul with ‘Lotus Glow,’ her First Album Under New Moniker
Evan Dale // June 14, 2023
From Brooklyn, by way of Paris and Martinique, with love, Adi Oasis has been showering the Neo-Soul world with the warmth of her new album, Lotus Glow since it was released at the beginning of March. From Adeline to Adi Oasis, the Parisian-born, New York-based soulstress’s new project is a cementing stamp of her moniker shift, steeped deeper in the now-clear signature definition that years of prolific features across the globe, and solo efforts spanning soulful influence from the Caribbean, France and her now home in the US, have brought into focus. The bass-wielding, multi-hyphenate, multi-passport mosaic has been an unsung heroine of a rangy, instrumentally rooted Soul, R&B, and Funk renaissance reshaping the larger scope of music for a decade or more. And yet, it’s this moment - this Lotus Glow - that feels penultimate in its exercise as an (re)introduction for Adi Oasis.
‘Lotus Glow represents the flower I’ve blossomed into, the artist I’ve worked on becoming all my life. The glow is where I am going next. It’s my destiny.’
Lotus Glow’s features alone would give credence to Oasis, who has often been that same guest artist which those deeply embedded and invested in Neo-Soul’s expansive, worldwide scene would be excited about on other projects. For Lotus Glow, those names are Jamila Woods, J. Hoard, KIRBY, Leven Kali, and Aaron Taylor, all of whom have had impactful, emergent influence on an instrumentally-founded, emotionally-inclined soulscape for years. Each play their own role in deepening the textural, epochally indefinable cloth woven into the project’s length. Red To Violet bathes the vocal registers of both Oasis and Jamila Woods in velvety, other-epochally rich guitar riffs, flowering into a Springtime anthem of soulful depth spanning generation gaps. Compositionally vast, Marigold sets the stage for Oasis and J. Hoard to juxtapose their respective ranges against one another for a ballad that feels as though it should belong anywhere along Motown’s most influential run in the 60’s and 70’s. Adonis with KIRBY is an exhibition of both women’s vast, soulful highs, pushing high, too, the emotional spectrum of the project at large, where flourishing notes and upbeat production pulsate often against a more serious lyrical tone. Leven Kali continues to prove himself one of this generation’s most capable dueting forces, merging lanes with the album’s protagonist - who herself, through tracks like KAMAUU’s MANGO, has proven to be an unparalleled presence in the romantically-inclined collaboration - for the explosively sultry yet fun-loving Naked. And Aaron Taylor - himself one of the most underrated nomenclatures across London’s role as the center of Neo-Soul’s reinventing orbit - breathes his one-of-a-kind, emotionally evocative register and constant adjacency to a UK jazz-club aesthetic into FourSixty.
And yet, the roots of Lotus Glow go much deeper than the the extraneous artists involved. Ultimately, it’s unendingly personal for Adi Oasis herself, who is rightfully playing the main stage not only here in her rebooted debut, not only playing the main stage in homage of her many far-reaching roots, but playing main stage, too, for Neo-Soul, R&B, and Funk at large, as they continue - like Adi Oasis - to self-reinvent and evolve into new form, tethered always in something honest and inwardly facing.
‘It feels like a debut album,’ she told Ones To Watch in a conversation earlier this year. ‘It’s my first album under the name Adi Oasis and I share that journey with vulnerability because we’re told one story in artistry, which is that you have to be 20 years old, freshly arrived as who you are and do it all by yourself. That applies to Prince and no one else, which is why he’s one in a trillion. For me, my journey was a winding road and I think it is for everyone. Lotus Glow is an arrival, a beginning. It’s time to tell my story. It’s an homage to my ancestors, my roots, being a black woman, being an immigrant. These are my stories. It’s the most personal and by default, political work I’ve ever done, but it’s also the most hopeful!’
The artful essence of Lotus Glow emanates from that very focus on telling her own story, and no one else’s, though it certainly becomes a relatable, anthemic point of contact for so many listening. Particularly political as she said, born from the truth in her own experiences, Dumpalltheguns bleeds of its on-the-nose title, but finds more depth as it also sources funk-forward nuance from the great politically active protest eras come, gonna, and come again. It’s an exhibition of both her ability to entrench her music in meaning, while simultaneously delicately floating across myriad stylistic scopes as a vast, rangy vector for her own messages.
After her self-renaissance, and the great depth at which her poeticism strikes personal - and therefore greater communal and societal chords - it’s that range which makes Lotus Glow such a stamping moment for her career. Dynamically shuffling from the funk-laden and politically discoursed to the literal baby-making anthems (Multiply), she knows no borders, thematic, musical, literal, or otherwise, seamlessly weaving her mosaic of influence, experience, and emotion into an album worthy of her complexity, yet aesthetically light and anthemic of the warmer months. So, play it all Summer long, and then keep playing it, because Lotus Glow will only continue to gain shine without ever losing touch with its muddy, honest roots.