There’s something innately powerful about the little things when they’re given the space and attention that they need to in order to bloom and flourish. The microcosmic, too, can be cosmic when you really focus in on the details. For Neo-Soul flower child, Baby Rose, and her unparalleled ability to hone in on one syllable - one note - one moment’s minutiae - and breathe the life into it necessary to expand its bounds into a sonic universe all to itself, the little things take center stage. And across her new album, Through and Through, that expansion of auditory spaces, and an ability to fill them with emotionally intuitive world-building, drives her decidedly different sound into a new realm for modern Neo-Soul. Deep vocals have always defined a first glimpse into her uniqueness and ubiquity, but with the rest of her skillset so fiercely sharpened and on display Through And Through, her new project is a moment for Baby Rose to exhibit just how necessary a collective addition her and her music are to a greater Neo-Soul and R&B scene in constant search of self reinvention, towards both the analogue past and the timelessly retrofuturistic.

 

“I’m not just a singer with a unique voice. I’m somebody that has something to say.”

 

It’s a point well-spoken for the Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and producer. It’s a point well-taken for anyone listening whose initial attraction to her one-of-a-kind, deep-toned crooning only leads to deeper stories and emotional explorations the depth and uniqueness of which surpasses what brought a listener to her space in the first place. Having grown through the challenge of learning to love and respect the ubiquity of her gift, she’s emerged on the other side as an artist whose hard work to make sure she wasn’t projected through a monochrome lens has made her one of the most well-rounded, vivaciously Kodachrome musical forces in a scene bursting at the seams with unique talent. It’s only an advantage now that her natural vocal disposition alone separates her. The other edgers of her skillset - storytelling so vividly so as to build worlds and immerse an audience in relationship-level depth, emotional evocation so organic that it hits as a series of waves, producing so timelessly that her epochal presence feels omnipotent - are many. And Through and Through, with every pillar of her texture, she’s at her best.

 

The thirty-seven minute project opens to an instrumental layer cake of tumbling chords and shrieking string play that send anyone listening perhaps to another era, or just to another dimension of Neo-Soul emotionality that feels cut of a timeless cloth altogether. It’s a sentiment in her foundation that will continue throughout the project, tying it to another time, another place, while still so ambiguously existing in the present. Here, at the introduction, aptly named Go, Baby Rose quickly submerges us all in a poetic, dark stanza, breathed seamlessly into existence by way of intense register.

The Devil's a liar,

That tries to divide us.

Throws fuel on the fire.

We're down to the wire.

Only love can revive us.

When the storms get louder,

The tide gets higher.

For me, be a martyr.

For you, I'll be a rider,

Until we expire.

 

That same poetic discourse and a continued collection of exhibitions on a vocal prowess as striking as the rest of the multi-hyphenate Atlanta artist’s identity, too, tumble forward throughout Through and Through’s length, albeit its direction always taking unique turns.

 

In an upbeat, dance-worthy track fitting of Baby Rose’s particularly jazz-club oriented aesthetic, she and the legendary Georgia Anne Muldrow team up on Fight Club. Slowing it down and drawing on the organic romanticism in her musical adherences, Baby Rose turns Dance With Me into a timeless ballad of overcoming the hurdles in a relationship in pursuit of the simplest expressions of love. Overtop the funkiest beat on Through and Through’s tracklist, Paranoid emerges as perhaps the strongest expression of Baby Rose’s ability to push the boundaries of her sound. Her spellbinding highs juxtapose her range’s comfort zone, and a willingness to pursue old-school Soul and Funk feels modern against the instrumentally minimal backdrop. Upbeat even further, on I Won’t Tell, she teams up with her hip-hop counterpoint, Smino - enigmatic, inexplicable, and yet oh, so necessary to his particular soul-rap intersection - for a display of otherworldly artistry that we should be so lucky to witness. Tell Me It’s Real bleeds emotively as the most authentically Baby Rose cut from her whole canon, embodying a sound and a feeling that only she could capture.

 

It’s that indescribably breadth not only from track to track, but evolving throughout the length of her album, that really lies central to what it is that make Baby Rose stand out in Neo-Soul, in R&B, and in music at large. Well beyond the tracks we even outlined above, Through and Through forges forward, unearthing even more intrigue and experimental retrofuturism as it treks across six more tracks on its back half, each also a necessary addition to the project. And like those tracks, Baby Rose as an all-encompassing, willingly unique, rangy, practiced, and now mastered flashpoint in her craft, is a necessary force go unique genius at a time in history where pushing the envelope is simultaneously increasingly rare and sought-after. For fans of Soul, of Funk, of R&B, of anything, Through and Through, through and through, is a masterclass on artistic well-roundedness.