As December comes to an end, we want to highlight one of the strongest projects from the month, and truthfully, from the entire year. Jesse Boykins lll released his 17-song album, Bartholomew on December 8 and it remains one of the staples to our current listening habits. The soulful, powerful vocalist draws inspiration from his wide roots that range from Jamaica, Miami, Chicago, and Brooklyn – his current home.

 

Bartholomew is a calm, mellow project filled to the brim with Boykins’ riddling lyricism. The production is also something to admire and carries with it a silky acoustic yet intriguingly bubbly sound that makes him stand out from other R&B artists and provides him the grassroots honesty that that we’ve come to love about other New York songwriters.