On the heels of Spring project, STATIC, Inglewood’s Brandon Banks returns with a late Summer A-Side / B-Side that merges the emotional and compositional strings we’ve learned to expect pulled from his emerging artistry. An adept vocalist refusing to utilize any aesthetic that doesn’t experimentally capture the essences in his own brand of R&B, Banks has become a generational force for redefining music sourced in soul’s boundless range.

 

Where STATIC meandered wildly, encapsulating the breadth of his influence under a single banner, Caught Up – through just two tracks – explores in balance a bass-heavy, emotion-heavier tone of modernist R&B, where its first inclusion, Gold rides an established affinity for acoustic guitar; where its second, Iroc, explores a darker, electronically nuanced direction. But, as different as the two tracks at times feel in texture, both are tethered akin by an underlying foundation of emotion that finds itself rooted in Banks’ fluid ability to exalt emotion through penmanship and vocalism.

 

A register that seamlessly transitions between the mellowly subdued and the elatedly high, Banks finds a way to utilize the entirety of his range during both tracks, at times belaying laid-back bars with a relative cool; at others with shattering highs expressively dominating the mini-project’s exhibition of Banks’ growth.

 

With Caught Up, as has been true with every subsequent release from Brandon Banks, obvious creative growth is at the core of the conversation. With one of the more unique deliveries in modern R&B, and all the ability to equally write through his emotions, the emerging Inglewood star again gives a glimpse of just where it is he’s headed - and where in tow, R&B and Neo-Soul are headed at large.