In a 2019 marked by Santa Monica soul child, Leven Kali’s debut album, Low Tide and by St. Louis’s favorite wordsmith, Smino delivering feature after feature across the year’s most important projects, both artists have come out of it all as two of music’s most sought after names. In fact, it’s to a point that if there were a collaboration that shined a light on 2019’s transcendent hip-hop and R&B scene, it would be between Leven Kali and Smino. Mix in the sultry funk of Topaz Jones, and it’s a guaranteed hit.

 

Homegirl is exactly that.  

 

Expectedly electro-funk in its foundation, Homegirl makes space for Kali, Smino, and Topaz Jones to bring their particular flair, silkiness, and clever penmanship that has made them all such key role players in an era defined less by definition, and more by an ability to float in the undefinable gray areas of genrefication’s stringent past. 

 

It’s not funk, soul, R&B or hip-hop. Homegirl is, instead, a beautiful exploration of their many blurred lines and a powerful exclamation point on 2019’s R&B and hip-hop foundation experimentation.