Who is HXRY | The Transcendent Chicago R&B Artist Bringing his New Wave & Charisma to the Scene
Evan Dale // Sep 8, 2021
Mitch Dumler & Eric Laufer
There’s a lot going on in Chicago. There always has been, but its reputation as a budding garden for a new era of DIY and experimental R&B is particularly of focus at the moment. The city has always been home to the soulful. Even its widely ranging hip-hop history has long tapped into the soul-centric spectrums of vocalism and instrumentation to fold into the oft conscious and socially motivated leanings of its poeticism. Think rappers from Common to Chance the Rapper; Lupe to Kanye West, and there isn’t really a reasonable way to separate hip-hop from Neo-Soul in any of their creative canons. As there shouldn’t be. In all of their sounds, too, lives the Chicago Soul tradition. In all of their sounds exists influence from greats like Earth, Wind & Fire, Sam Cooke, Donny Hathaway, and Curtis Mayfield to more modern names like Jeremih, BJ the Chicago Kid, and Jennifer Hudson. Even still, through the decades of the contemporary R&B sphere, a signature Chicago sound hasn’t ever fully taken shape – at least not the way that it has in cities like Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles. There has never been a modern Chicago renaissance for R&B. But through the audacious, experimental, and ultimately new waves being made by a select handful of current names on the rise, something concrete, yet oh so stylistically fluid is very much on the horizon.
HXRY grew up listening to his mother play records from Mary J. Blige, The Isley Brothers, and a whole lot of disco. He grew up to his dad supplying the rock, blues, and hip-hop. “But, it wasn’t until [he] started linking with other producers on SoundCloud who had super electronic backgrounds that inspired [him] to keep experimenting,” he told us in 2020 in an effort to delineate to some extent the incalculably wide-ranging sound that he boasts today. For those that know it, HXRY’s auditory aesthetic is one that is instantly recognizable. It’s also at once reminiscent and yet entirely new to those who haven’t heard him before. It’s somewhere in the carefully curated balance between the retro-nuanced R&B and the electro-nuanced production where his unmistakable signature comes into focus. And for reference and further depth on that, it’s best to start with Reflections.
HXRY’s debut album – his second solo project since the onset of 2020 behind his PIECE OF MIND EP – was released at the tail end of Summer this year, and it’s a thesis on the sound he’s been inventing and refining since he first began blending the myriad influence he’s been musically exposed to since his childhood. One listen, and it’s a lesson to anyone on the other end of the soundwaves that perhaps R&B is the most fluid and dynamic of stylistic musical spaces, if the idea of genre really exists at all. A second listen, and that same listener’s immersion into HXRY’s electro-soul universe begins to get woven into their understanding of what R&B was, is, and could one day be at the hands of experimentally unapologetic artists like himself. The Chicago vocalist, producer and songwriter is undeniably forging forward his own path for Neo-Soul with foundations in electronic production. It’s a carefully curated balance between the two, that also blends the epochal spaces of music. There are moments – usually when his vocals are front and center on Reflections – that a listener may think that they’ve travelled to some point in the late 90’s by way of his crystalline, emotionally fueled vocals. There are other moments – when HXRY’s flexing his productive prowess – that one really understands that they’ve never heard anyone quite like HXRY before, and that he is ultimately a product of the modern musical cloth. That’s the beauty in his sonic expanse. That’s what makes him such a stylistically and epochally spanning bridge for anyone tuning in
Mitch Dumler & Eric Laufer
And for anyone who may be tuning in for the first time, there couldn’t really be a better time to find out what it is that draws a listener’s own personal listening sensitivities to the rangy auditory aesthetic of HXRY. With a debut album to start with, a whole lot of singles, and a must-listen EP in PIECE OF MIND to move back towards, the Chicago R&B transcendentalist is an expressly timeless name to know. Delineated first by his unmistakable range and register, his ability to propel his vocals to places that only few these days could muster would already make him a force anywhere in the world of Neo-Soul. Merge that with a signature productive foundation built on fluttering keystrokes, synth progressions, and bass all born of the electronic modernity we inhabit, and fold in his raw, poetic talent to craft emotion from the strokes of his pen, and HXRY, along with a swatch of fellow Chicago creatives like frequent collaborator and soulstress in her own right, ALIAH (FKA Aaliyah Allah), and experimental producer from whom HXRY has long drawn inspiration, Chromonicci, are redefining the boundless opportunity to widen the R&B soundscape.
Mitch Dumler & Eric Laufer
Towards Chicago, at the hands of HXRY and the other talented and way-paving creatives like him, R&B may be looking for the beginnings of a new renaissance. There lies a sound rooted in soulful tradition, utilized through time and through other stylistic explorations for its ubiquitous nature, merging with an electronically produced modernity, to ultimately produce an electro-soul future, where a project like HXRY’s debut Reflections may in fact be a two-way mirror, using the past to predict what’s to come, albeit with a signature twist.
Through the course of an afternoon spent walking, talking, and taking photographs throughout Chicago, his charisma bloomed into an addicting presence, while the balance between his fun-loving disposition and his raw passion for what he’s creatively pursuing spoke directly to the same tenets in his music. Keep an eye and an ear out for what may be next from him and the underground R&B scene ready to explode out from underneath Chicago. And while you’re at it, take a listen or three to the inventive exploration that is Reflections.
Mitch Dumler & Eric Laufer