When retrofuturistic R&B duo, VanJess released February project, Homegrown – a nine-track collection brimming with a balance between 90’s reminiscent synth strokes and explosions of modernistic nuance attributed to a unique auditory aesthetic never really heard before – the project kicked off Valentine’s season to the tune of distorted, contemporary love and lust. Quickly, however, it was apparent that Homegrown was much more than one of those lovey projects that gets rushed for the holiday and was – is – instead one of the most nuanced, detailed, and ultimately addicting collections not only in recent R&B memory, but throughout 2021 at large. It lies in the innate aesthetic of VanJess, that which when listening to their young yet robust canon, brings to mind a constant bubbling of memories not only to a 90’s club scene, but also to the soul, funk, and disco eras that, too, define from where it is that a new golden era of R&B artists source. And just as from the past, so too do those contemporary vocalists and producers source from a future founded on the electro-heavy present we all inhabit. House music in particular tethered to the renaissance of synth analogue and keystroke digital masterminds defining our current cloth bookend the electro-nuanced R&B fringe in where VanJess find particularly contemporary inspiration. Both 90’s-rooted renaissance R&B star on his own rise, Devin Morrison, and Montreal by way of Haiti house infusionist, Kaytranada, found their signature sounds on the project’s original track list (Boo Thang and Dysfunctional, respectively). And with VanJess’s newest release, a Deluxe Edition to the original genius of Homegrown, R&B’s most imminent one-two-punch are swinging harder at Neo-Soul expectation than ever before.

 

The duo, who are actually sisters calling home to California by way of Nigerian roots, found the inspiration for the original collection not only in the incalculable influence of their musical range, but also in the solitude and creative subsequence of 2020’s pandemic and lonely quarantines. Born form their time spent in their house, Homegrown has literal roots that still feel particularly vulnerable, relatable, and necessarily danceable for so many looking for an emotion-fueled groovy outlet in the quiet of their own house; for so many looking to tend to their own garden in the solace of home alone. The expansion of that foundation, which totals four new songs and a remix of sultry anthem, Slow Down, featuring the one-and-only Lucky Daye, round out the Deluxe Edition of Homegrown. Just like its original form, the album is one of this year’s best, unapologetically setting a tone that new sounds, rooted in the old, still leave so much room for the established boundaries of Neo-Soul and R&B to bend and bleed.

 

As if the addition of Lucky Daye to the Homegrown lineup wasn’t powerhouse enough to get any R&B fans deep, deep in their feels, VanJess add another signature club heater to change the Slow Down pace they inevitably set on any dancefloor. Say Yes, featuring and produced by the ever-up-tempo TOKiMONSTA, bookends the house-nuance precedent set by Kaytranada’s Dysfunctional dynamism. And it doesn’t stop there. With Surrender, an analogue bass and synth rooted Neo-Soul renaissance stretching from London to Lagos to Los Angeles, waves its white flag to the tune if the emotive anthem. And with Feelz Right and Love & Hope, a return, and even further exploration, of the VanJess bread and butter. Innovative, electro-nuanced, 90’s rooted slow jams that keep the flame alive for an R&B modernity as golden, timeless, and oh, so sensual as any to come before it.

 

When it was released in February, and in every moment since, Homegrown was already one of the best projects – in any stylistic realm – to come out of a 2021 stacked with R&B masterpieces in particular from Joyce Wrice’s Overgrown to Snoh Aalegra’s Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies. Now, with the release of its Deluxe Edition, the album proves that the future of R&B’s sheen lies in sourcing from its golden past, that no one is doing that better than VanJess, and that they’re just getting started.