Written by 
Listen to the technical precision of Jai’Len Josey’s pipes, and you won’t be surprised to hear that she’s been schooled on how to be a professional singer her entire life. Growing up, she picked up game from her mom, who worked in the marketing departments of storied Atlanta-based R&B labels, So So Def and LaFace. Later, Jai’Len cut her teeth doing musical theater in Tri-Cities High School, which boasts one of the premier performing arts programs in the South. After graduating, she starred in the SpongeBob musical on Broadway as Pearl Krabs before leaving to dig into her own music, co-writing Ari Lennox’s biggest solo hit along the way.. When her new album, Serial Romantic, wasn’t fully clicking, her label parachuted in super-duper-producer Tricky Stewart (Mariah, Rihanna, Beyoncé) to finish the job. She’s been built to do this thing, for real.
In step with that experience, Serial Romantic is an ultra-polished fantasy record where you can hear the money in every crystal-clear falsetto note and sense the effort in the album’s theatrical story arc. The gist: On an upbeat first half—with touches of house and dance pop—she meets a man that has her swooning in a way she never thought possible, then on “Love Ain’t Shit (Interlude)” a friend spots him “at Nobu sitting across from some hussy with a 40-inch buss down” and the facade crumbles into writerly ballads. It’s skilled, heavily studied music but with a distance between Jai’Len and the album’s protagonist that makes the songs feel universal yet slightly impersonal. On the bouncy front side, her over-the-moon affection has her imagining scenarios where she’s living as a Betty Draper type (“Housewife”) and leaning into sexual taboos (“Freak”), but the details could belong to anyone: “I’m playdough thick/Come play with this.” They’re harmlessly fun songs that I’d sway to if I heard them in a bar. But without signature personality traits—Victoria Monét’s biting sense of humor, Summer Walker’s unhinged excavation of her open wounds—it’s hard to get hooked.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Jai’Len Josey’s voice fills in those gaps, though. She can really let it rip, like watching a pitcher with airtight mechanics and control go through their arsenal. There’s intention behind the delivery of every word, especially once the tonal shift hits and the beats become more stripped back. On “Truce,” she’s frustrated that she’s even in a situation that requires her forgiveness, which shows up in the half-pissed way she holds onto the final note of, “It’s easier said to get past it/But for you, boy, I’ll try so hard.” The melancholic acoustic guitars of “Won’t Force You” are cliché, but the deflated melodies in the first verse make her disappointment sound so real. I keep going back to her electronically altered chromatic scale halfway through the hook of “I Believe (Selfish),” which gives the I choose myself note at the end of the album a bit of musical glow.
Serial Romantic is an effective showcase of Jai’Len’s abilities, though it’s more of what I’d want out of a talent show performance rather than a collection of songs. R&B can be a genre so anchored in tradition that music even more rigid can seem overly manicured. There are a few parts of Serial Romantic that are a tiny bit messier and more playful without losing her belief in structure. Bursts of garage drums lift up her back outside anthem “Serial Romantic,” as she juggles a dance card with clever flirtiness: “I hope you came to me hungry/I hope you down for this pot roast.” Three 6 Mafia-style “Yeah ho’” ad-libs of “New Girl” give the album a Southern sense of place, which goes a long way in making the story feel rooted in Atlanta rather than an indescribable dreamworld. That might seem trivial, but it’s the kind of particular that gets me closer to figuring out who Jai’Len Josey is underneath all of the gloss.
