With his oaky baritone, Givēon often sounds like he teleported to us from the 1970s. In the rapid-fire internet age, his love songs — frequently lost-love songs — are unhurried. At his best, he’s like a barrel-aged cognac — warm, earthy, and mature. Still, when he rose to prominence at around the age of 25 about five years ago, in a landscape where more modern, edgy alternative R&B dominated, he allowed his steady, soulful production to ride on top of subtle rap drums; across his debut EP, Take Time, and album, Give or Take, he even dipped into cloudy MC cadences, too.
Now, on his sophomore LP, and well established as a singular voice, there’s nothing “alternative” about his musical approach. Beloved is almost barren of the hip-hop flourishes that peppered his earlier work, and instead leans all the way into the orchestral R&B of another time, lush with searing strings and the crash of real hi-hats. Rich and authentic, Beloved feels indebted to Al Green, Philly soul, the Jackson 5, and Blaxploitation soundtracks.
Demonstrating the most robust control of his instrument yet, Givēon offers a stunning, panoramic view of romantic relationships in their toughest places. He’s always been a real yearner, taking cues from the “Black women heartbreak music” he’s said he was raised on by his mother — singers like Anita Baker and Mary J. Blige.
True to form, much of Beloved lives at the end of the road romantically, where songs like “Twenties,” “Mud,” and “Strangers” ache with defeat. “Yes, I’m taking this hard,” he proclaims in a pained, zigzag riff on “Strangers,” after learning his ex is finally seeing someone else. By “Numb,” he’s unable to feel at all. When he admits, “I’ve been here before,” over angelic background coos, it’s a cunning recognition that a heartbroken Givēon is one his listeners are all too familiar with, though this version is the most visceral yet.
And though in these gut-wrenching moments, Givēon is the victim — even telling an old flame who has tried to play that same role, “You run my name through the mud/Wipe that dirt off your shoes.… You be lying to yourself so much it sounds true” — he complicates his reliability as a narrator, too, adding more nuance to his romantic persona.
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On tracks like “Diamonds for Your Pain (Interlude)” and “Keeper,” he’s slyly working his way out of the doghouse, telling a girl on the former, “Prettier than I remember/Haven’t seen you since December/You know I come around every summertime, swimming in your teardrops.” (There’s sharp imagery like this all over the album, building on the cinematic soundscapes acclaimed producers like Jeff Gitty and Jahaan Sweet have created with Givēon.) And though the groovy “Avalanche” is only sung from a place of promise and not repair, a naivete that could also prove unproductive peeks through. “Intuition says we’re way too young to start a family/But I’ve been thinking about forever, my dear,” he beams, delusionally.
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Beloved especially shines when it embraces how complicated heartache can be, like the songs where Givēon or the object of his affection linger in limbo. On “Backup Plan,” he watches anxiously as his lover quietly contemplates leaving him; on “Bleeding,” he’s a suitor tiptoeing around the shards of a woman’s broken heart, knowing she’s still fixated on her ex. He’s more hopeful on “I Can Tell,” where he’s proudly making his case as a better man than the one he’s trying to get some young woman to leave behind.
Fittingly, the album ends with Givēon as part of a couple who seem committed to surmounting conflict together, a buoyant reminder that, even in his world, not all snags precipitate a breakup. “I’ll even let you run me down to the ground/Watching you while you run your mouth/I stick around,” he sings brightly. “I love you ’cause you love me/Through the good, bad, and ugly.”
