JORJA SMITH'S 'BE RIGHT BACK' REVIEW. THE RED CHAPTER IS FOR BROKEN PASSION.

Last month Jorja Smith released 'Be Right Back', a project with eight songs that follows up her debut album ('Lost & Found'). The collection forgets her 2019 hit , Be Honest,  and Come Over, both with a more Jamaican sound, with reggae and dancehall influences. 

The visuals for this chapter, alongside with the cover, are always framed by the colour red, which is the star of the cover for the album.  Red is the usual colour for passion or love, but ,in this record, it seems  bittersweet  and incomplete .

Be Right Back starts with Addicted, full of Jorja's  delicious bare vocals. It was the first single released from the mini-album and it focuses on the realization after a break-up, with Jorja singing frankly after giving all in a relationship 'The hardest thing / You are not addicted to me/ I'm the only thing you should need'. The track includes soul production and alt-rock guitars that reminded me of part of John Mayer's solo in Frank Ocean's Pyramids. This song is a consequence of a break-up, after the passion, and hides some disenchantment.

The album continues with Gone, a truly experimental piece about losing someone, with an hypnotic piano and techno production that melts right with  mellow R&B. Here, Jorja throws her existentialist worries about 'the other life'. Some existentialism is followed up by Diggin, which talks about stress and anxiety with a production able to make you feel constriction in the chest.

The fifth track , Home, tells a true and sincere story of a broken marriage by the woman of the story , who is talking to herself , thinking out loud and confessing her feelings. 

There is a persistent feeling of sadness and disillusionment throughout the record that keeps on even if Jorja immerses in the luxury universe and diamonds, like in Bussdown , featuring. Shaybo, who emphasizes that desolation ('Even with drip I'm feeling drained'). This shows the constant support of Jorja for the new generation of artists , as she did with Enny's Black Peng Girls Remix. 

Waiting for her second album , Be Right Back is quite enjoyable : Jorja's voice is the protagonist of the record, able to hit high notes and create sublime vocals. She can drive the record to more urban sounds or to  jazzy ones  (like in Burn), creating a complete R&B ensemble.