I’ve gone loco for Jessy Lanza!!!! Honestly she may be my favourite electro-pop / contemporary R ‘n’ B producer and vocalist from not only Canada, but the whole of the god-forsaken Commonwealth.
I have to bring up my #1 R’n’B hero, Patrice Rushen, when writing about Lanza. Both have beginnings in Jazz but embraced popular music and technology, not as a career move or in serving a diva sized ego, but in seeing the real potential for emotional and creative expression when Pop is approached from an exploratory and non-cynical perspective.
All four of her albums rule, and are in stock, literally just jump in anywhere. ‘Love Hallucination’ (2023), sees a new level of vulnerability in her songwriting, which sits well in contrast to a production that’s a move away from bedroom synth-pop to BIG sounds. I don’t know any of the additional producers listed on this album but collectively they form a voltron-like figure equivalent to a contemporary Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (The Time, Janet Jackson etc). - Nic