I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about an emerging artist.
I cannooooot stop listening to Natanya’s album Feline’s Return. It’s one of the strongest I’ve heard in the last few years, full stop.
The word that keeps coming to mind when I describe why I love it is fresh—amongst a sea of R&B and pop that often feels like label fodder—just straight up smoke and mirrors, filler, playlist bait—Natanya shatters through that sound barrier for me with a sharp and clarifying approach to her music. With every listen, I discover something new. It’s the gag that keeps on gagging.
While my main descriptor is “fresh,” the album is definitely still heavily referential. The 90s and 00s inspiration within her music is definitely not subtle - the nods are loud and central - from the “Are You That Somebody?” interpolative licks in “On Ur Time” to the SWV/Brian Jordan Alexander laced vocal production on “Jezebel.” The album echoes Ashanti, Brandy, TLC, Mya, Janet, and more. The bouncy, smooth and sexy production is playing in Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Darkchild’s closets. But the inspirations, while decidedly heavy-handed, are undeniably fresh, current and original because of the approach to song structure - she’s doing things with production that are soooo fucking titillating to my ears, so varied, so dynamic, so INTERESTING. She weaves between that classic 90s/00s sound to Jersey Club to garage to “Someone To Call My Lover” guitars to more Pop forward synths. and I don’t mean over the course of the album - I mean over the course of one fucking song!! It’s so sonically inspired… and yet another sign that while Black American musical cultural production has always been top tier, the shit we did in the 90s and 00s will truly be studied and emulated forever.
Separately - I can’t help but notice that a sound so fresh is coming from an independent artist, unbound by a major label telling her what to do. Fresh, multi-genre approaches to music might be harder to put a genre box on and harder to pitch out to playlists at DSPs but they are still effective, and the independent/underground is steeped in this practice and crushing, while the output from majors remains painfully reactive and thus largely…boring. The cult fanbase Natanya is gathering from her music is proof this music is still marketable and effective. If more artists were given the flexibility to craft their own unique sound, I believe we’d have much more music that sounds like this… just fucking FRESH & GOOD!
I think we have a future global pop star on our hands. Natanya is going to pop fr very soon - watch this space.
I recommend starting with “Guitar,” “Jezebel,” or “On Ur Time” - but also just put on the whole damn album and thank me later.