Zuko Collective
What You Don’t Do, written with Sam Drew, is a cute ditty that flips the idea of needing someone to say they love you on its head.
“I know you love me, I don’t need proof,” she belts out.
Good Goodbye is a heartwrenching ballad about the end of a relationship and death. The way she sings it – from a wilting whisper to a robust high – is utterly beautiful.
Blood isn’t an instant classic in that every song is amazing but it’s definitely a slow burner as some tracks need more spins in order to sink in. But once they have, Blood sounds big. – Helen Herimbi LOVE & War is technically Tamar’s second album but with 13 years in between that and her debut, everyone rates it as her first.
And with it, the singer-songwriter, TV personality was well on her way to dethroning Toni as the most-loved Braxton. Calling All Lovers continues in that vein.
Although it opens with the reggae-tinged Angels and Demons, the album is real R&B straight up and down. Her vocal gymnastics are screwface worthy on songs like Raise The Bar. It’s kind of reminiscent of Beyonce’s Rocket – which was obviously inspired by D’Angelo.
Where Beyonce’s self-titled fifth album was the view of a woman who is a wife and a mother who is all grown up and still sexy as hell, Calling All Lovers is the view of a wife and mother who is grown up and sexy as hell, but isn’t afraid to let her exes know it. Tamar has said the album was inspired by past relationships and the sheer desperation in
Relationtrips All aboard for this sonic journey. her tone on tracks like Broken Record and Never show it. But it wouldn’t be a Tamar album if she wasn’t being her OTT self. Don’t get it twisted, while she’s got the pipes to go against your faves, she is doing it her own playful way.
Like on Catfish, where she repeats the colloquial “don’t flex,” or even on the doo-wopinspired Simple Things, where she sings about not needing extravagance over quality time with her man, she follows up a monologue with “we’ve got lights, we got food/ we got a phone, we can talk to each other/hell, we even got Facetime, I can find out where you at.” Ha! – Helen Herimbi