This fall, Philly-based, R&B dynamo Son Little will release New Magic, his second full-length album on Anti- Records.
But to lead off the summer, Son Little has already given a taste of the wizardry we should expect to find on that record, as he’s released “Blue Magic (Waikiki),” the album’s lead single, where Son Little throws all the necessary ingredients into his musical cauldron, and crafts an enchanted track with the potential to be the song of the summer for fans old and new.
A genre-bending single, “Blue Magic” is hard to define, as it seamlessly smashes styles together, and swerves across the imaginary boundaries of R&B: opening with the tropical sounds of Jack Johnson’s “Upside Down,” a female choir delivers the first notes, sweetly singing the song’s hook—I got the blue magic/I got the blue magic/And I rock over you so savage/’Cause I got the blue magic—over a bouncing, rider beat, delivered with Questlove’s laid-back thunder.
When Little enters with a nuanced, tonal guitar and his ever-smooth vocals, whatever you expected from the track changes, running the way of Philly Soul or Gospel-turned-Hip-Hop, as “Blue Magic” builds on its expertly shaped vibe, and lives in the charmed relationship between beat and melody. An infectious confluence of style, the songs pulls on Son Little’s borderless influences, and sounds like it could’ve come from Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book, rather than the New Magic of a forward-looking bluesman, which is a comparison either artist should take as a compliment.
But for all the directions it goes, “Blue Magic” is ultimately all Son Little—a name that you’ll hear more and more this summer, as more and more fans fall for his new, blue, musical spell.
LISTEN: “BLUE MAGIC” BY SON LITTLE
