Allow me to paint a picture.
It’s spring of 2022. I’m waiting ever so patiently for Kendrick Lamar’s upcoming album, “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.” To pass the time, I decided to go on the subreddit for the artist. On there, there’s a thread talking about recommendations for other artists while we all wait for Kendrick’s hottest new album. The top comment on this thread was gawking over this artist named “JMSN” and his most recent releases, “Velvet” and “Heals Me.” I gave both a listen, and I was truly blown away. I never thought that I would love this approach to R&B, but I did. With that being said, I’d like to review my favorite of the two projects, “Heal Me.”
Starting things off as always, did JMSN bring his a-game? He did 100%.
Going straight into my most-loved song off of the record, we have “Love 2 U.” This track is the most perfect song in existence. It opens up with JMSN singing softly over the instrumental. In terms of what JMSN brings vocally, he only offers a verse, two choruses, as well as a post-chorus. That then poses the question, how is the track eight minutes long? To get into that more, we must talk about my favorite part of the song, the guitar solo. Throughout the song, JMSN’s vocals are accompanied by this guitar, along with a myriad of other instruments. As he progresses through his verse and his choruses, the instrumentation gets quieter. All for the guitar solo to begin with five minutes still on the clock. There’s no other way to explain this solo other than one word, perfection. I advise you to give it a listen to see what I mean. I even watched a livestream that JMSN conducted that shared him breaking everything down. From his vocals, to the instruments that he picked up just to use for this song, this breakdown made me appreciate this track so much more than I already did.
Another favorite track of mine is “Don’t Make Me Change.” Throughout the song, we get the usual JMSN vocals. My favorite part about his style of music is how he always finds something fun to do with his voice. During the song, you constantly hear him layer his vocals on top of each other, making a hallucinogenic sound. Later in the song, we get the outro. Yet again, this is pure perfection. The way he uses his vocals alongside the rising instrumentation is pure excellence. All throughout the project, you realize that JMSN uses his vocals, and he uses them well.
Next up, we have the features of the record. Which are none. JMSN goes the old-school approach of not collaborating with anyone in terms of vocals. He makes sure to do the work himself. From vocals, to the production, everything is done by him. This goes to show the artistry that he holds and how determined he is to bring hard work back to music.
After that short segment, we have the production of the record. When I say that every track sounds different, I mean it. In this day and age, it’s easy for tracks to sound similar to others, especially when they’re on the same record. Artists try to create songs that all sound roughly the same to match the album’s vibes. They often fail at doing so and instead create a bunch of songs that sound identical to one another. When it comes to this record, none of the songs share sounds. They even do this by still being able to fall under the same umbrella of the album. They all capture the kind of vibe that they’re supposed to. To build off of this point, a lot of the tracks introduce the usage of a guitar as the instrumentation. It does well here though because it switches from electric to acoustic so often. This distinction alone sets the entire tone for a song. The fact that this can be done with one single instrument says a lot about the production on this record. Other times, you get other instrumentation such as drums and even maracas in songs like “Donde Estas.” While it may seem like something small, in all reality, being able to use these different instruments and make everything so cohesive is no easy feat. With that being said, I am in love with the production shared with the listeners all throughout the record.
Finally, we have the replayability of the record. The album is a short 10 tracks, encapsulated in a runtime of 40 minutes. With this kind of music, I’m more than okay with the average track being four minutes. Each song goes a different approach than the rap songs that I’m used to as well. With rap, you get a few verses, each separated by a chorus, and sometimes things like outros are thrown in there. With JMSN tracks, especially tracks off of “Heals Me,” you don’t know what the structure of a song is going to be. Some songs are only one verse, one chorus, and then straight to the outro. Other songs, you get multiple verses along with choruses and even pre-choruses. This inability to predict what is about to happen in each track is what makes this entire project, front to back, so enjoyable to listen to time and time again.
With all four of my pillars gone over, I can confidently say that this is one of my favorite projects ever. While my heart does stay with rap a lot of the time, I am so glad that I have artists to listen to, like JMSN, to keep things fresh. As you can probably tell from my love for this record that I’ve portrayed all throughout this review, JMSN’s “Heals Me” gets a 10 out of 10.