Summer is fast slipping away from us, so we’re holding on with a refresh of our Songs of Summer playlist in honour of how good music was to us this summer. From a canonical album from The Internet, to meeting newcomers like Kyan to debut album-teasing singles from Ray BLK, Mahalia and Ella Mai.
The RnB summer highlights
Speaking of Ella Mia, Summer 2018 was all hers. We wrote about her EP, Ready, last April but over a year later, Mai released a music video for Boo’d Up, a single off the EP. The rest is history. Boo’d Up took off stratospherically like no one could’ve imagined. A platinum plaque, a Billboard Hot 100 top 20 feature and headline tour later, that Boo’d Up was the RnB song of the summer is undisputed. Always exciting to see people we see as ‘one of ours’ get mainstream recognition for their talent and hard work.
While Gambino was making a mark worldwide with the release of This is America, we had our own movement bubbling here in the UK. Etta Bond turned her addictive-from-first-chord track Surface, into one of the UK’s most exciting musical moments all summer. The #SurfaceChallenge invited other artists to put their own spin on Surface, culminating in an epic remixed version with the best submissions to the challenge.
After a long hiatus from releasing new music, singer Ego Ella May returned to the scene with Table for One. The track is an infectious neo-Soul classic that snagged her official Spotify Playlist features and over 100,000 plays.
All that plus a deluge of great tunes from Emotional Oranges, Sango, Teedra Moses, Kehlani, Kyan, Mahalia, Dej Loaf and Leon Bridges. We’ve even snuck in rap favourites from Cardi B and Drake.
P.s. we’ve done this as a refresh of our Summer ’16 playlist. Enjoy reminiscing with those tunes too.
