This week's R&B is all warmth and groove. Tender vocals, real chemistry and funk-soaked rhythms carry songs that lift you as much as they move you. Sincere, soulful and built to leave you feeling good long after the last note. Turn them up.
Lil' Mike - Yah
"Yah" is a gorgeous R&B duet from Lil' Mike, a wonderfully tender collaboration with Evička born from genuine, spur-of-the-moment chemistry.
Lil' Mike's single is a lovely change of pace. This is one of his rare calm tracks, and it really shows his range. It's a warm, romantic duet, and the chemistry between the two voices is the whole thing here. There's a lovely backstory too: the track sat as an unfinished 2023 demo until Evička heard it and sent back her own part that very same evening. Music is often great when you don't mess around, and you just get stuck in. It's her streaming debut, and what a way to start. Soft, sincere and genuinely heartfelt, this one glows hard.
Lil' Mike is a France-based rapper and dancer, and "Yah" shows a completely different side to him from the harder material he's known for. Recorded at Big Lab Music studio, the duet is a testament to organic creative chemistry and the power of a collaboration that just clicks, both artists discovering how seamlessly their voices intertwine. It's clearly a significant one for both of them, and you can feel why. Lovely stuff, and more in this vibe please. A great single.
Auswan - Something To Live For
"Something To Live For" is a superb, funk-soaked slice of retro soul from Auswan, all slap bass and bright synths built for your next summer bop
Auswan's new single is a proper groove machine. Broody and funky in equal measure, it stacks his lead vocal and harmonies on top of punchy slap bass, bright synths and a driving drum groove, and the whole thing just vibes along wonderfully. It really does have it all, a tasty chorus, brilliant vocals and the breakdown? Fantastic. The whole thing builds somewhere beautiful, and the performances do justice to the song. It's colourful, it's confident, and it leaves your head bopping long after it ends. Cracking stuff.
Auswan is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer and producer raised in New Jersey, who studied jazz performance at Northwestern University on saxophone before moving to Los Angeles. There he's performed professionally as a saxophonist, vocalist, flautist and bassist, and after diving into the LA funk and R&B scenes he began writing his own music, blending his jazz background with modern R&B and soul. Citing Prince, Cameo and Jamiroquai, he makes funky, danceable, thought-provoking music, and this one absolutely delivers on that promise. Get stuck in below, you will not regret it. A great single.
Amarah Smith - Let It Go
Amarah Smith turns heartbreak into hard-won freedom on "Let It Go", a stunning, unflinchingly honest R&B anthem about walking away for good.
Amarah Smith's new single doesn't flinch. "Let It Go" faces heartbreak and betrayal head-on, drawn from her own experience of a relationship that turned destructive rather than nurturing. And there's real courage in how plainly she sings it. What lifts it beyond a personal story is how universal it feels, a genuine anthem of emotional liberation for anyone stuck somewhere that no longer serves them. I've been there Amarah, and this one really captures it. Her vocal carries both the hurt and the resolve, and that balance is what makes it land. Raw, honest and empowering, it's the sound of someone choosing themselves. Powerful stuff.
Amarah Smith is a rising R&B artist from London who turns personal pain into powerful, relatable songs, drawing on contemporary voices like Leon Thomas, Chris Brown and Queen Naija. She writes in the intimate setting of her small study room, a creative sanctuary where raw emotion becomes melody, and her whole approach is rooted in perseverance and authenticity, guided by her own mantra about keeping going even when the road gets hard. With a growing catalogue built from genuine life experience, she's steadily earning a name for vulnerability and vocal strength. More of this please, Amarah.
A'shon Galaxy - Save The Last Dance
Velvet vocals over a hypnotic late-night groove make "Save The Last Dance" a brilliant neo-soul slow-burn from A'shon Galaxy
This one glides in like a late-night invitation. "Save The Last Dance" is a neo-soul and R&B slow-burn that moves between cool confidence and genuine intimacy. Built on warm chords, a hypnotic groove and A'shon Galaxy's silky, velvet-toned vocal. It lets the mood do the talking, but the pre-chorus with the line 'everyone needs someone to love' really lands. There's a real richness to the arrangement, vintage-leaning warmth wrapped around a modern sensibility, and it's clearly meant for someone special. A proper classy, slow-dance of a song.
A'shon Galaxy makes soul-stirring R&B that reads like a heartfelt odyssey through love, heartbreak, longing and joy. His sound is built from the warmth of vintage keyboards, the pulse of rhythmic guitars, deep drum grooves and resonant bass, all channelled through a single passionate vision. Drawing on the music that shaped his youth alongside the sounds he's explored himself, he crafts something familiar yet genuinely fresh, a soundtrack for the soul where every song tells a story. A rich, characterful voice, and one to keep close.
Ash L Leif - I'm Still Right Here
Dark contemporary R&B meets sweeping orchestration on "I'm Still Right Here", an excellent, cinematic anthem of defiance from Ash L Leif.
Here's R&B with the scope of a film score. "I'm Still Right Here", the anchor single from The Aegis Frequency, merges dark contemporary R&B, heavy electronic rhythms and orchestral soundscapes into an atmospheric hybrid. It lands as a poignant, resilient anthem of defiance against overwhelming forces. ANd there's no shortage of ambition here; it works a chapter in a larger story, cinematic and high-concept, yet the raw emotional core keeps it grounded and human. The push and pull between epic orchestration and intimate vocal is the whole appeal, and it's already building organic momentum across North America, Brazil and South Africa. And the chorus? It genuinely takes off.
Ash L Leif is an independent author and producer crafting a living soundtrack for the dark fantasy universe of The Omega Saga. Blending atmospheric contemporary R&B, driving electronic beats and sweeping cinematic orchestration, he builds character-driven auditory chapters designed to accompany the high-stakes narrative of Aethelgard. It's a genuinely unusual project, fusing high-concept world-building with raw emotional storytelling, bridging modern music production and literary fantasy. We're not surprised it's finding an international audience across North America, South Africa and Latin America. A bold, singular vision.