Album Review: IRL by Mahalia
Mahalia returns with a sophomore effort as her best to date.
In her adolescent years, Leicestershire chanteuse Mahalia Burkmar’s meteoric ascent frequently garnered the retro or revivalist R&B label for her musical oeuvre. However, such framing betrays a fundamental misapprehension of the contemporary milieu in which the genre operates for 21st-century auditory aficionados.
While releasing copious standalone tracks (including collaborations with Ella Mai, Burna Boy, Lucky Daye, and Rico Nasty) and a smattering of EPs, with the latest arriving merely a year ago (Letter to Ur Ex), her devotion has remained strong, though rewards have proven sparse. For Mahalia's generation and fans—she is 25 years old—the venerated nineties and early aughts touchstones of Mariah, Carey TLC, Destiny’s Child, etc., do not engender a sense of retrospection as seventies and eighties music did in that period.
Firstly, those revered recordings have endured the vicissitudes of fashion with aplomb—they have never lapsed into irrelevance—hence the talk of “revival” is moot. This has been accelerated by the ubiquity of instant digital access, homogenizing the relationship with the past: any composition from any era can feel current given ample popularity. Moreover, those halcyon R&B numbers constituted a broader flow of soulful musicianship and song-crafting. This music persists in the cultural zeitgeist, ceaselessly reinterpreted and reimagined.
Mahalia’s oeuvre taps into the most soul-steeped and musically adroit facets of that R&B lineage. It acknowledges the need for a clear distinction between chart-oriented, hip-hop-suffused compositions and the more organic, sophisticated Neo-Soul of Jill Scott, Maxwell, Erykah Badu, etc. And in this album, more than ever, the fusion is seamless. Right out of the gate, bountiful radio-friendly hooks, pop sassiness, and au courant idioms abound, yet profound musicianship roots not just in the nineties but much farther back.
The album's first single, “Terms and Conditions,” co-written with confidante RAYE, concerns Mahalia delineating romantic boundaries. Her social media and catalog hint at romantic turmoil, but she is done with such tribulations. She lays down the law in unambiguous language over a beat oscillating between pop and R&B with a dash of daring hip-hop panache.
“Cheat” finds her and JoJo upbraiding a duplicitous lover over his covert polyamorous ways. Fortuitously, producers Spencer Stewart and J.D. Reid furnish a paradoxically laidback groove for their tirade. The songstresses take full advantage, excoriating the serial adulterer with pointed lyrics.
The accompanying video indulges in retro early aughts aesthetics and color schemes. After receiving an illuminating text on her bejeweled Motorola Razr and verifying the intel on Myspace, she briefs JoJo on the perfidy afoot. Once apprised, the ladies take a page from the Brandy and Monica playbook and ambush the scoundrel. The craven Casanova hastily absconds while the ladies revel in their newfound sisterhood against him.
In her previous 2019 album, Love and Compromise, Mahalia penned anthems about defiantly spurning men and emerging undefeated, like the sultry, spiraling “I Wish I Missed My Ex.” But for this sophomore collection, she sought to unveil her unfiltered self, ditch the bravado, and give listeners a glimpse behind the curtain. IRL successfully realizes that ambition, with tracks highlighting everything from the poise therapy, granted her to relationship trauma she believed resolved.
The plaintive summery strains of “Ready” set the tone for the album, showcasing the chanteuse at her most emotionally naked. The recurring reflection motif in the candid lyrics renders it eminently relatable, setting the confessional tone for what follows. Per Mahalia, this period of pronounced personal growth shaped the record, as evidenced throughout.
She enlists rap behemoth Stormzy for a featured turn on the measured love song “November,” hoping to spotlight his crooning and subvert expectations via a matrimonial collaboration. In “Wassup,” she interpolates Soul for Real's “Candy Rain” with rapper Kojey Radical, castigating a paramour (for spurring this “good girl” to “tequila with no chaser”). Joyce Wrice dazzles on her featured spot, “In My Head.”
Though over a decade has elapsed since she first signed with a major label at merely 13, not yet sure where her voice would transport her, this collection of 13 tracks suggests she is finally manifesting her dreams into reality, now in real life. In the title track, Mahalia sings, “I just want to see in real life what it is when I close my eyes.” IRL captures a young woman fully coming into her own—not just boldly throwing her hands up but bravely lowering her guard.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): Ready / In My Head / IRL