After selecting up his first Grammy (finest R&B music for co-writing SZA‘s “Snooze”) earlier this yr, Leon Thomas is gearing as much as launch his new studio album.
“This new album is certainly a special breadth of sound and sonics and even lyrical selections,” Thomas informed Billboard earlier than his efficiency at Nashville’s inaugural Blavity Home Social gathering on Friday (June 14). “I really feel just like the work that I’m doing now could be positively elevated and persevering with to develop and construct on who I’m as an artist, [and] doing exhibits actually performed into that. There’s loads of power to what I bought happening.”
In August 2023, Thomas dropped his debut album, Electrical Nightfall, which featured collaborations with Ty Dolla $ign (“Love Jones”) and Benny the Butcher (“X-Rated”), in addition to the breakout single “Breaking Level.” He launched the set on Motown Information through Ty Dolla $ign’s EZMNY Information imprint, to which Thomas was signed because the label’s first artist in 2022.
“[The last album was] post-breakup. ‘Breaking Level’ was the flagship music speaking about it,” he defined. “[Going into the new album], I used to be on my single journey simply doing my factor and I documented loads of the issues I used to be going by means of. It’s known as Mutt, like a canine, as a result of I really feel like at the moment I used to be being a canine. I used to be comfortable being single and I needed to doc that within the panorama of R&B, and [there are] many alternative ways in which I do it. It’s not all tremendous poisonous, loads of it is rather introspective and susceptible as properly.”
Thomas, in fact, isn’t any stranger to traversing the huge vary of tropes that comprise R&B and hip-hop, having lent his skills to songs from Toni Braxton (2014’s “I’d Moderately Be Broke), Kehlani (2019’s “Butterfly”), Ariana Grande (2020’s “Nasty”), Giveon (2021’s “For Tonight”), SZA (2022’s “Snooze”) and Ty Dolla $ign & Kanye West (2024’s “Burn”). Whereas the forged of gamers on Electrical Nightfall remained comparatively tight, a bunch of collaborators are within the kitchen for its follow-up.
“Me, Ty Dolla $ign, Wale, Child Rose, all of us got here collectively and did a bunch of various joints on there,” Thomas revealed. “I’m attempting to see if we’re going to maintain the Madlib joint that I’ve, hopefully, that makes the album, that may be a very cool music for folks to listen to.”
Thomas has not but set a launch date for the album. His most up-to-date single, “Harmful Sport,” a collaboration with ESTA, arrived on Could 24.