“Last night tried to get some snooze/Dreamed we was breaking up, we were through,” he sings. “When I looked around you was gone/Found that a house is really not a home/When you’re alone.”
“This Time” is the second single from K’Jon’s major-label debut, “I Get Around” (Universal Republic), one of this year’s most promising R&B albums and also one of its least expected. For the first time in recent memory the most vital new soul music addresses particularly adult concerns, with a particularly adult sound.
Nowhere is this style more clear than on “On the Ocean,” K’Jon’s debut single, which has been on Billboard’s Hot Adult R&B Airplay chart for nearly six months. A dramatic exhale of a song, it’s a palpable craving for something that, especially in a recession, is more erotic than love: financial stability.
“Every now and then, it feels like/My ship has gone and sailed away,” K’Jon sings with just the faintest scrape of tension in his voice. “Now the tide is coming in, I see the waves flowing/Out there on the ocean, I know my ship is coming in.” Behind him are misty new- age-esque walls of sound, plinking piano and the sounds of gurgling water. All the while K’Jon remains placid, never trying to overwhelm or be overwhelmed.
