Even though recent discussions about whether R&B and soul music have died have been overblown, there’s still a nugget of truth somewhere in all the noise. Once upon a time, it was kind of a mark of music media’s inherent racism that singers kept getting classified as rappers in news coverage — especially when it was negative.

But as Long Beach singer Giveon rightly pointed out in an interview with Uproxx last week ahead of his new album Beloved, the increasing influence rap has had over R&B’s sound and content has made that tendency less and less of a malapropism over the past few years.

All the rappers appear to be singing, and singers increasingly carry themselves with the bearings of their rougher-edged counterparts. That goes double for the men’s side of R&B, which Giveon notes has become increasingly dominated by female voices — the Sailorrs, Summer Walkers, and SZAs. There appears to be less space for men to share their hearts in a similar way.

Which is why Beloved isn’t only a breath of fresh air, it’s a mission statement for Giveon; to return some of the balance back to the genre. On it, he’s backed exclusively by a live band; Lyrically, he avoids tired “situationship” narratives, although he doesn’t shy away from the occasional emotional confusion that accompanies romantic courtship. It’s a gorgeous, emotionally poignant project, and if it was a movie I was rating on Letterboxd, I’d give it five stars and a heart, and would definitely watch it again.

I was super-duper excited to talk to you, because of the video for “The Beach.” Go Jackrabbits!

You went to Poly?

Class of 2003! You must think I’m old as hell [Giveon just turned 30]. I have to ask you, what’s your go-to order at Poly Burger (which was Tommy’s back when I went there)?

I was never there. My mom always made me go straight home because something always ended up happening over there.

And it was Tommy’s for me, too, because I also grew up over there. I went to the apartments next door. I lived there before I went to Poly. I went to elementary school at Roosevelt, across the street from Poly. I probably would be a whole different person if I had an order, but I would get… I guess my homies would bring just that greasy brown bag of fries, though.

So let’s talk about Beloved. I listened to it about three or four times just while I was here in New Orleans covering Essence Festival. My partner’s on the trip with me, and she goes, “What is this? Oh, my goodness. That sounds so old-school,” and that was something that I certainly noticed. It’s an appeal to the ’60s, ’70s era, which is the sound I grew up on, sort of after the fact. What made you want to go back to that era specifically for this album?

I mean, even just the way I started, my voice, my tone… I don’t pull from my peers. I go back. So I think I was already there vocally. I think I just took a chance on world-building because I didn’t want to do it before, because that’s a difficult thing to do. You can’t play with that.

You have to actually do it properly, or you just look crazy. And especially, my family would tell me, “This sounds crazy.” You just don’t want to miss the mark. So it’s always the artist I’ve been trying to be, I just didn’t have the skill yet. Even though my fan base is still the younger group, they’re not even going to know where that’s from. I feel honored to be able to introduce them to that world and that sound.

I love that you said world-building, because I’ve been really deep on my movie kick. How did you build that skill up over the past couple of years? What have you been doing to get to that point where you felt confident in your world-building skill to do this version of the album?

I think just consuming all types of mediums — not just music — and understanding what I naturally gravitate towards. And I realize the stuff that I gravitate towards is when the body of work is all cohesive. I’ve always been just an album artist and the albums that I gravitate to, they’re all albums. Me and my team, we know how to pick a single, but I’m not a singles guy, so I like stories. I was writing stories before I was writing songs, so I think it’s just natural, it’s just a part of my DNA.

Now, executing it is a whole different thing, and being able to articulate your vision to certain people to help elevate it and bring it to life, that’s a skill I learned recently. So now, it’s going to be more in depth because I used to just be like, “Well, I want to do it like this, like this, this.” But now I’m like, “No, this is the textures I want to feel. These are the emotions I want to feel, these are the colors I want to feel.” But it takes practice, and that’s why I haven’t made this album until now.

What is the narrative of the album? If it were a movie or a TV show, what would the genre be? What is the tagline? What’s the synopsis of that story that you’re trying to tell, and how does each song tie into that?

It’s something written and directed from a male point of view. I emphasize that because just the space is dominated by the female point of view, which I think that’s how I grew up, too. My mom was playing a lot of Mary [J. Blige], a lot of Anita Baker, a lot of Aretha Franklin. So I grew up on the female point of view, but she also adds some Teddy [Pendergrass], Luther Vandross, Al Green in there. And I feel like as time went along, the male point of view was kind of drowned out because we were just being out really outperformed. I think the male space started to infuse too much with hip-hop. So some R&B artists, you couldn’t tell what they were.

The writing of it, if I had to say it’s a movie… I don’t want to say rom-com, because it’s not a comedy, but it’s like a romantic drama, but it’s also very realistic. I talk to people like this all the time: I’m not a love song type of guy. I’ll have a song about love within the album, because that’s just the course of how relationships go. If this was a movie, it would be shot and directed by A24 or the Safdie Brothers. It’s a little moodier, but it would be like the same color grade as Uncut Gems and stuff like that. It’d be that.

I love that that’s your reference point. I was like, “I can’t get into movies,” and now you’re speaking my language, man. I love what you said about the romantic drama of it all is, the big thing everybody’s talking about now is The Materialists, which really wasn’t a rom-com either.

The same way I’ve tried to make this album, I feel like I’m also slowly, naturally progressing into film at some point. Because these stories are timeless stories. So also just putting these stories into a medium of music is a little like I’m doing these stories a disservice. I could build them all the way out.

I love that you have a song on there called “Twenties” because that’s when you actually are getting that experience. That’s when you’re running your head into those walls and bumping your head on those low ceilings and learning what it is to be in a relationship. In the spirit of that, what is something that you now know about relationships, something you now know about love, that you would wish you knew in your twenties?

I think when you’re in a disagreement with your lady, that harder, more assertive approach does not work. You think it works, but it does not work. You save so much time and energy if you’re more delicate with your approach. If you come from more of an emotional standpoint, rather than just trying to solve it, what’s the solution? Because that feels dismissive, or you can accidentally invalidate them, even though you’re trying to get to a solution, obviously, that just doesn’t work. You just got to meet them where they’re at.

What is one of the harder aspects of working with live instrumentation? How much input or say do you have in how the song sonically turns out? Are you sitting there writing notes on the bar, or are you directing the band? How do you know when it’s the right sound?

I think the hardest part about that is dealing with these high-level musicians to where another musician could be like, “Okay, let’s do a five on a B flat,” blah, blah, blah. And I’m just like, “Ah. Make it more gritty.”

Not having that language is like trying to speak Spanish, and I only know a couple words. And that could get frustrating, but then I’m surrounded by Sevn Thomas, who executive-produced my album, he’s really articulate in that regard, too. You just have to say it a certain way to certain musicians because they’re trained a certain way, like music theory, classical, so they don’t understand how to play wrong, so they sometimes don’t understand groove or pocket or soul or something like that.

James Brown was like, “I can take any band and make them a James Brown band, and then without me, none of them could be a James Brown band.” Because he had the essence. So it’s just being able to articulate what soul is because there’s no words for it, so it is hard.

You said something earlier about the vocal growth, and there’s a certain song on there where you hit a falsie, and I was like, “He ain’t going to hear no more dinosaur jokes.”

That’s another thing we really need to educate the audience about, too. This is something that people got to understand this stuff, so they’ll just enjoy it more — like falsettos and textures and tones, and even people not singing in key or not singing the right notes. If you go back and watch Sade playing Glastonbury, if you go back and watch Teddy playing live on BBC, they’re not caring about that.

And when you’re not caring about that, it creates a more authentic, raw performance. But I think people now are obsessed with this perfectionism, this Photoshop of music, and then complain about the quality. But as artists and us writers as well, we have to realize we’ve given too much. We’ve given just too much access to the listener. The listener is going to listen to what we make, so we have to educate them on what’s actually good. “No, this is what’s good.”

I know that you have to answer a lot of the same questions because you do a lot of interviews. I have to ask a lot of the same questions, I have to ask all the biographical stuff, all stuff that gets boring to answer over and over again. What’s something that you always wish someone would ask you or something that you always wanted to talk about in an interview that you never really got a chance to?

I guess the perspective of why I make music in the first place. Because I think sometimes people assume if someone’s an artist or a musician or something, they’re making music to get famous. I think there’s a huge discrepancy of conversation around making music because really, it’s just innate. I don’t think I get a lot of questions about purpose. I guess they don’t care.

Giveon, right now, I care. What is your purpose?

I think my purpose was to make emotions for Black men more palatable and more acceptable.

Grew up in a house with all boys. Emotions, you would get flamed for. So I put it into the crafts and then I could present it, and I don’t get flamed for it. I’m like, “I just said this to you,” they’d be like, “Yeah, but it got a melody and some music now, so it’s okay.” If a girl’s getting on my nerves or if I’m getting on her nerves, if I just say that, that’s crude, that’s mean. If I put it in a song and say it, it’s artistic.

So I’m like, “Oh, okay.” It’s just, it was almost like my cowardly way of expressing myself, but it works.

Beloved is out now via Epic Records. Find more information here.