In 2016, Walsall teenager Jorja Smith emerged with Blue Lights, a Dizzee Rascal-sampling lullaby narrating black British youth’s fear of the police. This impressive debut led to co-signs from Drake, Stormzy, and Kendrick Lamar, not to mention the 2018 Brits critics’ choice award. The 20-year-old’s first album finds her standing on her own two feet. A gentle record of lithe, accomplished slow jams, it toys with a myriad of genres: while delicate R&B is the most obvious reference, there’s a UK dance nod too – not in the literal way of On My Mind, her 2017 garage collaboration with Preditah, but that distinctly polished percussive sound is evident throughout, in the slinkiness of February 3rd and the humid undercurrent of The One.
The social commentary is limited to Blue Lights and the soft rap of freestyle Lifeboats (“Why do we watch them drown / We’re too selfish in the lifeboats”), but the album’s appeal lies especially in Smith’s silken accounts of despondent romances – soaring, hopeless ballads about adolescent crushes. Ebbing and flowing with daydreams and a glossy but gritty pulse, Lost & Found is quietly, confidently remarkable.
