With modern dating being reduced to app-swiping, toxic nonchalance and even balloon-popping humiliation, we’re losing recipes on how to properly yearn for each other. But while most try to keep their guards up, Baby Rose is staying devoted to what’s real. Fresh off winning her first GRAMMY Award in the Best R&B Album category for her part on Leon Thomas’ MUTT, the unmistakable contralto returns with Yearnalism, her third studio album steeped in confidence, care and liberating love. The singer-songwriter-producer defines yearnalism as the process and documentation of desire in its many forms: “Desiring freedom, desiring love, desiring what you can't have, desiringexpansion.” This streamlined 12-song LP of soon-to-be classics creates a bumpy roadmap ofdesire free from ego. Rose notes that despite the current trend of “too cool” emotional avoidance in music and entertainment, she pushed herself and her collaborators to bare a different side of themselves. “If you're coming into my court, you're coming to yearn,” she declares with a laugh. Three albums in, Yearnalism is a sonic snapshot of Rose at her most self-assured. “This is mereally honing in and trusting that signature, catching lightning-in-a-bottle sound,” she says. “This is kind of a lesson in me really figuring out that my favorite process is being a part of the crew, being a part of this whole moment.” Baby Rose has been building up to this moment, brick by brick, for almost a decade. Raised between Washington D.C. and Fayetteville, N.C. on artists like Nina Simone, Donny Hathaway and Janis Joplin, the musician born Jasmine Rose Wilson has been a mainstay in alternative R&B since her 2019 debut, To Myself. That’s when the smoky resonance of her voice and a wise-beyond-her-years presence first stopped listeners in their tracks. Since then, she has held her own on records with Ari Lennox, Big K.R.I.T., Q, BADBADNOTGOOD and J. Cole. She closed out the end credits of Hollywood blockbuster Creed III and lent her talents to A24’s Materialists both onscreen and off by giving the film’s soundtrack two songs of aching texture and moonlighting as a wedding singer in a cameo. She’s graced stages with everyone from Robert Glasper to Vince Staples and made appearances in performance art at The Museum of Modern Art and ballets at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in arrangements by Misty Copeland’s choreographer, the legendary Kyle Abraham. Her industry admirers include heavyweights like SZA, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, H.E.R, Kehlani, James Blake and Olivia Dean. Plainly put, Rose’s name rings bells and her artistry speaks even higher volumes. Getting to the level of self-love that each track of Yearnalism exudes has been a journey for Rose and one that she plans to keep taking. Rose credits therapy for allowing her to call past bouts of anxiety and depression by their names, friends like SZA for introducing her to methods of breathwork and meditation and keeping God first for helping her stay grounded through her journey. With her continued study of Yearnalism, Rose reminds the listener that it’s worth it to say the hard parts out loud with honesty and to love in spite of fear.
