Jacquees

Between the sultry, sweat-inducing croon and frequent declarations of his own greatness, Jacquees’ objective is clear: he won’t stop serenading us until he’s on top of the whole R&B game. The singer born Rodriquez Jacquees Broadnax in 1994 has been grinding toward that goal since he was a teen churning out mixtapes and winning talent shows around his native Georgia. Stylistically, he found his path by letting R&B’s sexually assertive classics guide him toward a confidence familiar to fans of pop-adjacent melodic rap. Before Jacquees held his own in collaborations with the likes of Chris Brown and Tory Lanez, he found his first musical home on Cash Money Records with 2014’s 19 EP. The frisky first project came alive in a hail of trap beats, vocoder’d come-ons, finger snaps and danceable grooves (see the Jodeci-referencing “Come Thru”). It also set the stage for his 2016 debut LP, 4275, which hopped eras by way of both styles and guests: Jagged Edge (’90s), Trey Songz (’00s) and Young Thug (’10s). While his 2018 tape with Cash Money cofounder Birdman, Lost at Sea 2, found Jacquees ruminating on the depth of his ambition, his 2019 album boiled it down to three words: King of R&B. Runaway single “Your Peace” combined a luxe R. Kelly sample with a steamy Auto-Tuned cameo from Lil Baby, encapsulating Jacquees’ knack for using the past to remix the present. It takes more than a cocky album title to open a door to conversations about legacy, but Jacquees is actively shaping the genre's future.