In art, effortlessness can go under-rewarded. Strain for greatness and you will likely be rewarded with plaudits but become too polished and the circle can begin to close. You become again, somehow, less worthy of note. Rochelle Jordan, the British-Canadian singer, is someone who has spent well over a decade cruising, bafflingly, under the radar. All the way back in 2012 she released Pressure, one of the best R&B records nobody has ever heard. In 2025 she remains niche, to an extent, even as her 90s-dance revivalism is more in vogue than it’s been in years.
On the same day Jordan released her new, third, album, superstar Doja Cat dropped Vie, her own record of shimmering, Lex Luger-worshipping jams. Across fifty minutes, Doja, ever the musical chameleon, plays the role well. As a pop-star, her versatility remains her most defining quality. In a just world though, people would simply listen to Through The Wall, an album made by an artist who has long occupied the same space as if she were its sole inhabitant.
Through The Wall sounds expensive. I suspect it cost far less to make than Vie, and yet it sounds richer and more graceful – as if the synths are made of velvet, as if the hi-hats are cut glass. Part of that effect is coherence. For the length of her career Jordan has maintained a relationship with producer KLSH, and his continued presence helps Jordan coax the disparate worlds of DāM FunK, Terry Hunter, Japan’s Initial Talk, and KAYTRANADA’s chic, slow-grooving house into the same burnished cosmos.
Jordan succeeds by not attempting to be all things to all people. Her sound is a consistent one, defined by soft, drifting vocals and modest BPMs: late night R&B for a world where quiet storm morphs into oscillating garage, for a universe where Aaliyah is queen, sovereign and North Star.
There are pockets of raucousness among the smooth, like the thumping drums which precede the final chorus on ‘Bite The Bait’ or the gnawing synths which disrupt the back half of ‘Sweet Sensation’, but Through The Wall mostly just goes and goes, slipping impeccably from one shimmering cut to the next, like a collection of fine jewellery. This gracefulness means some songs distinguish themselves less conspicuously than the rest, but there are too many gorgeous tracks to care, from hypnotic lead single ‘Doing It Too’ to ‘Ladida’, a song with a chorus so bulletfproof that it wraps the temporal lobes in chains.
The press for the album stakes the claim for Rochelle Jordan as “the future of R&B”. I’m not so sure about that. This is unabashedly retro-stuff, cut from the same silken cloth as Timbaland and Noah Shebib. But that’s no bad thing. Rochelle makes the sound her own, effortlessly. Some music is just cool, plain and simple. Coolness isn’t an underappreciated quality, but it is harder to come by. Through The Wall gets there.
