Lucas Foster likes those Glade candles that makes your house smell like you’re baking a cake.
It’s hard to articulate love and joy in a culture that suffocates one and monetizes the other. Perhaps this is why R&B is in a “strange” or “dead” place, depending on who you ask. This song is DRAM announcing that after forming an exploratory committee he is prepared for a 2020 bid to take up the mantle. “The Lay Down” is not just gorgeous, it’s not just lush, it’s expertly composed and perfectly executed; remiscent of D’Angelo’s last outing and far surpassing, in musicianship, writing and, most importantly, mood, most any attempts at something similar released this summer. It’s an old school studio system single, an interpolation of Roberta Flack And Peabo Bryson’s “Tonight I Celebrate My Love” with DRAM playing Peabo, H.E.R. playing Roberta, rich backing vocals, live bass, guitar and drums provided by Chad Smith, Pino Palladino and Andrew Watt. I genuinely look forward to watching where DRAM takes this.
