bLAck pARty’s ‘The Last Dance’ Seamlessly Merges his Many Sonic Worlds while Controlling the Dancefloor Pulse
Evan Dale | August 12, 2025
Jake Herman
Through a lens painted rose by a romantically inclined R&B artist, writing and crooning his way from interested first impressions to sensually explorative emotional bliss, the music of bLAck pARty has persisted in the boundary breaking orbit of the last decade’s Neo-Soul renaissance. His refusal to commit to any existing trends, and instead unreservedly navigate past the expectation of his stylistic spaces, has reinforced the scene’s indefinability since the release of his 2016 debut project, Mango. Through every project since, a wide-ranging vocal register has invoked the passionate discourse that he writes, poetically guiding a listener from eye contact at a house party to drawing the shades in the bedroom, without ever feeling anything but organic and nonchalant. But – from uplifting ballads like Bloom to funk-driven baby-makers like Dancing – that perspective only tells at best half the story.
Through a lens kaleidoscoped in a mosaic of different shapes and directions, steadfast in his inadherence to one sound or even many influences, the music of bLAck pARty has evolved and challenged preconceptions of modern soundscapes spanning funk, soul, disco, hip-hop, house and afrobeats. His vast and varied canon of production credits, ranging from Kari Faux and Childish Gambino to the entirety of his solo work, grants him a unique perspective on all angles of music. His obsession with the energy of the dancefloor is rooted in his experience DJing for Childish Gambino on tour. In that dichotomy between DJing and the established vocally-driven stylings that define so much of his work, his sound – especially with the release of 2022’s Hummingbird – has emerged as though he’s DJing his own album at an intimate club.
Through a coalescence in both lenses – bore from so many rangy sounds, influences, and experiences – and duality dug deeper by his roots traversing Little Rock, Arkansas to his daily life in Los Angeles, bLAck pARty continues to prove his complexity. And yet his sound, albeit long-legged in its nuance, feels focused. With the release of The Last Dance – his first project since 2022 – his sound feels as intentional as it ever has, seamlessly exploring more sonic spaces than ever before. And if there’s one true intent at its heart, The Last Dance is meant to get people moving.
You can see it in the speed shades he’s wearing on the album cover: bLAck pARty is here to throw, and fully partake in, the party. You can feel it as the first summery chords billow upward from the album’s intro, Distance Lover: And you can tell from the moment his first line, “you should be inside my bed,” vibrate into frame a few seconds later, that The Last Dance will so nimbly tightrope the dancefloor and the afterparty; the production design of his beatscapes and the R&B kid belting his high notes overtop them.
Truthfully, Distant Lover feels like a vintage version of bLAck pARty’s most polished self, flexing his crystalline vocal runs and bending in some quick-paced rhymes in the track’s second half. As the opener bleeds into its subsequent cut, Hola Mami, a faster pace still defined so crisply by his vocals that here hit even higher highs, bLAck pARty unearths an undeniable hit built on acoustic guitar riffs and a whole lot of sexual tension. And by the time the third track comes into focus, a listener couldn’t have guessed an even faster pace. Highly produced, rhythmically seducing, and intimate The Last Dance’s titular track feels anthemic of bLAck pARty’s new chapter, and the house production defined by it is sustained through the next two songs: Tonight and Can’t Feel My Face.
From there, The Last Dance undulates onwards, at times reaching downward, deep into jazz-tinged Neo-Soul – listen to Sober and Moonlight – and at other times back upwards to head-bobbing house heaters, coming to bLAck pARty’s eventual zenith with Sweet. The project’s flow gives its listeners on the dancefloor the same undulation – those same highs and more mellow moments – to transport them through the journey that is bLAck pARty’s newest album – that is simultaneously definitive and encapsulating of the breadth and balance in his artistic journey to date.