‘UNDRA’ is the Addictingly Authentic Poetry of Reginald Helms Jr. Finally, Fully Realized
Evan Dale | July 2, 2026
Juan Nieto
It’s been a long half-decade, and the slow drip of less than two singles a year during that stretch – accompanied by roughly the same rate of visual releases – where our eyes and ears have all been opened to the elusive mystère of reggie. The Houston-rooted artist operates in the kind of sonic grey area that makes a lot of sense once one realizes he’s a member of Zero Fatigue. The Chicago-oriented crew – that, amongst others, is called home by Smino, Monte Booker, and Ravyn Lenae – has long been defined by the stylistic tight-roping of soulful raps and R&B-tinged poetics floating over beats that tether between jazz instrumentals and electronically nuanced production. Even through his rare releases and exceedingly uncommon appearances as he’s delved deeper into his personal life and fatherhood since first gaining notoriety with early releases in 2020, reggie has never seemed to lose momentum en route to the drop of his long-awaited debut album.
Now that it’s here, UNDRA blooms with the indefinable nonchalance that has for years left the project’s imminence so anticipated. He breathes life into it with the ease, not of an artist who is striving for an air of effortlessness, but of one who is so organically encapsulating an innermost id with his sound that it takes on his own understated confidence. There are few, if any, moments throughout UNDRAwhere reggie doesn’t auditorily exist in a state of vulnerable mellow. His is a sound that exudes a deft adherence to delicate vocals and open lyricism without ever feeling emotionally soft, or thematically overcooked. Instead, his sensitive croonings are thoughtfully centered, well-met by an audience starved of balance and authenticity. His diary-entry songwriting makes him a relatable speaker in a scene oversaturated with everything from fake-gold braggadocio to forced, false emotion.
UNDRA is an artist unapologetically exploring the range of his sound, and doing so now that he’s finally ready to. It’s no surprise that timing feels timely when an artist of reggie’s uncalculated calm waits for the right time. But the project is much more than timing. UNDRA’s range, and reggie’s confidence exploring the reaches of his own creative extents could have only come with time, sure, but finding the balance as those extents have continued to grow wider can likewise be a high hurdle for such an indefinable artist to climb. UNDRA’s equilibrium lies in its progression.
Beautiful Things 1st scene/audition gently introduces the listener to the project, with reggie bubbling across a minimalist, nearly subconscious acoustic progression until it explodes with the uplifting collectivity of a chorus repeating his words back to him, and back to all of us, in tow. That kind of slow roll towards a sudden zenith is repeated at a macro scale as the project pushes forward. Forward through the gentle meanderings from the layers of sunshine in musical form that is Cali Goldrush, to the introspectively aimed lazy day anthem that is sometimes, reggie plays with his soothing falsetto’s adjacency to organically instrumental backdrops. The result is an unendingly listenable tranquility.
2b acts as UNDRA’s intermissionary transition phase, again microcosmic of the album’s larger evolution at play. Beginning softly, as does the project as a whole, the track spins its way upwards, electronically immersing listeners in a progression towards bigger, bolder sounds. And Scene_02 is UNDRA’s first real expression of reggie the rapper. Effortless as his sound when he’s delicately serenading the listener through the album’s opening stretch, the track is a playful albeit not unserious glimpse into one of his sound’s far-reaching bookends.
reggie’s falsetto doesn’t abandon us in UNDRA’s second act, though. It simply evolves, too. At the project’s to-this-point standout hit, congrats!, it takes on a more cinematic and grandiose position. Layers of his register, pops of guitar strings, and waves of unrecognizable yet artistically arranged sound envelop the listener in an exhibit of genre indefinability that feels expressive of one end of reggie’s auditory existence at large.
The same can be true – albeit in the opposite direction – of the album’s closing track, Takin It There, where – over an effervescent Monte Booker beat – he again raises the volume and the energy towards something else unexpected, yet still well within his wheelhouse.
