RUBII transcends stylistic grey areas with ‘Change & Remain,’ tethering understated soul to Southern hip-hop production
Evan Dale // September 4, 2024
The underrated capital of understated Soul, Birmingham has a tendency to boil over with emotionally warm, melodically blooming artistry. Though rather from Leicester, the part of the UK that gave the world Mahalia: the joyously effervescent Neo-Soulstress eternally submersed in love-drunk flux, is likewise blessing us with the expressively minimalist, yet emotionally immersive auditory aesthetic of RUBII. Bridging the fog-ridden grey areas of UK’s vast Neo-Soul, Hip-Hop, and R&B spaces, RUBII’s is a sound that should be simultaneously utilized to soundtrack a rainy drive down a coast too cold to swim in and a dark, bass-thumping night club still charging cheap for mixed drinks – like that which she is slated to headline on September 10: The Camden Assembly.
Her newest EP, Change & Remain is an homage to her one-of-a-kind delivery projected through an ardent exploration of downtempo hip-hop beatscapes. Blue-tones and calming chords delineate the project’s foundation from beginning to end. And though the EP runs only 16 minutes across 6 songs, its inherently determined texture allows it to feel much longer – much more immersive – to anyone listening. Put the project on repeat on a busy day for some subconscious listening, and you’ll hear many versions it.
Change & Remain – with Chameleon – is, from the jump, dynamic yet sonically seasonal. The lowkey chord play and fervent bass drives its identity forward through the next five songs in subsequence, while RUBII’s melodically hypnotizing vocal runs feel first and foremost instrumental. Her register plays incredibly consistent through each verse on every track, putting on a display of not only vocal control, but understanding for the kind of textural aesthetic she’s aiming for – and hitting bullseye – throughout the entire project. But it’s not only control and vision, RUBII’s voice is deeply emotive. The tonal minimalism feels dark in such a lighthearted way, that there’s no way to describe it sans any number of adjectives braced at odds with one another. Gloomy and warm. Cold yet inviting. Duality embodied in just one vocalist’s mellow melody allows it to expand and contract from track to track, granting each cut its own weighted grip on the larger project.
Secondly, her lyricism is every bit as unique and ubiquitous not only to her and the character of Change & Remain, but ultimately to all the post-genre, transcendent spaces rooted in the UK’s vast sonic experimentation, and now flowering across the globe. A wordsmith through and through, each of her words breathed into existence – and those of Kofi Stone in his verse on Chameleon – are vastly poetic and landscape painting. The outcome, where steadfast poeticism is never wasting a beat imbibes the textural subtleties of the EP’s production and allows her the space to roam a little more freely.
With Chameleon and Jealousy, RUBII’s beats feel tethered to the production of Southern hip-hop, while her understated delivery and spellbinding vocals shine a new light on the possibilities of such musicality when taking on her brand of a Neo-Soul heading. Dreams and Leave Me Alone are a bit more attached to a softer R&B edge, where delicate chimes and more melody bleed into the airwaves. And with Night Drive and Art of Getting By, all of her sonic changes of pace feel their most experimental, and as such push further into a trial of Art Pop adjacency.
Wholeheartedly an experimentalist, a transcendentalist, a post-genre explorer, RUBII – with Change & Remain – is a deep dive into the indefinable sonic grey areas of Birmingham and beyond.