Table For Two

“R&B itself is never going to die, and I wanted to shine a light on women because I feel it’s time,” Lucky Daye tells Apple Music of Table for Two, which arrived just in time for Valentine’s Day. The EP is brief, but it packs a punch both vocally and emotionally as it explores the ins and outs of romance. For each track, the singer is paired with a female counterpart—Yebba, Tiana Major9, Mahalia, Ari Lennox, Queen Naija and Joyce Wrice. Together, these women offer a striking snapshot of contemporary R&B’s multitude of voices and tones, and inject a feminine energy into the dialogic nature of the music. Lucky, who says the project was born out of a desire to honour them as well as his love for collaboration in general, brings a balance to the songs that is modern even as it calls up tradition. It’s part of what he sees as a push to restore the genre back to its rightful place as the centre. “At the end of the day, everything comes from R&B,” he says. “It can't be forgotten, and that's my job.” Here, he talks us through how each of the project's tracks came about.

Ego Trip
“In my mind, the whole concept behind everything was really futuristic. And this was before quarantine and everything was going digital, I wanted the whole EP to sound digital. I wanted to pretend we were in this world of just internet, and it's like you enter into it and then you start dating. Maybe you're inside of Tinder or whatever. Because if you listen to the end of the first song, there's another interlude that mentions every social media platform.”

How Much Can a Heart Take
“I wanted it to feel like a book. I didn't want it to end with the first song. So it's like 'How Much Can a Heart Take' is a question. The way that it's moving and the way that we did without the rules and the non-standard activities, as far as chords and singing too much, I just wanted to bring singers. Yebba came through with it, and it had to begin with that song because that song is the first song of the show—it's explosive, her vocal ability and just her energy in itself.”

On Read
“It's kind of like how people get mad at weird stuff like being on read. So it was just like, 'All right, bet, that's where we at? Let's make this a whole thing.' People break up over it. It's real life. And it's pointless.”

My Window
“Well, first time I heard this sample was from Missy Elliott [‘The Rain’], and I always loved it—that's one of my favourite songs. But we were able to create a UK, rainy, romantic, sad—you know that UK vibe? When you think about Europe and it's overcast with rain and people with black umbrellas just walking around like it ain't raining. I felt [Mahalia] could definitely emote that. Her voice is smooth, it's simple, it gets straight to the point, and she put some sauce on it at the same time.”

Access Denied
“I didn't have anybody on that track before, it was just me. And when I played it for Ari [Lennox], she said that it was tight and she would hop on it. I felt like it would be a great dance version of the future. Like if anybody had a futuristic dance-off, it'd be tribal and what they remember from what real life used to be. It's tribal to me, but it's still rhythmic and it's still soulful. That's a gem.”

Dream
“It kind of reminded me of the 2000s, and I loved that. It made me feel nostalgic. It wasn't too much, it wasn't just like a little bit, but it was just enough. [Queen Naija and I] are singing together—it felt like Usher and Alicia Keys 'My Boo' vibes. I ain't never heard her do no wrong with her voice at all. It's always on.”

Falling in Love
“This one came to me late because I didn't think [Joyce Wrice] wanted me to stay on the song. I wrote the song originally with Davion Farris, who's SiR's brother, and we wrote it with a girl in mind. Joyce was like, 'Ooh, I want it,' and when we heard her voice on it, it was undeniably a yes. [The song] is like either we're going to do this or we're not. Once we get to this last one, it's like, 'My heart is all the way in it, don't even play with me, let's do this or not do this before I close this book.'”