With his first full-length album, A Brief Nirvana, Khamari reveals shades of Frank Ocean in tone. But there’s something decidedly less melancholy about Khamari’s delivery. R&B is certainly moving in intriguing directions with artists like Khamari.
Intelligent, cerebral (in moments) and incredibly tender, I believe everything he says. Without outwardly saying as much, he’s made a promise to help carry the R&B torch that so many people seem to believe has long dimmed after the early 2000s. However, artists like Khamari remind us to actually pay attention to the things we love the most. (“Take notice of what’s in front of you,” Alicia once said.)
A Brief Nirvana is still very steeped in R&B yet intelligently blends aspects of folk (“Cherry Picking”), alternative and adult contemporary (“A Sacred Place”) and soul music (“Tell Me,” “Right My Wrongs”) that harkens back to a time when it was okay, in fact expected, that artists would take the genre and do something genuinely interesting with it. Khamari and his peers are most definitely don't something genuinely interesting with it. Stay tuned.