The intro to Sasha Keable’s “tell me what you want” sounds like it was pulled from 2012, back when R&B still moved slowly enough to let you feel things.
That reflective, richly soulful quality that disappeared when everyone decided bedroom tracks needed trap hi-hats and 808s to matter. Keable brings it back, and she’s not editing herself for anyone.
Most queer R&B uses careful pronouns. It keeps things ambiguous enough that straight listeners can project themselves into the narrative. Keable doesn’t bother.
“Your fingers so deep inside my body, girl, it lingers” isn’t coded language.
Neither is “got me biting harder on your necklace, girl, just wanna thank you for your service.”
She’s addressing a woman, singing about sex with a woman, using the same explicit directness that straight R&B has claimed for decades. The difference is she’s not pretending it’s something else.
The production from Eddie Lopes, Charlie Pitts and Kent Azares gives her room to work. Drums sit back. Synths breathe.
When Keable sings “I’m tryna work out how your fingers,” then lets the line hang before finishing it, the space does the work.
Her voice stacks harmonies that feel more like texture than decoration. It’s restraint you rarely hear anymore, where silence matters as much as sound.
What separates this from typical explicit R&B is how little Keable cares about softening it.
“Break it down, do your little dance on my body / Couple grand keep it real nasty for me” doesn’t apologise.
The BBC Sound Poll and Brit Award nominations suggest people are paying attention, but this track doesn’t sound like it was written for industry approval. It sounds like it was written for someone specific, and everyone else is just listening in.
The song appears on ACT II, the deluxe edition of her Act Right EP dropping 6 February. But the track works independently of any larger project.
Keable’s touring Blue Note Jazz Club in New York and Los Angeles this April, which tells you something about how she’s positioning herself.
Not as a pop crossover act, but as someone operating in the tradition of grown R&B that doesn’t water itself down.
UK R&B keeps producing artists like Keable who understand that specificity hits harder than universality.
The track isn’t trying to be for everyone. It’s for people who recognise what “stay down there till you’re drowning” means without needing it explained. That’s not exclusion. That’s just knowing your audience.
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