The Rhyme Suite

A review of Ari Lennox’s third studio album.

Ari Lennox just has it, and she’s had it for a while now.

I once cosplayed as an American University student to get a glimpse of her in late 2019, just months after the release of her debut album Shea Butter Baby (2019), and it was worth the journey. When you’re young and new to D.C., a trip from Howard University’s part of NW D.C. to the American University part feels like quite the trek. 

Nevertheless, the D.C. native entranced the audience with her beautiful vocals and silly anecdotes. But more than that, it was her grasp of soul that took hold of us, conjuring sensuality in a manner similar to that of Jill Scott. 

That experience made me a true fan, and ever since, I’ve been hanging on to every note, every word, and every “eeeeee.”

So when the singer dropped Vacancy (2026), her third studio album and first venture with Interscope Records in late January, I was elated. 

“Mobbin’ in DC,” the album’s opener, is a sonic sister of her debut project’s “Chicago Boy” and “Up Late.” It conveys a late night link up, but as she tells him, “You know where I stay, you know where I be…You know my location, mobbin’ in DC,” I can’t help but think of the four-year break between this album and her last one, age/sex/location (2022). Sure, she’s talking to him, but she’s sort of talking to us too. She’s back, so we better hit up the phone and stop playing games with her. That caught my attention immediately. 

It’s easy to fall into the songs that follow. “Vacancy,” “Pretzel,” and “Under The Moon” tap perfectly into the soulful sound that we’re accustomed to. But with “High Key” and “Twin Flame,” she taps into a more contemporary R&B sound. The project maintains a nice balance of the two – the soulful Ari that many of us fell in love with, and the Ari that is clearly adapting to the R&B landscape. This is largely thanks to Elite, the album’s executive producer and a frequent collaborator of Dreamville, her former home label of 10 years.

But then we get to songs like “Soft Girl Era,” the album’s leading single that came out in early-2025. The song sort of grew on me in the greater context of the album, as it falls almost right in the middle, but it’s still not my favorite.

When I first heard this song, I immediately felt as though it were a less-interesting variant of “Pressure,” a single from 2021 that charted at No. 1 on the Billboard Adult R&B Airplay chart. 

The thing with “Soft Girl Era” is that it came out a couple of years too late – the term “soft girl era” entered the cultural lexicon closer to when “Pressure” blew up. It felt like the musical equivalent of a TikTok trend that finds its way to Reels or Facebook a few months later.

This single sort of represents what is missing from this project. Even with its nostalgic openers and a clear “grown woman” tone across the project, her raw and authentic takes on love and dating in this current hellscape are not as plentiful on Vacancy. 

The album is a solid effort, but the “vibe” takes precedence over the substance of what is actually being said. The songwriting, while not uninteresting, feels a tad more generic than what she’s previously exhibited. 

As an example, I think of songs like “POF,” the opener off of age/sex/location, where she proclaims, “Lord knows I don’t need no one, But sure would be sweet.” My jaw dropped when, on the same track, she said, “The audacity to lecture me about your Christianity, then turn around and try to f*** on me like it was gon’ be easy.”

These lyrics are not only memorable, but they also invoked a strong reaction because they were real.

Even on the aforementioned “Chicago Boy,” it captures the feeling of lust one might feel for a complete stranger, one that she happens to meet in a Chicago CVS while looking for Ricola.

Ari has always found a way to balance humor with sensuality with the real, but on Vacancy, it just doesn’t feel as authentic. Sure, on “Cool Down,” she says that “Everybody gets a little down sometimes…Everybody’s in such a rush these days.” While these are two true statements, they are also quite superficial. And she certainly exhibits much conviction while saying, “Holding on but my heart won’t let me, Loved you, how stupid, so foolish” on “Wake Up.” But for a majority of the subject matter on these songs, I can’t tell what draws from real life and what draws from social media buzzwords and hypothetical scenarios.

This is not to say that the songs must be entirely serious or realistic – songs like “B.M.O,” “Waste My Time,” and even “24 Seconds” off the new joint bang for a reason. Black women are allowed to be fun and sexy through their music.

But I just don’t feel as connected to this project because it’s not as raw or vulnerable.

It’s like I said before, Ari Lennox just has it, and she has for a while now. But Vacancy just doesn’t do the best job at distinguishing the figure that we know as Ari Lennox. Some songs feel distinctly Ari, but for others, they might not sound that weird coming from another artist with a few tweaks. Technically, the latter point can be made with most artists – covers and interpolations are dually plentiful and successful for a reason. Yet a song’s identity is wholly influenced by the artist on it, and for some of these songs, Ari’s identity just feels…absent. 

However, this doesn’t mean that the songs are bad by any means. I might just be there whining to “Company,” a reggae infused track featuring Buju Banton, on her upcoming tour. And I might just find myself nearly as captivated as I was in late 2019.

Yet, at the same time, I am of the belief that she can give us more. 

One can’t help but think that her showcase of vulnerability on social media contributed to the lack of vulnerability that we see here. In late 2024, the singer claimed that she would be stepping away from social media permanently while also airing out her grievances with Dreamville.

At this point, in 2026, she’s still active on social media – or, at the least, there are people posting on her behalf on her official social media accounts. Yet, she has pulled her personality back more and more over the years. This decision is more than valid, as she has faced criticism for everything from her attitude toward the music industry to her looks. At the end of the day, she’s still a person, and respect should not be lessened just because she’s a public figure.

Ari Lennox is talented, and while Vacancy might not resonate as much as past projects of hers, I will not be turning in my fan card. I’ll just be waiting for the next project, hopeful that it upholds her authenticity in a more resonant way.