H.E.R. Steps Into the Spotlight on “Back of My Mind”

The mystery of the unknown has always been a draw in music, but few performers have wielded its temptations and protections like H.E.R. The R. & B. singer popped up, seemingly fully formed, in 2016, as an incognito major-label artist, benefitting from both the thrills of uncertainty and the infrastructure of the industry apparatus. The gambit paid off almost instantly. “So who is she?” one Los Angeles Times headline read. The only thing anyone knew for sure was that she wrote and produced the music, and that it was being passed around with the hush-hush secrecy of a sensitive dossier. The question was still being posed in 2019, when H.E.R. went from being a secret to a “surprise” Grammy nominee, for awards including Best New Artist. Until recently, she found comfort in the invisibility. “I wanted to be anonymous,” she told the Guardian. “Living my truth was very hard—I felt vulnerable.”

Despite all the obfuscation, the H.E.R. origin story is one of child stardom. Born Gabriella Wilson in Vallejo, California, the precocious singer was discovered at nine when she performed at the Apollo, singing Aretha Franklin. She did a mini-tour of morning shows in 2007 and 2008—“Today,” “Maury,” “Good Morning America,” and “The View.” At twelve, she started working with Alicia Keys’s management company, and she signed to RCA Records as a teen. After a few quiet years, Wilson reëmerged as H.E.R.—which, in a light irony, stands for Having Everything Revealed. She was an R. & B. spectre, camera-averse with an enigmatic persona and a frictionless, atmospheric sound. It didn’t take long for the artist to become an A-list darling (Rihanna playing a H.E.R. song on Instagram) and an awards-show fixture, despite having a marginal cultural impact. H.E.R. scored as many nominations at the 2019 Grammys as Cardi B and Childish Gambino (the alias of Donald Glover)—artists with a much higher profile. In 2020, she performed the “In Memoriam” segment at the Emmys, and she took part in the pregame ceremony at Super Bowl LV, in February. In some ways, these appearances feel like a prestige ouroboros—the governing bodies and producers of the same types of events cyclically patting one another on the back.

This year, H.E.R. ascended to rare air, winning both the Grammy for Song of the Year and an Oscar for Best Original Song, a few weeks apart. Her sustained presence on red carpets seems somewhat at odds with her output. Though it would be disingenuous to suggest that H.E.R.’s music doesn’t resonate with listeners, it does feel optimized for industry gatekeepers—a class still figuring out what to do with so-called “urban” music. There is a growing divide between the kind of music embraced by voting committees and the music deemed important by the social Internet (a discrepancy that has, no doubt, contributed to a rapidly declining viewership of the ceremonies), and H.E.R. seems to land in that gap. Still, it means something to win these awards, and some of that lustre surrounds her new album, “Back of My Mind.” Bizarrely, it’s being pegged as a début.

There is a long history of artists releasing their “major-label début” after an independent release, a move that implies an upgrade in setup. There is also a shorter history of artists releasing début albums following a string of studio-quality mixtapes, with no discernible differences between the two formats beyond intention. In 2016, Chance the Rapper won the Best Rap Album Grammy for his mixtape “Coloring Book,” before releasing his début album, “The Big Day,” in 2019. The mixtape, in its earliest iterations, in a music ecosystem that wasn’t redefined by streaming, was self-produced, independently released, given away for free, and often full of samples and beats that couldn’t be sourced legally. Mixtapes built momentum so that performers could draw in labels as suitors or generate buzz for a “proper” release. The idea, in both of these trajectories, was that the début album marked an evolutionary step up for the artist.

The H.E.R. catalog mirrors these narratives, with “Back of My Mind” submitted as a sanctioned statement and a clear advancement. In the behind-the-scenes Apple Music mini-doc about the making of “Back of My Mind,” H.E.R. tries to make a distinction between this album and the (Grammy-nominated!) “compilations” that came before by citing greater authenticity in the songwriting and an improvement in musicianship. “There were a lot of recordings on this album that I realized were like elevated versions of songs on my first projects. . . . It just took it to another level,” she says, calling “Back of My Mind” a celebration of R. & B. and an acceptance of her vulnerability and her voice. Although this feels like another act of narrative control from an artist who has been meticulously managing her profile, there is some credence to the idea that H.E.R. is finally stepping into the light.

At its core, “Back of My Mind” doesn’t stray too far from H.E.R.’s musical wheelhouse. It is full of the same moody, diaristic narration and alternative beats amplified by live instrumentation. Many of the songs linger in a familiar headspace—that of being taken for granted (as a lover or a performer) and having to reassert her value. The album has the latitude of an artist who has interpolated Lauryn Hill, covered the blues of Foy Vance, and sampled Floetry and Aaliyah. Although previous albums have hinted at this range before, “Back of My Mind” moves into new sounds, and is a bit more persistent in mapping out the complete array of her facilities. In the mini-doc, H.E.R. is shot playing the guitar, the piano, and the drums, executing key components of her songs as a soloist, and this album wants to make that wide-reaching skill set known. Additionally, H.E.R. mobilizes many masters of the style to bolster her cause. The genre-bending beatmaker Kaytranada is listed as a composer. The turn-of-the-millenium pop-R. & B. draftsman Rodney (Darkchild) Jerkins is a producer. The under-heralded singer-songwriters Stacy Barthe and Tiara Thomas fill out a robust writer’s room. H.E.R.’s longtime collaborator DJ Camper, who has made a name producing late-career comebacks for Mary J. Blige and Brandy, is behind the boards once again for much of this album. Ty Dolla $ign sings backup. Beyond the positioning, “Back of My Mind” becomes a satisfying ode to songcraft and form.

Though not quite as ambitious or captivating as similar attempts at constructing an all-encompassing R. & B. cornucopia—such as Solange’s “A Seat at the Table” or Janelle Monáe’s “Dirty Computer”—“Back of My Mind” demonstrates the lasting power of the many distinguished R. & B. traditions and places H.E.R. within them. Punched-up versions of her usual fare can subsume a listener, but the tracks that astonish are the ones on which she scouts the outer reaches of the genre’s influence. H.E.R. has called R. & B. “the foundation of all music,” and though that’s not entirely true, she goes to great lengths to test her hypothesis. The album opener, “We Made It,” and the track “Trauma,” with the Maryland rapper Cordae, find the seams between R. & B. and hip-hop. H.E.R. wades through a thicket of bass on “Bloody Waters” with a wispy falsetto, and then dives deeper into activist soul on “I Can’t Breathe.” She pushes into neo soul with “Hold On” and then retreats into strobing, probing balladry on “For Anyone.” Each of these songs displays a rich timbre that sets her alongside divas of the recent past. This album is a show of pedigree, not a début but a continuation.