Exploring Jazmine Sullivan's Expansion of the 'Heaux Tales' Universe
Last year was the year of Jazmine Sullivan. She kicked off 2021 with Heaux Tales, an ambitious conceptual project that instantly etched itself into history as one of the most seminal works of musical art this century. Jazmine delivered breathtaking performances at NPR Tiny Desk @ Home and the BET Awards, won top honors at the Soul Train Music Awards, scored her biggest commercial hit in over a decade ("Pick Up Your Feelings"), earned three Grammy nominations, and took home the Cultural Impact Award at the 2021 Bulletin Awards. With an original runtime of just over half an hour, Jazmine designed an entire universe of shared narratives and unique experiences that centered and explored the complexities of sex, Black womanhood, and love. Now, over a year since the project's initial release, Jazmine has revamped the set as Heaux Tales, Mo' Tales: The Deluxe — an expanded edition featuring five brand new songs.
Of the five new songs, Jazmine's standalone summer single, "Tragic," is the first to appear on the revised track listing. Still as sharp and as biting as it was last June, "Tragic" benefits from the contextualization offered by its preceding interlude entitled "Issa's Tale." As with the original Heaux Tales album, nearly every song is directly preceded by a spoken-word interlude that touches on the themes and topics of the following song. Now, for "Issa's Tale?" Yes. The "Issa" in question is, in fact, none other than Insecure star and creator Issa Rae.
The six-time Emmy nominee divulges a hilarious story of an epic failure of a goodbye sex session with one of her exes before they ended their relationship. Ever the comedienne, Issa concludes her story of real-life "tragic" dick with this quip: "I'm so glad I was cheatin' on him." When placed after "Issa's Tale," "Tragic" transcends the most obvious interpretations as a song about guys with weak sex game. The specifics of "Issa's Tale" ("I felt like he had used me. He knew what I wanted, and he just pumped me and dumped me.") amplify lines like "you never put me first." Not only was Issa's ex disrespecting her time, but he was also disrespecting her body and worth as a person by using her simply as a proxy for his own orgasm instead of using their final night together to cherish their relationship. On a purely sentimental note, it's wonderful to hear Issa's voice on an album that parallels Insecure's own exploration of sex and Black womanhood. Furthermore, Jazmine (along with Bryson Tiller) gifted the HBO series its most successful original song (also titled "Insecure"), so it's a nice full-circle moment. Musically, "Tragic" is still so damn good. The way Jazmine drives up the intensity throughout the bridge to add more dimension to the instrumental is second to none. After "Tragic," however, two important firsts occur.
"Jazzy's Tale," the most emotionally intense tale since "Rashida's Tale," sets the stage for the best song on The Deluxe: "Hurt Me So Good." With a piercing monologue of introspection juxtaposed against a literally jazzy instrumental, this is the first time we hear from the curator of the Heaux Tales Universe. After spending so much time holding space for the tales of other women and assuming their characters on the project's different songs, Jazmine finally emerges to share and narrate a tale of her own. "The content that the validation brought me was worth the actual pain that the relationship eventually brought," she muses. That need for validation to reaffirm that you are, in fact, worthy of love, despite, as in the case of "Jazzy's Tale, "growing up a brown-skinned girl, a fat girl... essentially growing up feeling undesirable," can simultaneously be vital and deleterious. That tension also exists within the Black church — a place that is concurrently a haven of serenity and a cesspool of dangerous ignorance. Thus, it's fitting that "Hurt Me So Good" relies on an urgent ascending melody, gospel chord progressions, and a singularly divine vocal performance not unlike ones you'd hear in Black churches across the country. As fraught with emotion as Jazmine's vocal is, there's also an underlying sense of security that reminds us that she is singing from a point of reflection.
Jazmine sequences "A Breaux's Tale," the first and only tale from a man's perspective, directly after "Jazzy's Tale," the only tale that she narrates. "A Breaux's Tale" is grounded by two truths: 1) You can't be upset for somebody doing exactly what they said they would do & 2) men are self-aware about how awfully they treat the women that they claim to "love" even if they pretend otherwise. To the first truth, the narrator for "A Breaux's Tale" slips this important detail into his diatribe about being "played": "Then have the nerve to say she told me she was dealing with other people and I gotta chill." His own male entitlement prevented him from actually receiving what he was being told. Just because you change your behavior to court somebody does not mean that they have to accept that courtship! To the second point, the narrator laments "she pulled a me on me, that's getting me tight right now thinking about it." Now how are you going to feign shock that someone treats you the same way that you treat legions of other people? Come on now. "A Breaux's Tale" is subtle in the way that it pokes holes in the shoddy logic that many men use in their approach to love and relationships, and it's a wondrous set-up for "Roster" — a song that finds Jazmine stripping the concept of a roster, a symbol of immense objectification, of its shadiness and submerging it in a vat of truthfulness. "'Cause I'm a player by nature / But I'll always keep it honest," she croons over dry acoustic guitar. In comparison to the two preceding songs, "Roster" features a more subdued vocal performance that highlights the tender warnings ("So, don't catch feelings / I know this sounds appealing") she gives in the song's chorus.
Heaux Tales is Jazmine at her most explicit and frank when it comes to her exploration of her relationship to sex — both conceptually and in practice. On the original track listing, songs like "Put It Down" and "On It," which earned a 2021 Bulletin Award nomination for Collaboration of the Year, did the heavy lifting in that regard. "Mona's Tale," a prideful boast session, transports us back to that lyrical territory to introduce "BPW." Another acoustic guitar-reliant song that underscores Jazmine infectiously gasconading about her skills in the bedroom. The repetition of "say it's the best," in the post-chorus shifts the song into an arena under Jazmine's control through her self-proclaimed BPW (best pussy in the world, if you haven't figured it out by now). Very much Greek sirens energy. "BPW's" placement after "Roster" is also a fitting push-and-pull between the physical and emotional tenets of sex.
Finally, "Shanti's Tale" and "Selfish" bring the expanded version of Heaux Tales to a close. This concluding narrative-song pair focuses on both knowing your self-worth and actually putting that knowledge to use. "I rеalized he couldn't have access to any parts of me until he could accept and love all of me," Shanti says. Continuing the guitar trend of the last two songs, "Selfish" finds Jazmine weaving together all of the advice, warnings, and lessons learned from the previous tales and understanding that sometimes the issue truly is the other person. "You want me to change / Want me to risk everything / But don't want to make no sacrifices," she sings. Constantly trying to change yourself to fit someone else's depiction and understanding of love will only ever lead to failure.
As if Heaux Tales wasn't already a masterpiece, this deluxe version is even more glorious. Throughout these narratives, both old and new, there is so much that we can learn and re-learn and unlearn. This is an album that unquestionably centers the experiences of Black women. Now, fellas, if we shut the hell up, listen, digest, and reflect on the tales and Jazmine's musical embodiments of those sentiments, we'll learn how to be better partners, but more importantly, better people. If it wasn't clear before, it's painfully obvious now. Jazmine Sullivan is currently the greatest American singer-songwriter. Respect the queen when you see her.
