I had been awaiting a full-and-loaded album from R&B/soul artist Summer Walker for what seemed like way too long. So when Over It (2019) was finally released in early October, it’s all I listened to for at least the next two weeks (just ask my roommate).
Apparently, I wasn’t alone. Over It was the second-most streamed R&B album ever in the first week after its release, with around 154.7 million streams (although 150 million might have been me) – second only to The Weeknd’s 2016 album Starboy. After dropping her first 2 projects Last Day of Summer (2018) and CLEAR (2019), Walker’s silky smooth voice and effortless riffs were featured on plenty of tracks over the months. But at best, they only left listeners hungry for more. Over It is her debut album: an 18-track compilation of love, heartbreak, and her deepest musings.
If you’ve been up-to-date with mainstream R&B music, you’ve heard “Girls Needs Love.” Summer Walker’s velvety vocals, balanced perfectly with Drake’s signature clean bars, made for the perfect laid-back, sultry track for the genre. While the song was originally intended to be recorded solo, Walker approached Drake suggesting that he feature on her track, and voila! There we have it — the #1 track on Billboard’s Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart.
When I first heard “Girls Need Love,” I remember being surprised at its bluntness. There is something so straight-up about the way Walker confronts female sexuality. Modern hip-hop, rap, and R&B brims with examples of male artists touting their “baller” status: making a lot of money, doing a lot of drugs, “fucking a lot of bitches” – you know the drill. I, for one, am glad female artists like Walker are finally being unapologetic in addressing their sexual behavior and trashing the sexual passivity women have always been assigned. Walker is talented at celebrating the power of sexuality through her music, and this boldness is what makes her music so hard-hitting.
This feminist awakening constantly reappears. Walker talks about the frustrations of being a woman best in “Fun Girl,” when she addresses double standards. Walker is, by no means, “wifey material,” whatever that means, anyway – and she’s tired of being judged for it. If “wifey material” is being submissive, dependent, and conquerable, she’s the opposite, and I guess she’s right, you just “can’t turn a hoe into a housewife.” She asks listeners, why are the exact qualities that make her just a “fun girl” – independence, outspokenness, sexual promiscuity – often what make a man attractive? And that is a really good question indeed.
She makes no apologies, though; in “Just Might,” Walker again tells us she doesn’t care what people think, she “just might be a ‘hoe’.” This thought in itself is pretty awesome; her sexual freedom, isn’t something she’s ashamed of at all. Instead of considering it shameful, she’s embracing the derogatorily used title “hoe.” She’s taken this popularized stereotype and twisted its negative connotation, correctly reminding us that being a sexually active woman does not make you a “hoe.”
The features in this album were perfect; I can’t think of artists that could’ve done it better. One (self-proclaimed) highlight is her track “Come Thru,” featuring Usher. She essentially sampled his 1997 track “You Make Me Wanna,” threw in some killer verses, and added the cherry on top by inviting Usher to sing on this remake of his own song, 22 years later. “You Make Me Wanna” was the quintessential ‘90s R&B song, and Walker’s reconstruction of it was like an update into the current style of the genre. Yeah, she really did that.
A couple other features include 6LACK on “Like It” – when has throwing a little 6LACK feature onto any track ever been a bad thing? – and Jhene Aiko on “I’ll Kill You.” The latter is about a relationship that is the perfect amount of simultaneous crazy and cute, and in my opinion, no one does that combination better than Jhene Aiko.
I am a huge fan of this sort of matured girl-power movement in music; themes of not only emotional but also sexual strength, empowerment, and badassery, everywhere in popular music from Rihanna, to Nicki Minaj, to Cardi B. It’s no longer just about rejecting sexism, it’s about loving yourself, not dealing with any bullshit, and doing whatever the hell you want. In Over It, Summer Walker has once again proved herself to fitting right in with female R&B artists who have been redefining what it means to be a woman in today’s day and age.
Written by Sanjana Sanghani