Bryson Tiller TRUE TO SELF (EXPLICIT CD)

Audio Mixer: Fabian Marasciullo.Photographer: Ro Lexx.The first three singles off Bryson Tiller's debut album kept the singer/rapper hovering near the top of Billboard's R&B/hip-hop chart for a few months during 2015 and 2016. Each one went platinum, as did the parent release. This consequently made Tiller one of the decade's major R&B breakouts. For True to Self, his follow-up, Tiller opted to employ an almost entirely new and slightly larger cast of collaborators -- a little over two dozen in number, once again strictly producers, no guest vocalists -- yet the method nonetheless seems to be "If the style you coined ain't broke, don't fix it." Like T R A P S O U L, True to Self is primarily thumping, dispirited slow jams laced with smudged samples -- '90s R&B once again the crate raided with the greatest frequency. This kind of thing sounds a little less novel in 2017 than it did years earlier, but True to Self is more colorful and melodic than what preceded it. Likewise,