With his forthcoming debut album set to drop this fall, R&B artist R.LUM.R released his latest single and paired visual “How This Feels” on Friday (July 12). He recently inked a deal with Island Records earlier this year, and his new track “builds on the momentum” the entertainer has achieved since he first climbed into the music scene with his breakout single “Show Me.”
The Florida-born singer delivers vulnerable lyrics and piercing falsettos in the songs hook when asks, “So can we be real/About how this feels?” As he goes back and forth from guitar chords to nocturnal R&B, R.LUM.R’s latest melody lights a fire into his next chapter in the music industry.
The opening scene of the visual shows the vocalist staring at a burning old-school Cadillac set on fire. The picturesque film continues into the opening verse on owning up to intimate feelings and connections that could be conflicting or dangerous if pursued. “I don’t wanna lead us in the wrong direction/Force or fake a feeling cause we both need affection/End up co-dependent cause we can’t deal with depression/The way we need/ So can we be real?/About how this feels,” he croons.
“With this first visual, I wanted to make sure to do something more striking and interesting than I’ve ever done that makes you feel the isolation that is so felt in the music,” he said in a statement. “I think we did it with ‘How This Feels,'”
His widely successful single “Frustrated” reached Top 10 at Urban AC Radio in 2017. Most recently he released his project AFTERIMAGE, which reached over 100 million global artist streams.
“I really believed in what Erykah Badu used to say about music, ‘Once I release it into the world, it’s no longer my story.’ Once the audience listens to it, it’s their story. I can’t wait to see how people interpret it. There’s growth to be done, and you don’t have to be afraid of it.”
Listen to “How This Feels” up top.
