To call an artist like Natanya “genre-bending” is to miss the point; the genres have been bent already. What distinguishes the members of her cohort, raised on the everything-at-once fusion of the streaming era, is the purposefulness and personality they apply. The London singer-producer is part of a wave of upstart Gen Z acts from the UK bringing a versatile, internet-native sound close to the mainstream. Zooming out, she’s one of many young artists raised on a generation of approachable, conversational R&B (on one song, she’s crying about a lover while “Solana” is on her speaker) seeking the spectacle and songwriting discipline of older generations. Last year, she opened for both Ravyn Lenae and PinkPantheress on respective UK tours; she makes sense at the midpoint of these two, combining a nimble vocal approach and forward-thinking arrangements with a penchant for the compressed drama of Y2K dance-pop production. Feline’s Return, released as a pair of EPs in June and October, makes a case for Natanya as a resourceful young artist who can personalize a range of saturated sounds.
While Natanya wears her admiration for big-budget affairs like Janet Jackson’s All For You on her sleeve, her vocal production still maintains traces of the more languid bedroom soul popularized by the likes of Steve Lacy and monte booker. For Natanya, being a pop star is about inflection, arrangement, and attitude; even when she sings quietly, each choice she makes is magnified by the spotlight, and gets its oomph from how it’s situated alongside all the other layers. Sometimes, she’ll reach into a nasally Amy Winehouse vibrato, fitting her upbringing as a London jazz student. Other times, she’ll adopt a delivery closer to the colloquial American R&B of the ’90s (“truth” becomes “trewth”) or commanding Beyoncé verve. She shifts between vocal styles on a whim, clearly at home working inside these digital beats, and her flirtations rarely feel like obvious homage. There are some good lead melodies here, but Feline’s Return’s stickiest vocal moments are short and sweet—repeated backing phrases that play off the beat just right, riffs that leave trails of color in the mix, or animated MJ “ow!” ad-libs that invigorate you like cracking open an expensive brand of fizzy soda.
Natanya handles production on Feline’s Return alongside longtime collaborator Jkarri, who’s worked with PinkPantheress, Jim Legxacy, and Nia Archives. They try out a wide selection of beats, evoking the plucky, freeform rhythmic palette of 2000s R&B producers like Darkchild in spirit, if not necessarily in form. There’s booming dancehall on “Moviestar”; glittering Baltimore club on “Meeting You Once”; and the inspired choice, on “Dangerous,” to stage her sultry vocal against one of the staggered jerk beats that UK rappers love, capturing a moment of romantic confrontation that gets chopped and screwed on the bridge to heighten its tension. Some songs can feel overly reliant on appearing versatile, lacking a solid topline to focus them, and the atmospheric guitar-and-vocal arrangements on “Say the Word” and “Ur Fool” are somewhat anonymous. But it all goes down smoothly, as Natanya contrasts distorted beats and tricky drum patterns with an airy touch.
