YEARNALISM

Written by Sidney Madden

With modern dating being reduced to app-swiping, toxic nonchalance and even balloon-popping humiliation, we’re losing recipes on how to properly yearn for each other. But while most try to keep their guards up, Baby Rose is staying devoted to what’s real. Fresh off winning her first GRAMMY Award in the Best R&B Album category for her part on Leon Thomas’ MUTT, the unmistakable contralto returns with Yearnalism, her third studio album steeped in confidence, care and liberating love.

The singer-songwriter-producer defines yearnalism as the process and documentation of desire in its many forms: “Desiring freedom, desiring love, desiring what you can’t have, desiring expansion.” This streamlined 12-song LP of soon-to-be classics creates a bumpy roadmap of desire free from ego. “Is This Love?” featuring Elmiene questions boundaries and priorities. “Dressed In Metal” is the breaking point in a late-night argument. “Better” is the heart-pounding break-up anthem for the ex-lover who never thought they’d lose you, the friend who you’ve outgrown, the boss who took your talent for granted.

“Friends Again” featuring Leon Thomas asks if it’s even possible to revert back once deeper feelings are shared. If you’re down bad from prying and crying, Rose cites “Sunday,” as a major pillar of the album, the one that feels like “the sun room in my mom’s crib.” Joyful flute and güiro make “All My Love” the infectious bounce of a wedding reception walkout song as Rose belts an arms-wide-open message of finding love in every face that passes by. In the poignant album ender, “Jasmine’s Sonnet,” the artist makes a point to address her younger self directly by “just saying, ‘Love is for you, just like the air you breathe, you don’t have to do anything to deserve it.’”

Rose notes that despite the current trend of “too cool” emotional avoidance in music and entertainment, she pushed herself and her collaborators to bare a different side of themselves. “If you’re coming into my court, you’re coming to yearn,” she declares with a laugh. “To yearn and to say with your whole chest, ‘I love you and I care about you and I’m professing this’
– and not in a toxic way, but just in a purely vulnerable way – that coming from the male perspective is so refreshing and gratifying. The ability to surrender and ask for what I need from the feminine is as well. Understanding the balance of both of that energy within us, that could really save some things. I’m so certain of it.”

Three albums in, Yearnalism is a sonic snapshot of Rose at her most self-assured. “This is me
really honing in and trusting that signature, catching lightning-in-a-bottle sound,” she says. “This is kind of a lesson in me really figuring out that my favorite process is being a part of the crew, being a part of this whole moment.”

Rose’s lesson plans have been stacked the past few years. Before Yearnalism, Rose’s last project was 2024’s Slow Burn, an EP produced entirely by Rose and Toronto psych jazz band BADBADNOTGOOD. This process of creating with BADBADNOTGOOD marked a turning point
for Rose. It reaffirmed the alchemy of the jam session for her; The kinetic energy of creating with live musicians, recording on tape and trusting the flow of the first few takes. It allowed Rose to play with sounds and find her own: A mix of guttural, bluesy Muscle Shoals warmth with playful
jazz and alternative R&B experimentation, deeply rooted and transcendent all at once. Yearnalism arrives with conviction thanks to this period of rapid creative growth.

Before the core team for this album was formed, Rose had already collaborated with several producers such as Miles C James, Alissia, Jonah Christian, Biako, Tom Brenneck, Ryan James Carr, Joe Harrison, Alex Goose, Jonah Stevens, Spencer Stewart, at various times and places in the past few years. Assembled from an original batch of about 70 tracks, Rose rounded up producers Biako, Ryan James Carr, Joe Harrison as her “wrecking crew” to take the post production of records – bass, guitar, drums, keys and ancillary instruments like flute, lap steel – from bare to polished, running it all through tape for cohesion while still maintaining the raw integrity of her original vocal performance. With the Grammy-winning Biako as her co-executive producer, Rose and her braintrust locked in for two weeks straight to mold the album. Rose and Biako then called on Moritz Braun to mix the album, intentionally using selected analog gear like the Echo Plex and EMT-250 to make for a rarer, warmer tone throughout. In a world where AI makes things readily accessible, it’s easy to forget the character that comes with that process. “It was important to take our time, be tactile and work with breathing physical analog gear”, says Rose. For her, having the team was a personal exercise in “learning where and when to surrender, where and when to take reins” that clearly paid off.

Baby Rose has been building up to this moment, brick by brick, for almost a decade. Raised between Washington D.C. and Fayetteville, N.C. on artists like Nina Simone, Donny Hathaway and Janis Joplin, the musician born Jasmine Rose Wilson has been a mainstay in alternative R&B since her 2019 debut, To Myself. That’s when the smoky resonance of her voice and a wise-beyond-her-years presence first stopped listeners in their tracks. Since then, she has held her own on records with Ari Lennox, Big K.R.I.T., Q, BADBADNOTGOOD and J. Cole. She closed out the end credits of Hollywood blockbuster Creed III and lent her talents to A24’s Materialists both onscreen and off by giving the film’s soundtrack two songs of aching texture and moonlighting as a wedding singer in a cameo. She’s graced stages with everyone from Robert Glasper to Vince Staples and made appearances in performance art at The Museum of Modern Art and ballets at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in arrangements by Misty Copeland’s choreographer, the legendary Kyle Abraham. Her industry admirers include heavyweights like SZA, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, H.E.R, Kehlani, James Blake and Olivia Dean. Plainly put, Rose’s name rings bells and her artistry speaks even higher volumes.

Getting to the level of self-love that each track of Yearnalism exudes has been a journey for Rose and one that she plans to keep taking. Rose credits therapy for allowing her to call past bouts of anxiety and depression by their names, friends like SZA for introducing her to methods of breathwork and meditation and keeping God first for helping her stay grounded through her journey. With her continued study of Yearnalism, Rose reminds the listener that it’s worth it to say the hard parts out loud with honesty and to love in spite of fear.