Feature Photo credit: Ro.Lexx
It’s late October, and the night feels half-empty. The air over South Jersey carries that sweet rot of fallen leaves, a smell that always feels like goodbye. Out past the edge of Vineland, the road is a black ribbon stitched through farmland, no streetlights, just the low hum of the car and Isaiah Falls bleeding through the static. The radio isn’t perfect out here. It fades in and out, like memory, like someone you used to call.
The song is “Heaven2Me”, and it sounds exactly like this night looks: soft, cold, and a little infinite. The kind of music that doesn’t beg for volume; it seduces with presence. The synthesizers echo like the orange dash lights, the drums glare against the windshield rain, and Falls’ voice drifts through it all like a secret, low, breath-warm, too close to part from. There occurs something, somewhere between verses, where the silence feels weightier than the sound. You begin to ask yourself if that’s the whole plight.
Driving like this, you realize late-night music isn’t about rhythm, it’s about recognition. It’s about hearing someone else shape your ache into melody. Every lyric hits like a passing mile marker. Every pulse of the music is like a finger sliding down the inside of your throat. By the time the music has settled into you, you don’t know whether you’ve gone anywhere, just that something in you has changed.
In an era where rhythm and blues has become the currency of pop, Isaiah Falls seems intent on rewriting its language. With LVRS PARADISE, a two-part debut steeped in sweat, longing, and late-night honesty, the Floridian-born artist reclaims intimacy as the genre’s most powerful weapon. This isn’t just R&B for the bedroom, it’s R&B for the soul after the lights go out.
You could draw a crooked line from D’Angelo to Frank Ocean to Isaiah Falls, but that’d miss the point. Falls isn’t trying to join a lineage, he’s trying to torch it. His R&B isn’t about the genre’s survival; it’s about its rebirth, stripped back to skin and nerve endings. Somewhere around the album’s midpoint, maybe on “DESIRES” (feat. Ambré), it hits you: this isn’t background music. It‘s like looking into a mirror, and you’re unsure if you like what you see.
The production is drenched in mood, warm synths, slow-moving percussion, and basslines that slither instead of strike. It’s not clean. It’s alive. Each track has a pulse, each track has an attitude, a sort of half-drunk agonized heartbreak. On “A FLORIDA LUV STORY”, he stretches his voice to the point of coming apart, as if beauty doesn‘t matter, but rather truth does. You can almost see the sweat running down the side of his temple as he leans into the mic, almost daring themselves to break.
Even as the album skirts on the edge of grandeur, it never, not once, loses its pulse. “BUTTERFLIES” (feat. Joyce Wrice) feels like dappled light pushing through blinds after being out all night; “SEARCHING” (feat. Odeal) hums like skin on skin, warm, deliberate, vulnerable. Falls doesn’t just sing love songs; he makes them breathe. You notice him in the silence, and you grasp him in the pauses, the way one note can ache with longing.
This is the tension between the ordered and chaotic, the beautiful and decaying, that makes LVRS PARADISE so enticing. Falls does not chase perfection. He entices imperfection. The sparkle of your chosen pop artist is absent from his music; it sounds like sadness while it laments, à la the enticing style of Brent Faiyaz, the melodic ache of Bryson Tiller, or the after-hours confessions from Drake, but it has the pulse of a Florida heart, with Trick Daddy‘s bounce and the 808 ghosts of Kodak Black, too. It gets caught on your collar like cologne, or like a ghosted hand once that was held closely in your own. If the future of this music is personal, LVRS PARADISE is the model, written in perspiration, haze of cigarette,s and late-night confessions. This is beyond being just a record: a shameless public love letter to risk, to vulnerability, to being alive in this beautiful mess somewhere on a balmy Florida night, Isaiah Falls is still singing, not for us, but to us, to anyone that is still listening, to remind them that the heart of R&B is still beating, slowly, and its heavy body still moves through the dark.
This reviewer rates LVRS PARADISE
10/10
Tracklist For LVRS PARADISE
1.FOR LVRS ONLY
2. A FLORIDA LUV STORY
3. GET YA MONEY
4. TAKE A HIT
5. TRICK DADDY
6. DESIRES
7. SEARCHING
8. BUTTERFLIES
9. HEAVEN2ME
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Anthony Mclaude, the enigmatic figure known as Rock & Roll’s Best Kept Secret, delves into the world of music journalism with a raw and unapologetic pen. From established icons to up-and-coming talents, Mclaude fearlessly reviews and reveals the diverse sounds that shape our musical landscape.
Raised in a Christian household by a single mother and grandmother in the 1990s, Mclaude’s journey into the world of rock ‘n’ roll began at a young age. The soulful melodies of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, mixed with the pop sensibilities of Madonna and Alanis Morissette, created a soundtrack that would influence his future path.
A pivotal moment came in 7th grade when Mclaude’s storytelling prowess caught the attention of his teacher, Mrs. DeFeo. Her words of encouragement ignited a fire within him, propelling him towards a future in writing. Fast forward fifteen years, and Mclaude found himself studying journalism at Cumberland County College, honing his skills as a reporter for The Voice.
His dedication and passion for community journalism led him to a position at The People’s Press of Millville, where he made his mark with insightful articles and press releases. Collaborations with publications like Eclectic Shades, Rock At Night, and New Noise Magazine further solidified Mclaude’s reputation as a rising star in the world of music journalism.
With each byline, Mclaude continues to push the boundaries of his craft, capturing the essence of artists and their music with a unique perspective that sets him apart in the industry. As Rock & Roll’s Best Kept Secret, his journey is just beginning, with a future as bright and promising as the music he so passionately writes about.