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Jeremih VibeZ

Twenty tracks from a Chicago singer who is one of the most in-demand voices in rap and has never quite been given his own due.

Jeremih

Jeremy Felton is from Chicago and studied at the University of Illinois before "Birthday Sex" made him a star in 2009 — a record so immediately effective that it somewhat defined him for a decade.

What that reputation obscures is how good a musician he is. Jeremih plays multiple instruments, writes and produces his own material, and has an unusually light, agile falsetto that he uses with real rhythmic sophistication — he sings around a beat rather than on it, which is why rappers want him.

His 2015 album Late Nights and the earlier mixtape of the same name are held in genuinely high regard by people who follow R&B closely, and the MihTy project with Ty Dolla $ign is one of the most enjoyable records either has made.

What to listen for

"oui" is the best thing here and one of the loveliest R&B records of the 2010s — built on a straightforward chord loop, with a vocal melody that keeps resolving somewhere unexpected.

"Planez" with J. Cole is the other essential and the clearest demonstration of the rhythmic instinct.

The guest appearances are the career. Chance the Rapper's "Summer Friends" and "Living Single" with Big Sean are the Chicago connections, and Wale's "On Chill" and "That Way" show how reliably he improves someone else's record.

"The Light" with Ty Dolla $ign comes from MihTy and is the pairing at its best — two singers with complementary approaches to a melody.

"Freak Of The Week" with Krept & Konan is the British crossover, and "U 2 Luv" with Ne-Yo the generational handshake.

"Sick" with 4batz is the most recent and shows him still working with much younger artists.

Go deeper

Late Nights: The Album (2015) is the record, and the earlier Late Nights with Jeremih mixtape is the cult one.

MihTy with Ty Dolla $ign is short and extremely good.

For Chicago R&B: R. Kelly's shadow over the city is complicated and unavoidable; BJ The Chicago Kid, Jamila Woods and Ravyn Lenae are the artists carrying it forward.

And Ty Dolla $ign is worth following independently — another singer whose enormous guest-feature career has somewhat obscured a serious musician.

One final point about the feature career. Being the singer everyone calls is lucrative and quietly costly: it means your best work is scattered across other people's albums, and the catalogue under your own name looks thinner than your contribution actually is. Jeremih is the clearest current example, and the useful corrective is to play Late Nights straight through and hear what he does when the record is entirely his.

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