Jasmine Rose Wilson doesn’t love lightly. On her third album as Baby Rose, the US soul singer uses her fraying contralto to communicate the peaks and troughs of relationships as if on the brink of emotional collapse. On the slow-moving The Reason, Rose is fully aware she’s “gone off the deep end”, while on the vintage R&B of But, Nvm, she tries her best to convince herself everything’s fine while fleeing the scene. “Waiting on a train,” she sings, “to take me somewhere you won’t call my name.”
Such cinematic overtures aren’t accidental: Rose contributed music to, and briefly appeared in, 2025’s romantic comedy-drama Materialists. On the melodically rich soft-rock of Better, which shares the breezy lightness of Olivia Dean’s recent album and would have killed on a Bridget Jones soundtrack, Rose paints a precise portrait of a kitchen-based standoff she eventually wins. Sunday, meanwhile, starts off as a scratchy, Nina-Simone-esque ballad before a string section and guitar turns a musical vignette into an epic.
Throughout its 12 songs, it’s Rose’s voice that remains the star. She scuffs up guest Leon Thomas’s smoothness on the lovelorn Friends Again and stirs extra grit into When I’m Gone, half-rapping: “You ain’t got the motherfuckin’ answers / You’re a cancer,” over undulating guitar. Even when songs travel down a retro-soul cul-de-sac – All My Love is nice, but nothing more – she can still communicate true pain. By choosing to feel it all and revel in the drama, Rose kicks emotional numbness to the kerb.
