If you’re not plugged directly into the R&B scene, you might not have thought about Lloyd Polite Jr. for a little while. He’s an artist that’s always been on the periphery of breaking through into the mainstream consciousness like an Usher or a T-Pain – but never quite made the full transition to becoming a part of even your parents' pop culture lexicon. Lloyd’s best shot was with the Andre 3000 featuring and Lil’ Wayne narrated 'Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)', a 2011 song that climbed the charts in at least 14 different countries, even managing to hit number three in Australia – a country notorious at the time for being less engaged with R&B music, particularly when EDM-influenced tracks completely dominated the charts.
But in May of 2016, Lloyd dropped his first single in five years titled 'Tru', which would subsequently be followed up by an EP of the same name in December of that year. Upon his return as a totally independent artist free of the label backing that he'd been used to, there was something different about the New Orleans-born and Atlanta raised singer; a brutal honesty, openness and sincerity that he’d never revealed to us before. For those who forgot about Lloyd, 2017 is the year to scramble back onto the bandwagon.
The singer's brand new plan was, that if he was going to release music with less money, people and resources, he had to give fans a single song with the strength of ten. “The only way I knew how to do that, was to just really make it about myself. To make it about life in general, and all the realities; the beautiful realities in life, in my life,” Lloyd says. Delving deep into his own psyche, he came back with a song that addressed his absence from the game, how he was making ends meet for his family, and even opened up about losing a child to an abortion. But letting it all out, and unveiling what he calls his “perfect imperfections” was therapeutic: “I think it started to redefine what music was for me. The satisfaction it gave me, it started to redefine what I wanted to be in the eyes of the people I love the most,” he says.
It’s a cue that he took from the artists that have continually inspired him. “It seems like most of the people who I enjoy or have enjoyed are taking a more introspective approach to their music now,” he says. “I don't know if that's just me or something, but I just feel like people are saying ‘this is my most intimate work to date’ now. This is a personal record of mine, that I'm sharing with my fans, ” Lloyd adds. It’s an astute observation for an artist that’s been around the game since 1997 – many artists that came up at the same time as Lloyd are still making the same hollow music they were making in the early 2000s. Or even worse, they’ve embraced the turnt up trap vibes of the new generation and are hamfistedly aping a genre that many are already growing weary of.
Having avoided that route altogether, Lloyd sees what he’s doing as a throwback to singers and songwriters that gave all of themselves to their fans – including more recently, Bob Dylan, an artist he says depicted the human experience better than anyone else. “All of my favourites growing up did something that was about them, but it was bigger than them,” he says. Back then, artists connected with their audience by making them feel like we were all going through it – something that rappers and singers today may have lost sight of. “It affected so many others. It shows that they cared. And that's what my approach was with making 'Tru',” Lloyd says.