With the R&B scene continuing its beautiful blossom, artists like Ella Mai play a huge part in that. Pulling back the curtain and giving listeners a peek into the depths of her soul, on her second album Ella Mai is turning inward. The appropriately named Heart On My Sleeve (out today, May 6) sees the London-born R&B artist embark on a personal journey, granting us more unfiltered access to her inner musings than on previous releases. It’s the follow-up to Mai’s stellar, self-titled debut (2018.) Going double platinum in the US, the album was an instant hit. Its success was spearheaded by the chart-dominating, Grammy-award winning lead-single “Boo’d Up”.

Although it has been four years since her debut album, Ella Mai enters this new era with a sense of wisdom and transparency. This viewpoint was only reached by growing more into her womanhood and truly embracing all of love’s challenges with open arms. Having accumulated over 2.5 million streams on her debut album, the singer entered into the next phase of her career aware that the world sat in joyous anticipation of her next release.

Fortunate enough to be granted the time and space to work at her own pace by her label, and wielding a considerable amount of creative control, Ella Mai took the time to pause and figure out exactly what it was she wanted to say. “Everything you could think of was going through my mind,” she says of the process. “I hadn’t been in the studio for a while because I had toured all of 2019. So, in 2020 when I first started the album I had to connect again to the studio.”

Laced with 15 records, Ella Mai tapped on Latto, Roddy Ricch, and Lucky Daye for features. Check it out now!