3. “Replay”

Jozzy | Songs for women, free game for n*****

R&B’s pen du jour currently belongs to Jozzy, a multihyphenate whose writing credits stretch from Monica’s 2015 “Just Right for Me,” to Billy Ray Cyrus’ verse on the 2019 “Old Town Road” remix, to “Virgo’s Groove” off Beyoncé’s 2022’s spectacle RENAISSANCE. Mentored by the likes of Missy Elliott and Timbaland and namechecked by the James Fauntleroys of the music world, her first EP is the byproduct of a decade-plus worth of grunt work, and “Replay” stands out as the track that remained on, well, replay.

The pen is mighty on this one, as Jozzy laments a love lost that she fears she’ll never replace. She scales the seven stages of grief with terrifying dexterity, accentuating just how quickly one can go from denial to grief to anger to acceptance and back around when in a mental state like this – and that’s in only three minutes and 22 seconds. A child of the ‘90s, this song feels directly in the lineage of the hip-hop soul pioneered by artists like Mary J. Blige and Jodeci; as I type this, I’m visualizing a Love Jones-type music video with Jozzy as Darius. Just a thought.