Sunday, September 22

There’s an emotionality that only Marsha Ambrosius can conjure. Since emerging as The Songstress in the duo Floetry, the Britain-born singer and songwriter has combined her lush, golden-toned vocals with a boundless gift for soulful vignettes that exist at the intersection of deep love and serious heartache — gripping songs as vulnerable as they are powerful. That gift often shines through others’ works: Michael Jackson’s “Butterflies”; a multitude of hip-hop hooks for Nas, Busta Rhymes, Nipsey Hussle, and more; or Drake’s sampling her unforgettable vocal from her earlier work “Getting Late” for his track “Flight’s Booked” from his platinum-selling Honestly, Nevermind album. It is, undoubtedly, Ambrosius’ time to shine in her own right.

Ambrosius now cements her legacy with CASABLANCO, her long-awaited new album executive-produced by the legendary Dr. Dre. Inspired by one another, the duo set out to create a jazz album — but instead they made a genre-bending tour de force. A fusion of technical mastery and unbridled imagination, it’s a mesmerizing portrait of two legends at work. 

To help sculpt the smoldering album, Ambrosius and Dr. Dre enlisted a superteam of creators — Focus, Erik “Blu2th” Griggs, Dem Jointz, Trev and Sly. Across studio sessions that began in 2021, the duo and their collaborators hit a creative apex, driving the sonics of what would soon become an exhilarating album. Listeners got to preview that work via a pair of fascinating tracks.

Arriving in 2023, “The Greatest” came laced with an opulent soundscape and yearning lyrics, a modern exploration of retro R&B as grand as it is mesmerizing. A year later, we received the sprawling and sensual “One Night Stand,” showcasing Ambrosius’ honey-dipped vocals as she painted a vivid picture of no-strings-attached romance. On a broader scale, these major sonic leaps are just the latest steps in a journey that Ambrosius began long ago. 

With her first solo album, Late Nights & Early Mornings (2011), Ambrosius revealed a more sensual version of herself. The standout single “Far Away” went on to be nominated for two Grammy awards and has sold over a million records. Friends & Lovers (2014), the sexier sophomore project, gave us “So Good” and “69.”  “OMG I Miss You” was a personal favorite of Prince’s, and Questlove famously referred to the album as “the one that got away.”  

Ambrosius met the love of her life while on tour in 2015 which led to 2018’s deeply personal NYLA, named after her daughter. From that set, “Luh Ya” amassed millions of streams, and the video for “Old Times” illustrated the inextricable link between the sociopolitical and the personal, a fitting representation of how Ambrosius’ music weaves through the culture, and vice versa.

Throughout that time and since, Ambrosius stayed busy — successfully touring, while writing and producing songs with titans including Alicia Keys, Earth Wind & Fire, and, of course, Dr. Dre. Over the past few years, her artistic relationship with Dr. Dre has blossomed into this thrilling chapter of her career. At the end of 2020, the pair began having conversations about a Grand Theft Auto project he was tasked with creating exclusive songs for. A few weeks after they’d begun trading ideas back and forth, Dr. Dre suffered a brain aneurysm. Once he was in rehabilitation, he called on Ambrosius to come to Los Angeles and pick up where they left off. 

“We bonded through his rehabilitation and his want and need to create good music,” she recalls. 

But it didn’t stop there. As the duo continued their collaboration, moving into the material that would form the foundation of CASABLANCO, Ambrosius stripped herself bare. She found herself carving out new territory for herself as a creative force. And now, on the other side, she feels this album shows her growth not only as a singer and songwriter, but as a mother and partner. Ambrosius embraced her many facets and traumas to create CASABLANCO, a deeply fulfilling and nostalgia-inducing instant classic sure to give fans relief and reason to celebrate all at once.

 “Dr. Dre dared me to dream bigger and aim higher,” says Ambrosius. “CASABLANCO took on a life of its own once we grasped the concept. The ideas just kept coming, and everyone was on the same page at the same time. It was like a musical insane asylum we had all checked in to and we understood why we were there: to make something we had never done before, together.”