Babytace Is Back to Help Us Exhale

Nobody does sad love songs like Babyface — and after years in the wilderness, he’s enjoying the pop moment he predicted

The return of Babyface? About damn time, so to speak. He’s one of the great hitmakers and one of my all-time pop heroes, but he’s a lot more than that. Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds ruled the radio because he was the male hitmaker who accurately saw where music was going: He recognized that the future of pop was women telling their stories. That’s how he created so many brilliant and everlasting hits for Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Brandy, TLC, and so many more. He was the songwriter who put the “another” in “Another Sad Love Song.” Who put the “red” in “Red Light Special.” Who put the “shoop” in “Exhale (Shoop Shoop).” If you’re a fan of pop music, you’ve had at least one messy moment listening to a Babyface song.

So it’s the perfect time for Face to come back strong, with his Girls Night Out project, starring Ella Mai, Doechii, Kehlani, and others. Just as he did with his classic Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, he’s crafting plum showcases for an all-star team of R&B and hip-hop women from Ari Lennox to Queen Naija, serving them drama worthy of their pipes. In the excellent costume-romance video with Ella Mai, for “Keeps on Fallin’,” they’re basically doing quiet-storm Bridgerton fan-fic.

Babyface defined a new kind of paradigm for the male artist in a woman’s world — his mission is to serve as an enabler to loud, powerful, complicated women. His Nineties legacy often gets overlooked, to an absurd degree, but it looms larger than ever right now. You look at the pop charts of 2022, and it’s like all of Babyface’s dreams came true.