In what feels like an eternity since her stunning 2018 debut album, Lost & Found, 23-year-old Jorja Smith has returned with Be Right Back. After the debut secured her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist and was shortlisted for a Mercury prize, she released a string of singles and collaborations that helped to further elevate her name into the mainstream. “Be Honest,” a collaboration with Nigerian rapper Burna Boy, and “By Any Means,” her personal response to the Black Lives Matter movement last summer, are just two of the half-dozen tracks with which she’s appeared to tease a second album. 

But Be Right Back, Jorja Smith has made clear, is not an album, and those songs wouldn’t have made the cut, anyway. The result is, instead, a brisk eight-track EP of songs she wanted fans to hear right now. Throughout the project, Smith uses her stellar voice to effortlessly float between R&B, neo-soul, grime and even pop.

“Addicted” and “Gone,” both mid-tempo with casual production, preceded the release and find Smith asking questions about a lover and their relationship. “What about the other life?/ Would it be a better life? You say/ Was hoping for a better life than this/ I don’t wanna wish a life away,” she sings on “Gone.” Her lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness delivery, with one line often building or blending into the next.

There’s “Bussdown,” featuring up-and-coming South London rapper Shaybo, which vents over why a girl’s success is constantly overlooked, and “Home,” where a single guitar leads Smith through the choruses, showcasing her ability to stretch her voice into a more raw and classic style, only to conclude the line in a hush. There are elements of hip-hop and influences of Drake and Sade in both her delivery and singing, her voice always leading the music, and rightfully so.

“Time” clocks in just under two minutes and begins with the lyric, “Come and roll your weed/ You can show me how.” The lyrics are sung in an easy rap and ask, simply, for someone’s time. It concludes in a conversation between Smith and a woman called Bejoyce, a nickname at which she giggles. Though a seemingly random bit of dialogue to fall halfway through the project, it’s charming to hear Smith out from behind the microphone. 

On “Burn” Smith tells a young girl, or more likely, a younger version of herself, how to hold herself up and to not let oneself burn out. “Let it go in over my lungs/ The fires always there no one needs to get hurt/ You let yourself burn you burn yourself up/ There she goes she is falling down,” she sings. Smith sounds all the more confident in her singing, never pushing the bounds of what’s necessary for the song, letting the quiet production elevate but never dominate her, and ultimately creating an undeniably unique style.

On “Digging,” Smith  creates a darker sound with drums and deeper beats sprinkled with various echoes and vocalizations. The consistent, driving track enhances the feeling of her congested head looking for peace of mind. She concludes Be Right Back with “Weekend,” another song reminding herself the money isn’t worth spending on temporary relationships or on drunken nights.

On these final tracks, it becomes clear the songs really serve as Smith’s update on the questions of life she first brought up on her debut, most still unanswered. All that’s missing from Be Right Back is more of it, but fortunately, it sounds like Smith already has that coming.

Follow Domenic Strazzabosco at Twitter.com/domenicstrazz and Instagram.com/domenicstrazz.