Find Yourself Lost In The Infectious Soundscape of Alternative R&B Music With NEW EX’s Latest Single “City Lights”

Cruising down the street at night in your car, you’re changing stations and City Lights by NEW EX comes on. You haven’t listened to this artist before, to your own regret, because you feel like you’ve been missing out on great tunes. Your ears are captivated by its sound, a sound of alternative R&B, a subgenre whose lines get blurrier by the day, as artists experiment with and incorporate different sounds such as trap, and indie, to mention a few.

Alternative R&B is a canvas for expression for R&B artists, each artist with their own sound. NEW EX, on his single City Lights, incorporates soul and trap into his sound. As soon as he belts that “City lights, city lights…” line, you know you’ve fallen for his sound, hook, line, and sinker. The song gives off this dark vibe. The beat is bass heavy, and the reverb makes the music sound more natural. He does a good job of painting a picture of a person trying to find oneself while chasing new highs. “…why I drive through the night, trying to find self-clarity…” he sings, with his hypnotic airy vocals. He wins at being relatable, singing to people trying to convince themselves and/or others that they are happier than they actually are.

City Lights seems to draw inspiration from The Weeknd’s debut mixtape “House of Balloons”, which as described by MTV is “a dark body of work, with trippy tales of partying, heartbreak and drug-fueled sexcapades.” This is that “Great minds think alike” moment, as NEW EX seems to be on the right path with this single and his sound at large.

Marlon O’Neil, known professionally as NEW EX is an Alternative R&B/Hip Hop artist from Winston-Salem, NC, signed to Nashville, Tennessee’s Polychromatic Records. He is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist and has been writing and performing music since middle school. If you love The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, and the likes, then you’ll certainly love NEW EX.

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