You could sum up the style of the singer born David Brown in one word: smooth. Since his lush 2018 breakthrough hit “Roll Some Mo,” the New Orleans native better known as Lucky Daye has earned a Grammy and a place among contemporary R&B’s premier revivalists for songs that combine old-school soulfulness with the romantic dramas of today. The title of his fourth album is a play on words, emphasizing the tension between “aloud” and “allowed” to reject the idea that artists need industry permission to take risks. (ALOUD! is Daye’s first album since leaving RCA Records, released via Warner Records instead.) Across 15 slow-burning tracks, Daye approaches intimacy from all angles—love, lust, distrust, resentment—over glossy production that draws from ’80s soul and ’90s R&B, with cameos from Leon Thomas, Muni Long, and Pusha T. Daye’s so smooth, in fact, that he can make a line like “If it’s on my watch, then it’s about sex o’clock” (“Anything Goes”) sound downright poetic.