Eric Bellinger is an earnest student of R&B history, and it’s made for a prolific, era-crossing career. The Compton-raised artist born in 1986 got his first break penning steamy tracks for 2010s leading men like Usher, Chris Brown and Trey Songz, but he smashed through the divider separating songwriters from singers with his debut album, 2014’s The Rebirth. That LP introduced a conversational vocalist with a no-holds-barred approach to reinventing the past: sugary come-on “Imagination” coyly swirled up the theme from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with Joe’s amorous 1999 single “I Wanna Know”. Bellinger carried that flirtatious energy onto 2015’s Cuffing Season, kicking off his commitment-focused winter album series with “Creep”, a seductive flip of the 1994 TLC hit that not only inverts the original’s unfaithful-lover concept but also features a fresh T-Boz cameo. Bellinger’s knack for revising his favourite songs is a constant his ever-evolving discography: “Main Thang”, from 2018’s Eazy Call, finds him rapping over elements of Xscape’s yearning 1995 single “Who Can I Run To?” But in Bellinger’s hands, old-school samples are more than just aural building blocks—they’re thematic threads he weaves into his modern trap-soul serenades.