Ann Marie is at the vanguard of a late 2010s brand of R&B that looks back to the turn of the millennium to establish a path forward. Born Joann Marie Slater in 1995 in Chicago, the singer/songwriter was writing poetry and flexing her vocal muscles as a kid, eventually setting her words to music and uploading the results to social media. She racked up thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and then millions of views, establishing an audience on the power of her sultry songs, and giving her the momentum to try her hand at music full-time. In 2015, “Different”—a bright, piano-and-synth-heavy pop number—was her professionally recorded introduction to the world. Just a couple years later, she released two full-lengths, Ann Marie and Unf*ckwitable, that retained a hint of poppiness as she took her sound in a more mature direction: channelling the sensual atmospheres of her childhood singing inspiration, Aaliyah, and injecting skittering trap hi-hats. She’s run with it since, infusing her sound with a dreamy, intimate and sexually charged R&B vibe that harkens back to the genre’s late ‘90s and early 2000s grooves while keeping things fresh with 21st-century perspectives.