You may not realize it, but if you’re a Janelle Monae fan, you will probably be a Roman GianArthur fan, too. You’ve gotten a taste of his work on Ms. Monae’s 2010 album, The ArchAndroid, in which he composed and arranged the album’s “Suite Overtures” and contributed to “Ba Bop Bye Ya.”
For The Boombox’s ‘Live Bytes’ series presented by McDonalds, Ms. Monae and Esperanza Spalding introduced GianArthur to a crowd gathered at New York City’s MSR Studios. A poised GianArthur launches into his story of lost love, “Contrition” but he precedes the bitter tale with some sweetness in the form of a brief cover of Lauryn Hill‘s “The Sweetest Thing” from the Love Jones movie soundtrack.
Roman, who we first featured a year ago with his single “I-69,” put on a mini concert, performing the previously stated song, which he describes as his ode to reciprocity in lovemaking, along with a very unique mashup of Radiohead’s “High and Dry” and D’Angelo‘s “Send It On.”
Check out the performance clips below!
