Summer time Walker has formally accomplished one in all fashionable R&B’s most gripping trilogies. The Atlanta singer’s new album Lastly Over It arrived at present, delivering an 18-track double venture that anchors the final six years of her storytelling with a uncommon dose of closure, self-assurance, and emotional readability.
Cut up into two halves — For Higher and For Worse — the album marks a decisive endpoint to a collection that started together with her 2019 breakout Over It and continued via 2021’s Nonetheless Over It. Whereas its predecessors leaned closely into heartbreak and public scrutiny, this closing chapter reframes Walker’s experiences as classes somewhat than wounds.
“Regardless of it sounding like I’m ‘lastly over it,’ like, ‘Oh, she’s actually mad now,’ it’s extra so a unique period, placing down the bags, placing down any stress, and simply transferring in direction of a greater life,” she informed Jennifer Hudson in an interview. That shift in perspective defines the venture’s emotional middle, even because it carries the identical intimate songwriting that made the collection a cultural touchstone.
Lastly Over It arrives after months of teases, together with a wedding-seating-chart-style Spotify rollout confirming one in all her most stacked visitor lists but. Chris Brown, 21 Savage, Anderson .Paak, Latto, GloRilla, Bryson Tiller, Sexyy Pink, and Brent Faiyaz are among the many collaborators who assist Walker discover themes of progress, accountability, and self-worth. She additionally connects with Doja Cat and Latto on “Go Woman,” trades velvet harmonies with Anderson .Paak on “1-800 Heartbreak,” and companions with Bryson Tiller on “Give Me a Cause.” Additional, she samples Beyoncé’s “Sure” on the observe “No,” a quiet flex that spotlights how far she’s are available in her craft.
However Summer time Walker makes clear that this album isn’t pushed by the anger that when formed her public narrative. In an October interview with Speedy Mormon, she mirrored on the notorious 2023 Ring digicam incident together with her ex Lil Meech, getting into one other girl’s house — the footage that launched a thousand “groceries” memes. Requested if the ordeal was infuriating, she didn’t mince phrases. “It was. That was actually ignorant,” she mentioned. “However, hey, I used to be like, ‘That’s trifling as f—.’ I actually don’t even should say something on that as a result of his life is horrible now, so yeah.” The second resurfaced once more in her promotional lie-detector teaser, the place she laughed when requested, “Was it his cousin’s groceries?” signaling she’s lengthy since moved previous the drama that when dominated her headlines.
That maturity weaves via the album itself. “ ‘For Higher’ is about selecting me, absolutely and at last,” Walker defined. “‘I’ve made decisions that didn’t at all times make sense to anybody else, however I don’t remorse any of them. All of them taught me one thing.’” On the flip facet, “‘For Worse’ isn’t bitter, however sincere. I’ve cherished too exhausting, ignored pink flags, and tried to make things better that had been past restore. The distinction now’s I really like myself that deeply, I’ve grown, I’ve healed, and I refuse to simply accept something lower than princess therapy.”
Musically, the album tightens and elevates the sound that’s come to outline Walker’s world. She faucets a stacked roster of producers, together with The-Dream, Bryan-Michael Cox, Nineteen85, Terrace Martin, Nija Charles, and Jeremih amongst them to construct a soundscape that oscillates simply between bare-bones vulnerability and wealthy, layered R&B heat. Songs like “Robbed You,” “Sew Me Up,” and “Coronary heart of a Girl” return to her acquainted themes of heartbreak, missteps, and the lingering ache of unfinished tales — the ghosts of “what may’ve been” — however her perspective has shifted. She isn’t pleading via the ache anymore; she’s sifting via it, naming it, and at last letting it go.
Walker even took the album’s themes into the streets. In Atlanta, she climbed into the motive force’s seat of a dump truck and invited her followers to actually drop their emotional baggage, tossing previous hoodies, T-shirts, and stuffed animals into the again as a form of communal reset. “They threw [away] their teddy bears, their previous T-shirts, hoodies, all away, and I’m glad we bought to share that with one another… to allow them to get able to be Lastly Over It with me,” she informed Hudson.
The discharge caps an undeniably full interval for Walker. Since 2022, she’s welcomed twins, earned a Grammy nod for final 12 months’s Clear 2: Tender Life, hit the street with Chris Brown on the Breezy Bowl XX tour, and, simply final week, secured two extra nominations for “Coronary heart of a Girl.” And whereas her private world seems steadier than in her earlier eras, the music suggests she hasn’t misplaced her edge. Followers weren’t shy about declaring Lastly Over It her finest work but — social feeds lit up nearly instantly with reward, calling the file “no skips,” “Album of the 12 months already,” and a “10/10” finale to one in all fashionable R&B’s most relatable story arcs.
By the point Lastly Over It reaches its closing notes, it gathers the uncooked heartbreak of Over It and the emotional reckoning of Nonetheless Over It into one thing the primary two chapters solely hinted at: true acceptance. Walker sounds steadier right here — clearer in what she needs, firmer in what she received’t entertain, and unmistakably extra grown. And for an artist whose private life has lengthy been parsed in actual time by the web, that calm self-possession looks like probably the most highly effective assertion she’s made but.
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