In one of the spoken intermissions, a woman named Precious Daughtry says a childhood of deprivation repels her from men without money. ’Cause you always feel like somebody’s judging you.” Throughout Heaux Tales, though, the motivations and makings of women who do or wish to earn material things through love and sex are considered with more kindness and clarity.
“We all want to be that confident person,” Sullivan said about the song at the time. On “Mascara,” from her 2015 album Reality Show, Sullivan personified a proud gold digger with an attitude to match. There is a direct throughline between the archetypal portraits Sullivan has painted in the past and the more dynamic accounts here. Heaux Tales, by contrast, commits to simpler, more timeless soundscapes, like the snaps and synths of “Bodies” or the standout guitars of “Lost One” and “Girl Like Me.” Over the comparably minimalist production and instrumentation, the album’s narratives of agency are made central. Her music has jumped from reggae to disco to boom-bap to marching band and more as she explored the lives of women and men in the throes of crime, passion, and addiction. One of Sullivan’s breaks into popular R&B was with the 2008 revenge tango “Bust Your Windows.” The scorned lover in the song is one of many personas Sullivan would act out over the course of three albums that pulsed with drama and camp. Sullivan strategically activates her regal voice with stories that are sharp, intimate, and addictive. Across eight songs connected by spoken-word interludes from different women, Heaux Tales unfurls a patchwork of origins, outcomes, thrills, and disasters of coital indulgence in her most cohesive work to date. Her fourth album is expansive and inclusive, embodying as many women’s insights into love and sex (read “ Heaux” as “ho”) as 32 minutes could reasonably allow.
Heaux Tales itself looks to something bigger, too, beyond Sullivan as its subject or star.
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