dornik welcomes us to ‘limboland’ with “you got it”

“Whatever happened to Dornik?” If you’ve been on the pulse of R&B movements around the world in the last decade then you’ve probably asked yourself this question at some point. The South London singer-songwriter and producer made a splash a half-decade ago with an ’80s-inspired sound that he called “electronic soul.” With a voice that drew comparisons to MJ and production that groovy as it was pretty Dornik captivated with his self-titled 2015 debuted and then he kind of, well, disappeared. Only dropping a handful songs in 2016 and 2017, he left a captive audience of fans frequently checking his Soundcloud in hopes of finding a crumb of new music.

Newly-independent and liberated, Dornik re-emerged at the end of last year with the bouncy single “Retail Therapy” flexing his silky vocals as well as a rap cadence following it up with the singles “Do You Wanna,” “Cush,” and “Galaxxxy”. Today he’s stopped feeding us piecemeal and given us his new long-player LIMBOLAND, its name an allusion to the record biz purgatory he’s been in while fans waited.

Firing off a final warning shot before the album came out today (May 22), Dornik blessed us with the audio for “You Got It” a breezy yet biting track about unapologetically putting an ex-lover in the rearview. “You invest so much time and energy into relationships that when they end, you can still feel that pull, he says via email. “‘You Got It’ is about freeing yourself from those negative patterns, and painful demands, and going your own way.” And indeed the refrain “Baby you got it, got it, ’cause I don’t owe you absolutely nothing,” might come off cold-blooded until you realize that it’s more a statement of self-care and boundary-setting than just a mean-spirited retort.

Listen to LIMBOLAND here, and tune into Afropunk’s IG Live next Thursday at 1 p.m. ET for an interview for the British soul man.