R&B has a long tradition of its artists making bold, sometimes bawdy requests in their music — often as a desperate bid to save a failing relationship. Remember how in “Let’s Get Married,” 112 shrugs “we ain’t gettin’ no younger, so we might as well do it?” That song exists on a historical continuum that now includes Daniel Caesar setting a baby trap with his latest single, “Have A Baby (With Me).” You gotta love a song title that clarifies its proposition with a parenthetical.
All jokes aside, it’s an expectedly pretty song from the Canadian crooner, employing a loopy bassline over which Daniel narrates the situation. “You hold my hand, but in your head, you’ve already left / You free yourself of patience / You sit on the bed, but your shadow is getting dressed / You’ve had too many years of waiting.”
His solution is bad, but it’s familiar; faced with the possibility of losing his lover for good, he beckons, “Have a baby with me / There’s no time to believe in what we could be / We could leave something here / It’s too late for our dreams / We can make a new dream.”
As a staunch non-aspirant, I must say: while there are admirable and dubious reasons to pursue parenthood, this is undoubtedly the worst. That said, it’s thematically resonant with the title of his upcoming third studio album, Son Of Spery, which invokes his father to address the complexities of our relationships with our parents, and how they affect the ways we move through the world, even without knowing it. It sounds like we’re getting a literary classic from Caesar, which might reverse the results of that drunken rant in 2019.
