Before Love Came To Kill Us

Uninspired choice of featuring artist aside, the artistic breadth and depth of this project speaks to Reyez’s position as an emerging, formidable artist in her own right - someone who knows exactly what a good song, let alone a good R&B song, should sound like.

The fearless formula, the genre-blending, the artistic craft on display marks Reyez's latest as one of the better albums in an already interesting 2020. Before Love Came to Kills shines a light on homegrown talent done great.

Although it's all over the place, Before Love Came to Kill Us radiates conviction from front to back, and is without doubt a true representation of its creator.

The album's deft genre-hopping is navigated with a confidence that comes from clearly hard-won experience. [May 2020, p.110]

‘Before Love Came To Kill Us’ has a number of strong tracks and is an excellent debut. Jessie Reyez appears to be in total control of this record and shows off her versatility, as well as her rage.

For the most part, ‘Before Love Came To Kill Us’ is a beautiful, heart-wrenching debut that sees its creator come good on her early promise.

There are so many good tracks on here that you want to say there is not a bad track on this outrageously fine pop record. But there is. Love in the Dark is a flaccid ballad [...] that almost undoes all the powerful work Reyez has done thus far. Almost, but not quite.

What’s most satisfying about Before Love Came to Kill Us isn’t that Reyez whizzes across multiple genres—these days, who doesn’t?—but the skill she displays at each. No matter the arrangement, she powers across it at full force. ... Like many recent pop records, the album is overlong, and the extraneous material tends to be the kind of filler that Reyez is well above.