“110%” by Jessie Ware
Genre: pop soul/future garage
Jessie Ware sounds like: Lily Allen’s cool sister that blasted Sade in her bedroom all day and hung out with people like Goapele and Adele (who actually is a close friend of hers)
Worth checking out: “Running,” “Wildest Moments,” “Sweet Talk”…okay just listen to everything she’s ever done
The ideal setting to play “110%”: Blasting on your laptop in a room of people so you can show off that you know a cool song.

Jessie Ware might be a really unfamiliar name but she’s making a splash over in the UK right now. This London singer was just nominated for the Mercury Prize in September for her critically acclaimed debut album Devotion. Fans of future garage music will recognize her from SBTRKT’s “Right Thing To Do” and “Sanctuary” and remixes that Disclosure and Star Slinger have done of her songs. Read more, watch her picturesque music video for the single “110%,” and grab a free download of her cover of Bobby Caldwell’s classic “What You Won’t Do For Love”:

I know, I know, here I go again with yet another genre, but music is constantly changing and future garage is definitely something we have to be paying attention to. It’s a relatively new subgenre of UK garage, which in turn is a descendant of house music. Are you still following? Okay well a more concrete example of UK garage is “Fever,” a song we featured a while back by B. Traits. If you were to take “Fever” and tone it down a little bit and add some spacey effects, you would get future garage. I mean, probably.

Ware isn’t just future garage though – her music has a heavy dose of soul and hip-hop in the mix. Influenced by singers like Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan, she incorporates powerhouse vocals and a certain groove you could only find in a diva. “110%” samples a vocal from Big Pun’s “The Dream Shatterer” and Ware still manages to sound as calming as ever. Devotion is crazy cool but for us American listeners, it’s only available via digital release right now. Good news though: on October 22, Jessie signed a deal with Cherrytree Records to get her digital and physical EP 110% out in the U.S. by December.

Download “What You Won’t Do For Love”