There’s a lot of charm to be found in the R&B tunes of yesteryear: they’re genuinely heartfelt and poetic without today’s apparent necessity to throw notes and key changes all over the place, or need to deal with life on the streets. Having said that, a lot of past R&B is quite soppy in their arrangements and not very empowering to the women that sang them: we get it, you love him even if he is a bit of a jerk!
This song doesn’t quite go the way of total devotion to some dude (it’s actually a rather sweet love song in general). The great thing about it is its haunting quality. The opening chords and choral “Ooo” are wonderful and get me every darn time, before moving into something with quite a bit of variety – it even goes into a shuffle later on!