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Jazmine Sullivan, 'Hurt Me So Good'

Jazmine Sullivan has returned with more tales for her heaux chronicles; "Hurt Me So Good," one of the new tracks on Heaux Tales Mo' Tales: The Deluxe, narrates the perils of staying in a relationship bad enough to make you question your worth but just good enough to make you stay despite the drama. Toxicity at it's finest. In the preceding interlude, "Jazzy's Tale," Sullivan invites insight into this mental state by sharing childhood experiences of feeling "undesirable" and a consequent need to seek validation from men: "It's a sad, scary and vulnerable place when you need to feel love so much that you're willing to accept anything."

In "Hurt Me So Good," Sullivan belts verses about being a shadow of who she once was over a busy percussive beat entwined with a jazzy piano melody. The track features Sullivan's raspy rap-singing as, effortlessly, her vocals go from floating alongside instruments to passionate lilts in the bridge and chorus. Sullivan ends the song with, "And I hate that I need you, when you know how to hurt me so good," followed by a cry-like run, a final plea to her lover for mercy.

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Taylor Jennings-Brown
Taylor Jennings-Brown is a 2021-2022 Kroc Fellow. She is a thoughtful writer from Durham, North Carolina and is a spring 2021 graduate from the University of South Carolina, where she received her bachelor's degree in mass communications and anthropology.