Neo soul found me at the worst possible time, which is probably why it got in so deep. I was nineteen, freshly heartbroken over a man who acted like letting me in would cost him something, and someone put Erykah Badu on at a party and I stopped mid-conversation like I’d been tapped on the shoulder by something I couldn’t see. That was it for me. Something about the way neo soul moves, unhurried, like it has all night and knows you’re not going anywhere either, does something to your nervous system that nothing else quite manages. It slows you down and makes you feel things at full volume instead of skipping past them. Jordan Corey’s ‘Feel Me (Stripped)’ walked in with that same energy and reminded me what it feels like when someone talks about love like they actually mean it.
Okay so Jordan is not talking about love the way your situationship talked about love, which was mostly vibes and inconsistency and you crying in an Uber. She’s talking about the real shit, the kind of love that lives in your chest before anyone even says a word, the frequency that bypasses everything rational. ‘Feel Me (Stripped)’ is about fucking someone up without forcing it, sitting across from a person who’s been closed off his whole damn life and being patient enough, sexy enough, real enough that he actually wants to let you in. That’s not a small thing. That takes a woman who knows her own worth so completely she makes herself undeniable. And the spring energy of this track? God, it’s so perfectly matched to that feeling of everything opening back up, windows down, nowhere to be, lying in the sun with someone who finally fucking gets you. This is love operating at a frequency most people can’t tune into.
Recorded live in Los Angeles with Allee Futterer on bass (yes, that Allee Futterer, Chappell Roan’s bassist) and Jason Goldstein on keys, ‘Feel Me (Stripped)’ has this neo soul sizzle that time shifts you to a basement club in the 70s. Jordan Corey‘s smokey, bluesy vocals snuggle up to it, delivering a sound that is a lost art in today’s pop music.
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The song opens with Jordan leaning in so close you can almost feel her breath. “Sometimes I wanna know what you’re all about / Speaking from the heart, let your feelings out / Tell me ’bout your home how you made it here / I really wanna know can you take me there?” She wants his whole origin story – the version he doesn’t tell people on first dates but explain everything about who he became. That question has a pull to it that should be illegal. She’s asking for access and you can feel he wants to give it to her even if he doesn’t know how yet. The hook landing right after seals it. She already knows the answer before he does.
She also clocked his whole situation from the jump. “You’re not the type of man to let people in / Judging by your vibe you ain’t feelin’ it / So tell me what to do to prove it to you / I really wanna know can you speak your truth?” The audacity of that offer coming from a woman who already knows she’s the realest thing in the room. She’s working with what she’s got, which is a man with walls up and a patience that most women would’ve burned through by the second verse. I’ve been her. God, the amount of times I’ve sat across from some emotionally unavailable ass and decided he was worth cracking open anyway.
The chorus is where she lays her whole hand down. “You wanna ride with a real one / A down ass chick for the long run / You wanna ride with a real one / I know that you’re about it it’s a feeling.” You don’t say ‘down ass chick for the long run’ to someone you’re still figuring out. She knows what she brings and she’s done waiting for him to figure it out. ‘It’s a feeling’ closes it because she’s already past words and she’s waiting for him to catch up.
The second verse digs deeper. “I know you used to hang at your mama’s house / Thinking ’bout the ways you could make it out / Somewhere down the line things began to skew / Tell me something more, let me get to you” She traces him back to where he started and finds the moment everything shifted, and she names it so casually it hits harder than it should. That closing ask is a request and a move.
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Then the bridge walks in and takes everything ten degrees hotter. “Let’s stay up late night talking history / Try and figure out all our mysteries / Indiana Jones, grab the rope and swing / You gotta have faith, lemme pull your strings” She opens with adventure and closes with a kink-coded power move so smooth you almost miss it. She’s holding the rope and he knows it, and goddamn if that isn’t the sexiest thing on this entire track. The outro’s “You ride, you ride, ride” drifting over the fade says everything she didn’t need to spell out.
Jordan is a Bay Area-born, California-based singer-songwriter, producer, and professional songwriter who has been moving through this industry for fifteen years with the kind of quiet confidence that doesn’t need to announce itself. She grew up on soul ballads, classic rock, and disco, started classical piano at six, and by fourteen was already transmuting her feelings into songs, which honestly explains everything about why her music hits the way it does. Her vocal and songwriting work got her a cut on Grammy-winning artist RAC’s album EGO alongside Rivers Cuomo, Rostam, K.Flay, and St. Lucia, and while on tour with RAC she linked up with his drummer Jeff Brodsky to form the production duo CURIO, whose work has since landed in campaigns for Apple, Google, Samsung, Adidas, Dolce & Gabbana, and a whole lot more. She also reads tarot, which, honestly? Of course she does. The woman who writes about love as a vibrational frequency you already carry inside you absolutely has a deck on her nightstand.
I have been chasing that nineteen-year-old neo-soul feeling I mentioned at the beginning of this review ever since. Most things get close. ‘Feel Me (Stripped)’ stopped me mid-conversation all over again and I did not see it coming. Jordan Corey found the frequency, the one that pulls you straight toward the man in the room who looks like he hasn’t decided if he wants to be known yet and she put it on a record. That’s the whole damn thing.
