Justin Hicks makes music that doesn’t rush to explain itself. There’s a measured confidence in his work, a sense that each song knows exactly how much space it needs and refuses anything extra. His voice is the anchor: supple, searching, and quietly commanding, capable of holding fragility and resolve at the same time. Rather than chasing genre or trend, Hicks shapes songs that feel lived in—personal without being closed off, expansive without becoming abstract for abstraction’s sake. His work traces what it means to move through the world as a Black man in America, not by declaration, but by accumulation: mood, memory, texture, breath.

That sensibility is especially present on “Oh!,” the second single from his forthcoming debut album Man of Style, due February 20 in recognition of Black History Month. The track pairs Hicks with his wife, Tony-nominated actor and singer Kenita Miller-Hicks, and their voices intertwine with striking intimacy. They don’t perform at each other so much as alongside one another, blending into a shared emotional register that feels unguarded and slow-burning. Miller-Hicks brings a richness and agility to the song that evokes classic soul vocalists without imitation, grounding the track in warmth and depth.

Musically, “Oh!” moves with an understated momentum. Jake Sherman’s Fender Rhodes glows gently at the center, while synth tones flicker like light passing through water. The arrangement resists traditional ballad structure, favoring repetition and restraint over climactic release. It’s a song that leans inward, built for closeness rather than spectacle. Even its most urgent lyric—“I’m so tired but I gotta go faster”—lands not as a cry, but as a shared confession, whispered rather than announced.

Across Man of Style, Hicks treats singing as a form of inquiry. His songs don’t arrive with answers neatly packaged; they linger, hover, and leave space for reflection. Recorded largely over two days in Long Island City and produced with longtime collaborators Meshell Ndegeocello and Chris Bruce, the album feels intimate without being insular. It documents a voice testing its edges—emotionally, sonically, spiritually—and discovering what can live there. Folk, R&B, experimental textures, and noise-adjacent moments all surface, but none dominate. Each track stands on its own, functioning less like a genre exercise and more like a letter or meditation.

The album’s title gestures toward multiplicity rather than surface polish. Man of Style isn’t about aesthetics alone; it’s about holding contradictions. Hicks draws from a lineage of narrative-driven songwriters—artists who blurred the line between confession and performance—while remaining firmly himself. You can hear echoes of classic soul and singer-songwriter traditions, but also the influence of contemporary artists who let form follow feeling. The result is music that doesn’t demand your attention so much as earn it over time.

Hicks’ background informs this approach. Raised in the Midwest by creatively inclined parents—a pastor with visual art ambitions and an educator who sang folk and gospel—music was less a profession than a practice, something embedded in daily life. That ethos carries through his work now. He treats songs as acts of care, aware of their limitations but committed to their potential to comfort, challenge, and connect.

Beyond his solo work, Hicks has built a wide-ranging collaborative life, contributing as a composer, vocalist, and sound artist across disciplines. His collaborations span visual art, theater, experimental opera, and concert performance, including Grammy-winning projects with Meshell Ndegeocello. Yet for all his interdisciplinary reach, songwriting remains his most direct mode of communication—a place where his instincts for clarity, tension, and emotional honesty come into sharp focus.

What ultimately sets Justin Hicks apart is his refusal to perform urgency. His music unfolds patiently, trusting the listener to meet it where it is. There’s no excess, no rush toward resolution. Instead, Man of Style offers something rarer: songs that stay with you, music that doesn’t perform for you but lives alongside you. It’s a body of work that understands intimacy as something built slowly—and believes that’s more than enough.