4 tracks · 12 min
Becoming the first girl group to win the Rising Star BRIT Award must be as daunting as it is thrilling—perfection takes time. So it’s small wonder that R&B trio FLO took the slow and steady approach to establishing their sound. Still, 3 of Us (released five months after their triumph at the 2023 BRIT Awards)—a compact bundle of sleekly produced midtempos—should satiate even the most impatient of fans, whetting appetites with a taste of what’s likely to come. The EP is co-written and produced by hitmaker MNEK (Dua Lipa, Little Mix)—with assists from talent including TSB (Stormzy, J Hus) and Ryan Ashley (H.E.R., Mahalia). On it, Londoners Jorja, Renée and Stella pour their feelings about various flavours of no-good lovers into four songs’ worth of skyscraping runs and honey-smooth harmonies. 3 of Us cherry-picks references that stretch from all the way back to the early 2000s (on the punchy distortion of “Control Freak”) to as recently as SZA’s 2017 album Ctrl, which echoes through the love-triangle saga of the title track. It sounds unmistakably of the now, but with its through thread of R&B history, there is a timelessness to the production that coats each song with a classic she…
