She opens with a memory - cats used to harmonize out on the bouley - soft oohs answering behind her while the beat settles into place underneath.

The address widens - 'my men and my women' - and she names her faith in the same breath, all of it riding the same easy, unhurried beat.

Then she turns outward and works the room - hands in the air, 'put them up' - the ad-libs calling back like a party already in progress.

First verse. The harmony's still smiling and the snare keeps walking, but her voice has turned to account-keeping - three weeks, a friend, a man who never called back.

What gets me is how little the arrangement has to move - bass and drums keep the ground even, the responses flash in and out - and she makes the motion herself, leaning against the bar line, then snapping back into it.

'Girlfriend, let me break it down for you again' - the line doesn't slow the track, it steadies it. The counsel arrives on the beat, not above it.

'Don't be a hard rock when you really are a gem' - she doesn't soften the attack to make the care legible. The care is in the discipline.

Now she names herself - 'Lauryn is only human' - and the voices behind her start catching the ends of her lines: 'human,' 'I been there.'

The verse gives way to 'come again' - the list is done, the call repeats, little 'yeah, yeah's stacking up behind her.

And now it sings. 'Guys, you know you'd better watch out' - the warning arrives rounded, almost communal, the background voices thickening around it.

'That thing, that thing, that thing' - the hook circles so easily you could miss that it's still a warning, a moral charge you can dance to.

Second verse, dedicated to the men - same beat, but the cadence is harder in the mouth now, more percussive, the background answers landing like punctuation.

Rims and Timbs, Cristal, court dates, kids - the list keeps growing, and because the beat never wobbles, every accusation lands square.

There it is - 'How you gonna win when you ain't right within?' - asked twice, stern, almost plain, sitting inside the beat instead of floating over it.

'Come again' - a small clearing after all that, a breath taken in rhythm, the bredrin and the sistren both called back.

'Watch out, watch out' - and now there are clipped bom-bom hits under every warning, the whole thing turning circular.

The chorus comes back with the address flipped - 'Girls, you know you'd better watch out.'

And the guys' answer stacks right on top of it - warnings overlapping now, the form itself doing the turning.

'That thing' keeps circling - girls, guys, only about - until the words wear down to pure rhythm, a named temptation reduced to a pulse.

Now the record lets go in small steps - the phrase falls back, the band easing out until it's mostly room tone.

And after that quiet - voices. A classroom. No drums, no hook, just young people talking over each other about whether they're too young to really love somebody.

One of them draws the line - loving somebody, being in love - and the answers pile up over each other, nobody waiting their turn. There's no beat to wait for.

The adults get quoted - too young, this is silly - and the answers come back fast, overlapping, unfinished.

And then it just thins away into quiet. Four minutes of warning you could dance to, handed off to a room of kids still working out what love is - no verdict, just the question.