Review: Isaia Huron’s Debut Album ‘Concubania’ Explores Faith, Flaws, and Desire

In Ryan Coogler’s horror thriller Sinners, the lone survivor of a vampire massacre, Preacher Boy, cheats death by lobotomizing a vampire with his guitar. The irony: his pastor father had condemned the blues from the pulpit earlier in the film. What was once framed as sinful becomes salvation. That generational rift between the secular and the Black church may have softened, but the tension still occasionally hums beneath contemporary R&B and rap.

At this past year’s BET Awards, GloRilla rapped about her “trappin’-ass” type before accepting the Dr. Bobby Jones Best Gospel/Inspirational Award for “Rain Down On Me” alongside Kirk Franklin and Maverick City Music. The win came over gospel faithfuls like Tamela Mann and Yolanda Adams. The controversy surrounding her dual triumph mirrored the very paradox animating Isaia Huron’s brilliant debut Concubania: the pull between gospel faith and human flaw, salvation and sin.

Raised in the church, the Nashville-born singer makes R&B that feels like the intimate recording of someone who stumbled into the back pew, last night’s misdeeds still clinging to him as the sermon begins. He calls the project “deep shadow work,” a three-act journey through love, heartbreak, and the toxic cycles we can’t seem to escape. Even its title, born from the word concubine, nods to biblical David—a deeply flawed man still favored by God. For Isaia, that tension is the point. Concubania is about living in duality because that, simply, is what it means to be human.

Even if you never read into its subtext, Concubania still glows as great R&B, charged with undeniable surface-level pleasure. The seductive harmonies of “LIST CRAWLER” make an online escort service sound as tender as the vow-like devotion of his duet with Kehlani, “SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME.” The bruised honesty of “THE EVERYTHING SONG” cuts through like a confessional. Isaia doesn’t chase redemption here so much as catharsis, letting every imperfection and vulnerability stand as proof that grace can coexist with flaw. In his world, sin and salvation don’t cancel each other out. They coexist in harmony, just like gospel and the blues.