War & Leisure is the fourth studio album by Miguel and was released on December 1st, 2017. The album was supported by four singles: “Sky Walker,” “Shockandawe,” “Told You So” and “Come Through and Chill.” In an interview with Billboard before the album,’s release, Miguel said his next album will be his most politically-charged project to date. It would find him addressing a number of social issues, including immigrant rights at the Adelanto Detention Center near Los Angeles. He gave a preview of the album and spoke out against the center (and others like it) during his visit to Adelanto. As the kaleidoscopic, sexual provocateur of contemporary R&B, you would expect Miguel’s latest album to deal with lust, love, intoxication, etc. Yet, on War & Leisure, Miguel evolves into a kind of guerilla romantic – ever mixing politics and pleasure. For Miguel, though, this combination is not taboo. On tracks like “City of Angels,” Miguel treats the seemingly unrelated ideas of politics and sex as equal. These two themes are quite literally the identifiable markers of the album: War & Leisure is a continuosly dichotomous project. The ideological successor to Prince and his mission, Miguel treats freedom of speech and self-expression as necessary components of human rights. The suppression of a person’s identity – sexual, religious, or ethnic – is an attack on their humanity. Throughout the album, he examines the moral crisis in America through a constant, clever duality – mirroring the broader divide on these issues. On “Told You So” and “Criminal” his seemingly innocuous and playful lyrics about sex and power read as sinister and grim when considered in the context of today’s political rhetoric. Despite this, the album is not a direct criticism of a specific agenda (that’s reserved for T-shirts), but rather a condemnation of the toxicity of contemporary society – especially against immigrants, women, and people of color. However, Miguel is not a natural dissident. Most of his previous albums are psychedelic explorations of love, lust, and self-discovery. War & Leisure provides plenty of these: “Caramelo Duro,” and “Come Through and Chill” both offer relief from politics (bar J. Cole’s surprising cameo). Sonically, the album is an evolution of his previous artistic style and reflects Miguel’s continued (and often controversial) maturation as an R&B innovator. Several tracks incorporate a wide range of synths and electronic rhythms; “Caramelo Duro” and “Banana Clip” experiment with wonderfully distorted guitar melodies. On the album’s closer, “Now,” Miguel distills the album’s sobering reproofs and intoxicating grooves into a single call for love and peace. Revisiting an earlier message of hope, he implores us to “not waste our common ground/We will fall for standing and watching, all in silence/Are we numb?/Where we going right now?” In an interview with PAPER magazine, Miguel observed, “We’re all just trying to figure it out. We’re in the middle of a lot – a lot of completely opposing messaging and narratives.” War & Leisure is not just a commentary on this chaos we all are experiencing, but also a much-needed reminder that we have the ability to be bigger than the chaos. In the end, even Miguel admits the album is more than just the ominous visuals of “Told You So”: “I wouldn’t say this is a political album…It’s definitely a more upbeat album, ironically.”