cortex - 'nothing Changed'
- Miss JLH
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
What’s Good Y’all! As summer winds down, my search for up-and-coming artists and new music is just getting started. This month, I’m dedicating my features to the artists making waves you need to catch!
While searching for the latest R&B releases, I stumbled upon an artist named cortex. The name alone made me pause. The cover also caught my eye, with 90’s R&B vibes and incandescent elevator lights shining on cortex. I wasn’t expecting a scrawny-looking white guy, so I hit play to see if he’d piss me off or make me go, uh huh…interesting. lol
I was honestly hoping I’d stumbled upon an AI artist so I wouldn’t have to share these next thoughts. I also went looking for proof that he was real. The only thing I could find online was an Instagram page and a few poorly rerecorded, short-form performance videos on YouTube.
Nonetheless, I did my best to tap into his latest single, ‘nothing Changed’; however, nothing specifically captured me about the track or the artist. cortex, from Malmö, Sweden, released his first commercial singles in 2023 and gained wider attention over the next couple of years. With singles like ‘Boassanova’ and the likewise Brazilian-inspired ‘Val de Marne’, it's easy to see how he's amassed a following of 29.5K followers on IG. In 2025, he released a full-length project entitled ‘Velvet Noire’, followed by 2026’s project, 'For What It's Worth'. He then continued releasing singles this year, such as ‘December 10th’, ‘Golden Boy’, ‘Days Are Over ’, and now, ‘nothing Changed’.
And while I can respect a hardworking, hungry artist consistently creating and releasing music to obtain a loyal fanbase, I also found it intriguing how easy it is for anyone in the world to copy the exact sound and style of Black music, even all the way in Sweden. It was hard for me to focus on the lyrics in this new single because it reminded me so much of Tory Lanez or Bryson Tiller, hell, even Drake. And while I understand music and artists can influence anyone, anywhere, I am genuinely just over the same recipe being copied and pasted but in a different font. ESPECIALLY when that style and sound now feels worn out and uninspired, and you didn’t do anything special to modernize the sound. I kept looking at my phone to see if I was truly listening to a new artist that actually exists, or if it was computer-generated from a mesh of voices and styles we have already seen and heard before.
‘nothing Changed’ by Cortex did absolutely nothing for me, so I decided to listen to his other releases. From ‘Golden Boy’ to ‘Days Are Over,’ ‘Overcomplicate It’, ‘Confused ’, and ‘I Want You ', I just kept digging a deeper hole of annoyance and disgust. I realized I might be working from a place of bias because this is a style of R&B that I have always had a love/hate relationship with. And while I may not have rocked with these artists, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t!
If you like the style of R&B from artists like Drake, Bryson Tiller, and Tory Lanez, then cortex is going to be your new obsession. Unfortunately, it was just a no for me, dog.
To listen to cortex’s latest single, check out the links below:
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