There's a particular kind of patience that only independent artists understand. No A&R breathing down your neck, no label clock ticking, no quarterly targets to hit — just you, your production partner, and the music you actually want to make. Mýa has been operating that way since she founded Planet 9 in 2008, and her new album Retrospect, out May 15, is the fullest expression yet of what that freedom looks like when it's finally finished.
Retrospect is her first full-length in eight years, the follow-up to 2018's T.K.O. (The Knock Out), and it arrives with a clear thesis: funk never died, it just needed the right person to stop apologizing for it. The album draws deep from the Minneapolis sound of the late '70s and early '80s — Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Teena Marie, Rick James, Vanity 6, Prince — and Mýa has been transparent about the pandemic being the catalyst. She went back to the music that played at roller rinks and cookouts and on Soul Train in her childhood, and she decided to build something that felt like all of it at once. "Music wasn't just a part of my life; it was the heartbeat of my home, the foundation of my joy," she said of the project. That's not marketing copy. You can actually hear it.
The 16-track album is produced by Mýa alongside her longtime collaborator Lamar "MyGuyMars" Edwards, with additional contributions from production duo Mike & Keys. It opens with "Give It to You," where Mýa borrows Rick James' vowel-stretching inflection on the word "elated" — absorbed, not quoted, as one reviewer put it. "Saturday Night" is a disco-funk groove that sits at the album's midpoint. "Just Call My Name" deploys a clean Prince-style guitar tone through wet reverb over a Rhodes arrangement, landing somewhere between a slow jam and a sermon. The "whoo!" that opens "No Pressure" is a direct nod to Teena Marie, and the West Coast funk of "Just a Little Bit" features Bay Area legend Too $hort, released as the album's second single on May 1. The lead single, "A.S.A.P.," dropped on January 30 and debuted at number twenty-two on the Adult R&B Songs chart — Mýa's first-ever entry on that chart — before a remix featuring 21 Savage arrived on February 27.
The guest list is eclectic in the way that only a truly independent project can afford to be. Snoop Dogg appears on "No Pressure," a track that nods to Michael Jackson and Rick James while celebrating the early ease of a new romance. Joyner Lucas, Phil Adé, Dizzy Wright, and D-Nice also make appearances across the record. The collaborations feel less like industry maneuvers and more like a DC-raised artist calling in favors from people she actually respects across generations and coasts.
For this release, Mýa also partnered with Virgin Music Group for distribution — a strategic move that lets her maintain full creative control under Planet 9 while reaching a broader infrastructure than her usual boutique rollout. It's a meaningful distinction: the album sounds like nobody told her what to do, because nobody did.
What makes Retrospect worth sitting with is the tension at its center: an album called Retrospect that mostly faces forward. "Saturday Night" is about tonight's plans. "Masterpiece" is addressed to someone in the room right now. The title is less about nostalgia as a destination and more about what Mýa told one interviewer — that it's also about introspection. Looking back to understand where you are. The road to release was longer than anyone planned: beyond the years of crafting and refining, the project was held up by legal processes, featured-artist clearances, and the untimely death of Mýa and Edwards's mixing engineer. She remastered the album twice and only released it when it sounded right to her and Edwards. "It's kind of like serving a meal undercooked," she said. "You would never want to do that for your customers." Eight years is a long time to keep the kitchen going. But Retrospect doesn't taste rushed.
