Found in the Inbox: Jaheim Keeps the Fire Burning on “Struggle Love”

“You know the voice,” the Rive Video Promotion campaign for Struggle Love begins. It is the hot-buttered tenor behind “Put That Woman First,” “Finding My Way Back,” “Fabulous,” “Anything” and “Age Ain’t a Factor,” and the three-time Grammy nominee Jaheim brought it back for a seventh studio album.

A record about getting through

Written and produced by Jaheim, Struggle Love covers falling in and out of love and plain surviving. “We are all going through a struggle right now,” Jaheim says. “Losing jobs, respect, love … It’s time to pull it all together.” The title track is “up-tempo with a Jaheim feel. It’s about looking back at where you came from and telling yourself you wouldn’t mind going back there for a minute.” The ballad “Back in My Arms,” the lead single, is “one of those songs where you don’t want to give up on love. Because there’s still fire at the end of the tunnel.”

A Drifters legacy

Raised in the projects of New Brunswick, New Jersey, Jaheim Hoagland started singing at five. The talent runs in the family: grandfather Victor Hoagland sang with the Drifters. “I’d be singing Luther Vandross songs at the top of my lungs on the way to school daycare,” Jaheim recalls. The album, the first through Jaheim’s Julie’s Dream Music Group with Primary Wave BMG Label Services, follows a debut that first drew attention in 2001 with Ghetto Love.

Why it was in the inbox

Fifteen years after Ghetto Love, the voice had lost none of its spark. “Struggle Love” is the proof.

Watch the official video

Quotes and release details from Rive Video Promotion’s campaign for Struggle Love. This feature updates Exposed Vocals’ original April 2016 post.