Jai Paul is starting to look like a functioning recording artist again! Earlier this year, the enigmatic artist played his first-ever live show at Coachella, and it worked out a whole lot better than what fellow recluse Frank Ocean did at the same show. Paul has been playing more live shows since then, and he’s probably been recording with HAIM. Now, he’s released his first new song since he dropped a couple of tracks in 2019.

The new song “I Care” is a duet between Jai Paul and his protege Fabiana Palladino. Palladino, the daughter of famed bass wizard Pino, started out as a London session musician, working with artists like Jessie Ware, Kindness, and Sampha. (She was in Ware’s live band for a while.) Jai and A. K. Paul brought her into their project the Paul Institute, and she released her track “Waiting” on the Paul Institute’s Summer 2020 EP three years ago. Now, Palladino and Paul have released the slinky, chilled-out duet “I Care,” which they wrote and produced together. Palladino says:

I wrote this song on my Juno 106 one night at home and played it to Jai the next day. He instantly came up with a beat, and we worked together on the track from there. I’ve always loved those Motown duets with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell or Diana Ross and wanted to create a modern version of that. We’re playing with the way those duets have this quite clear notion of romance, love and relationships… We’re subverting that a little to explore normativity in relationships. Musically, we’ve tried to put all of the beauty, excitement, and tension of modern day love into this song.

Check out “I Care” below.

“I Care” is out now on the Paul Institute/XL Recordings.