Syleena Johnson turns to UK house on the single Take Care with DJ Shy Cookie

Syleena Johnson has released Take Care, and it is not the kind of record her catalogue would lead anyone to expect. The song is house and UK garage, made with the British producer DJ Shy Cookie, and it puts a singer known for heavy, emotive soul over four-on-the-floor production.

The pairing does the obvious thing well. Johnson's delivery has always been built on power rather than on restraint, which is a quality club records tend to want and rarely get from vocalists who came up in the ballad tradition, and Take Care uses the whole of it rather than chopping it into a hook.

The production leans British. DJ Shy Cookie brings garage rhythm patterns and a polished bounce that sits under the vocal instead of competing with it, and the result is aimed squarely at a dancefloor rather than at R&B radio.

What it is not is an abandonment. Johnson has spent more than two decades on traditional soul, and the argument the record makes is that the voice travels: the same delivery that carried her ballads works over a club tempo without being reprocessed into something else.

No parent release has been named. There is no album, no EP and no tour attached, so Take Care is out on its own, available to stream and download now, and it will sit on the release calendar across both the rnb-soul and electronic sides of the ledger.

The crossing is happening in both directions this year. The UK garage artist Sammy Virji has been playing New York to audiences well outside the dance circuit, and records like Blood Lotus's independent debut have been filed under electronic and soul at the same time.