Jalen Ngonda Releases New Album "Doctrine of Love" on Daptone Records

Consequence’s recurring feature series CoSign highlights a rising artist who has caught our attention with a great new release. On this edition, presented by Lagunitas, we’re putting the spotlight on one of our 2026 Artists to Watch , Jalen Ngonda, and his new album, Doctrine of Love.

It would be reductive to say Jalen Ngonda makes music your grandmother would love, but that doesn’t make it a false statement. The 32-year-old soul revivalist has been bringing the past to the present since his debut album, 2023’s Come Around and Love Me . That project introduced a thrilling new voice in the rhythm and blues space, a bona fide sanger . His new album, Doctrine of Love , released on June 5th via Daptone Records, sees Ngonda diving further into that nostalgic sound, and fully wrapping himself in the atmosphere of the ’60s and ’70s.

Ngonda’s approach is more indebted to Motown than, say, LaFace Records of the ’90s, or today’s SoundCloud-startup-turned-label Soulection. While the aforementioned music brands have impacted contemporary music, Ngonda’s interest lies in paying homage to the forefathers of soul. According to the Washington D.C.-raised, London-based singer-songwriter, he fell in love with the sound of Motown by chance, at age 11. “To be honest, the very condition that led me to get into music is because we had a TV in our house,” he recalls. “The Temptations movie came on TV, and that’s what got me into it.”

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Fully enamored with the sound, Ngonda was also convinced he was going through a phase. “I was like, ‘I’m pretty sure at some point I’ll start listening to music from today,’ or, ‘All this weird Motown shit’s just something that I’m into right now.’ But it’s never gone away.”

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His soaring, raspy tenor belongs to a bygone era, but Doctrine of Love is Jalen Ngonda’s opportunity to grab the sturdy roots of rhythm and blues and pull them up to the present moment. In addition to the warm undertones that colored The Temptations’ influential work, Ngonda also experiments with the crystalline patterns of ’60s doo-wop groups like The Flamingos (“Anyone in Love”) and ’70s R&B/soul groups like The Dramatics and The Delfonics (“Love Is Gone”).

As inspired as Ngonda is by this era, he confesses his output is “just a reflection of all those guys,” and shouldn’t be placed on the same shelf. “I try not to fit in with them,” he shares. “I just respect them very much and I don’t try to get into the club with it. Like, ‘Oh man, let me join the Delfonics club so I can be part of their playlist.’ I think if people said that I’m trying to sound like them and I’m not doing a good job, I would still be making that kind of music, you know? Because I just love it.”

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For both his debut and Doctrine of Love , Ngonda worked alongside producers Michael Buckley and Vince Chiarito; Buckley previously played sax with the late, vivacious performer Sharon Jones, while Chiarito was the bass player for the soul pathfinder Charles Bradley, who has also passed away. (Both entertainers were signed to Daptone Records.)

According to Ngonda, he started writing songs for the album about two years ago. “I would go to New York to do a bulk of writing, then do some shows, come back to New York, do some more writing, do some writing in London,” Ngonda recalls. “And then once everyone around me felt that we had enough, we scheduled recording… I had to go on tour again and then went back to New York to record the vocals onto the backing track. It was just a process.”

Ngonda acknowledges that he went through somewhat of a convoluted journey while recording Doctrine of Love. “I think it’d be smoother if I wasn’t so busy with touring or playing shows,” Ngonda says. “If I could focus on just doing an album and relaxing, it would’ve gotten finished probably a bit sooner, and could’ve been released a bit earlier. I think when you’re juggling two things at once, you have to sort of compromise and push things. But I think creatively, it was a very fun process.”

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_Originally reported by [Consequence](https://consequence.net/2026/06/jalen-ngonda-doctrine-of-love-interview-cosign/)._