Chicago psych-soul artist Manasseh takes aim at his haters on “CBD” (ft. femdot.), a seductively soul-stirring diss track off his upcoming sophomore album ‘R&B[eyond]’ that wraps righteous anger in velvet vocals, psychedelic heat, and a hook built for reclaiming your peace.

Stream: “CBD” – Manasseh ft. femdot.

Success has a way of exposing who’s really in your corner.

The moment you start standing taller, taking up space, and believing in the person you’re becoming, the ones who can’t celebrate you tend to make themselves known. On “CBD,” Manasseh meets that resentment with fire: a smoldering, soul-drenched confrontation that wraps righteous anger in velvet vocals, psychedelic haze, and a hook as cutting as it is cathartic.

It’s a diss track with its heart still beating – heated, human, and alive with the release that comes from finally telling someone they’ve overstayed their welcome in your life. Manasseh doesn’t just call out bitterness, jealousy, and emotional freeloading; he turns them into fuel, letting “CBD” burn bright as a fierce, feverish act of self-respect.

You be doing the most
It ain’t always ‘bout you
Taking every chance
You can steal
To be so crass and rude

I can’t take it NOMO
I serve 10, you throw 2
A mood dampening connoisseur
Hot air, dark noise I’m sure

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “CBD,” the smoldering new single from Chicago psych-soul artist Manasseh featuring femdot. A vocalist, songwriter, arranger, creative director, and vocal coach from Chicago’s South Side, Manasseh makes music steeped in soul, R&B, jazz, and gospel roots – rich with feeling, brimming with texture, and led by a voice that knows how to ache, soar, and seethe in the same breath. His latest song arrives ahead of his forthcoming sophomore album R&B[eyond], a project he describes as “a genre-defying journey through soul, R&B, jazz, and cinematic soundscapes,” and follows the recently released lead single “Let’s Be Cool.”

For Manasseh, “CBD” marks another step forward in a career already rooted in deep Chicago community and collaboration. His 2022 debut album Monochromatic Dream centered loss, growth, triumph, and self-discovery through the lens of a queer Black man in Chicago, while his subsequent EP Variations V1: I’ll Be continued to expand his world with intimacy and intention. Beyond his solo work, he has spent years as a vocal coach and studio vocalist, lending his gifts to artists including Johari Noelle, Marquis Hill, Heavy Crownz, Rich Jones, Galaxy Francis, Rhea the Second, and more, with performances and features tied to institutions and outlets including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Audiotree, WTTW, Vocalo, and Earmilk. On “CBD,” all of that history – the church foundation, the arranger’s ear, the collaborator’s instinct, the solo artist’s fire – comes into focus in a song that feels both deeply personal and unmistakably alive.

Manasseh wrote “CBD” from a place of frustration that had been building for far too long.

The song’s title may scan as a sly wink at first, but its full refrain – “Please calm yo bi*** a** down” – lands like a boundary finally spoken out loud. It’s funny, sharp-edged, and deeply fed up, but beneath the heat is a real wound: The ache of giving yourself to people who can’t seem to celebrate the person you’re becoming.

“When I wrote this song, I was overwhelmed with anger toward certain people in my life who just couldn’t seem to celebrate my growth,” Manasseh tells Atwood Magazine. “I felt like I had poured so much of myself into relationships and situations, only to be overlooked or taken for granted – so I created this as my own diss track. It’s a message for anyone who struggles to genuinely be happy for their friends or loved ones.”

That resentment pulses through “CBD” from the first line. “You be doing the most / It ain’t always bout you,” Manasseh sings, cutting straight to the emotional imbalance at the song’s center: one person giving ten, the other throwing two; one person trying to grow, the other clouding the room with bitterness and bad faith. His words are direct, but the performance gives them dimension. He doesn’t flatten the feeling into rage alone – he lets it smolder, ache, and curl around the edges, turning a callout into a full-bodied release.

Gon head
Flyyyy away
You’ve overstayed
The welcome from my heart

Please calm yo bi*** a** down
There’s no clout to be found
Nobody even cares
what you’re talking about

Oooh pleeeease calm yo bi*** a** down
Learn how to just chill out
Nobody even knows
what you’re talking about

Musically, “CBD” thrives in that tension between elegance and exasperation. The beat moves with a smooth, almost late-night confidence, while the surrounding atmosphere swirls with heat: Hazy keys, woozy textures, and a vocal presence that feels close enough to singe. Manasseh’s delivery is controlled but never cold; he glides through the song with poise, letting every stacked harmony and stretched phrase carry the weight of a boundary being drawn. Even at its most cutting, “CBD” feels sensual and immersive – a diss track dressed in silk, smoke, and slow-burning soul.

The song’s most telling lyric may be its simplest: “You’ve overstayed / The welcome from my heart.”

It’s a devastating little turn of phrase, because it doesn’t frame the relationship as meaningless; it suggests there was once warmth, openness, maybe even love there. The problem isn’t that Manasseh never cared – it’s that care has been exhausted. The door was open until it couldn’t be anymore.

That’s what gives “CBD” its sting. Lines like “A mood dampening connoisseur” and “Hot air, dark noise I’m sure” don’t just call someone annoying; they paint them as an atmosphere, the kind of presence that changes the temperature of a room the second they enter it. Manasseh isn’t only rejecting a person here – he’s rejecting the emotional weather they bring with them: the negativity, the attention-seeking, the refusal to let anyone else have their moment.

Manasseh stops circling his feelings and says them outright in the song’s cathartic, emotionally charged chorus. “Please calm yo bi*** a** down / There’s no clout to be found / Nobody even cares what you’re talking about.” His words land with the giddy force of a door finally closing, but Manasseh’s effortless delivery keeps it from feeling flatly dismissive. He sings the hook with heat, humor, and release, turning an insult into an exorcism – less a cruel punchline than a survival phrase for anyone who’s had to reclaim their peace from someone addicted to disruption.

Femdot.’s verse deepens the song’s Chicago-rooted character, bringing a grounded contrast to Manasseh’s more vaporous vocal world. Where Manasseh lets the hook bloom into atmosphere, femdot. adds bite and motion, sharpening the track’s sense of confrontation without breaking its spell. Together, they make “CBD” feel less like a private rant than a communal exhale – the sound of two artists naming the behavior, clearing the air, and refusing to keep carrying what was never theirs to hold.

By the time the outro repeats “Nobody cares what you’re saying,” the song has fully slipped from confrontation into cleansing ritual. What begins as a pointed dismissal becomes almost meditative, a mantra for anyone who’s had to stop giving oxygen to someone else’s chaos. “CBD” doesn’t ask for peace by backing down; it demands peace by making the noise leave first.

Taken as a whole, “CBD” is more than a diss track with a wink in its title and venom in its hook. It’s a reclamation song, built around the moment a person decides their peace is no longer available for public consumption. Manasseh turns resentment into rhythm, exhaustion into momentum, and a blunt dismissal into a full-bodied act of self-protection. The result is one of those rare songs that feels indulgent and necessary at the same time – a release valve, a warning shot, and a mirror held up to anyone who’s ever confused closeness with entitlement.

That same spirit of self-definition runs through R&B[eyond], a record Manasseh describes as both a creative expansion and a love letter to the younger version of himself.

“R&B[eyond] project is an homage to the permission I was given to explore secular music, having grown up in a strict Baptist household,” Manasseh says. “Even so, my mother always recognized just how deeply I loved music – and that truth lives at the core of this body of work. At its heart, this album is for ‘Baby Ness.’ The artwork features a photo from my grammar school days, a moment when I felt completely confident, fully seen, and, honestly, my most handsome in that picture-day fit. That energy, that innocence, that self-assurance, all fuel the spirit of this project.”

In that light, “CBD” becomes an especially fitting window into Manasseh’s next chapter. Beneath its smoke, sweat, and sting is a deeper pursuit of self-trust: the right to take up space, to name what hurts, to honor the younger self who once felt fully seen, and to protect the adult self who’s still learning what that visibility costs. R&B[eyond] may move through soul, R&B, jazz, gospel, and cinematic sound, but its center feels deeply personal – a return to confidence not as performance, but as inheritance.

Stream “CBD” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and get lost in the heat, humor, and hard-won release of Manasseh’s seductively soul-stirring new single – a song for anyone who’s learned, the difficult way, who’s really in their corner.

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Stream: “CBD” – Manasseh ft. femdot.

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