After last year’s triumph with Toni Braxton, the ’90s biggest produce returns with a sweet trifle.
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Jonathan Bogart: Babyface’s imperial period in the early ’90s was so sleek, futuristic, and even chilly that it’s a shock to hear something so loose and hippyish from him. Sure, twenty years has worked changes on all of us, and at least the spring-coiled beat is vintage 90s, but I can’t help wondering if this wasn’t produced with one eye on Pharrell’s recent relentlessly positive work.
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Rebecca A. Gowns: The theme to a family sitcom running on syndication on an obscure cable channel: comforting; predictable throwback elements; so universal as to be vague; still makes me feel good within the first five seconds.
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Mo Kim: This is the standard to which I will hold all wedding bands moving forward.
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Brad Shoup: A modified go-go beat with a pop-gospel sunniness. On top is an array of surprising chords, fanned out by a magician. My favorite trick is the hook that starts like meowing before resolving in two fusion chords.
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Alfred Soto: With a thwacking production as modern as baggy jeans, “We’ve Got Love” is the kind of trifle that last year’s marvelous Toni Braxton concept album eschewed. Love, they told us, was not quite enough.
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Thomas Inskeep: The term “grown folks’ R&B” was created for songs like this one, a warm throwback to when “R&B” was “soul.” Reminds me quite a bit of the Isleys covering soft-rock chestnuts in the early ’70s, and works just as well. ‘Face doesn’t have the pizzazz he did, say, 25 years ago, but the chops haven’t gone anywhere.
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