Eddie Rockerz VibeZ

Veteran R&B crooner Babyface is making  one hell ,of a comeback with the release of his first original solo album in 10 years,  Return of the Tender Lover. “This is old-school R&B with a fine glass finish, the musicianship and production audibly expensive and the man’s voice so honeyed it presumably requires the attentions of worker bees,” the Guardian ‘s music reporter Dave Simpson wrote in his three-star review on Thursday. The nine-track album is all about love which has pretty much gone out of in the current hyper-sexual musical landscape. He won’t boast and have his way with the ladies, but treat them with respect, tenderness, understanding & a sense of wonder like a true lover, hence the title of this fantastic release. “The collaborations on Return of the Tender Lover and the design of its production feel traditional, in the sense that they don’t attempt to update Babyface’s sound ...

Fifty-four tracks from a songwriter who wrote enormous hits for other people before anyone let him sing, and then turned out to be a better singer than most of them. Ne-Yo Shaffer Smith spent years in Las Vegas and Los Angeles as a writer for hire, and the record that changed things was Mario's "Let Me Love You" — a number one he wrote and did not sing. Def Jam then signed him as an artist, and "So Sick" went to number one too. His significance is as a craftsman. At a moment when R&B was fragmenting into producer-led atmospherics, Ne-Yo wrote songs in the old sense: verse, chorus, bridge, a clear idea stated and developed, melodies that a person could sing back after one hearing. He has said repeatedly that Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder are his models, and the writing bears it out — he is one of very few artists of his generation who thinks in terms of the standard rather than the moment. What to listen for "So Sick" ...