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The Brian McKnight Collection

Twenty-five tracks from a singer, pianist, arranger and multi-instrumentalist who was, at his peak, the most musically accomplished man in R&B.

Brian McKnight

Brian McKnight is from Buffalo, New York, and grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist household singing in church — his older brother Claude McKnight founded the a cappella group Take 6, which tells you a great deal about the harmonic standards in that family.

What separates him from his peers is musicianship. McKnight writes, arranges, produces and plays multiple instruments, and his records are built on genuinely sophisticated harmony — the chord movement in his ballads owes more to jazz than to anything on R&B radio. He has sixteen Grammy nominations and no wins, which is its own kind of career.

What to listen for

"Back At One" is the signature record and a small marvel of construction — a counting song that never feels like a gimmick, with a bridge that lifts exactly where it should.

"One Last Cry" and "Anytime" are the other two everybody knows, and "Never Felt This Way" is the one singers study.

"Love Is" with Vanessa Williams came from the Beverly Hills, 90210 soundtrack and was his commercial breakthrough.

"Moody's Mood For Love" is the one to play for anyone who doubts the jazz credentials. It is a Quincy Jones production featuring James Moody himself, Take 6 and Rachelle Ferrell — and the song is a vocalese setting of Moody's saxophone solo, which is one of the hardest things in the vocal repertoire.

The covers show the taste: "Send One Your Love" (Stevie Wonder), "The Biggest Part of Me" (Ambrosia), "Every Time You Go Away" (Daryl Hall) and "Used to Be My Girl" (The O'Jays).

The rap features are the 1990s in miniature: Mase, Mr. Cheeks, Baby and Ill Al Skratch's "I'll Take Her" — the last being his first significant appearance on record.

Go deeper

Anytime (1997) and Back at One (1999) are the albums.

Take 6 are essential listening for anyone interested in vocal harmony — six voices, no instruments, and arrangements of genuine complexity.

For the lane: Luther Vandross, Peabo Bryson, Will Downing and Kenny Lattimore. And Rachelle Ferrell, again, because she turns up wherever the singing is hardest.

A last point about the sixteen nominations and no wins. It is a strange statistic for a musician this accomplished, and it says more about how the Grammys have treated adult R&B than about the records. McKnight's peers — the singers who actually know what "Moody's Mood For Love" requires — have never been in any doubt.

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