Okay, I'm confused. The knock on Ruben Studdard over the five years since his glorious victory on American Idol has been that he was a powerful singer stuck with the wrong material, the wrong career vision and the wrong producers. Like AI season
two winner Clay Aiken, Studdard's "velvet teddy bear" stage presence
has rarely translated to his albums, and he has traveled a road of
forgettable, relatively faceless discs that have been, at a minimum,
perplexing to those who expected great things from him. Complicating
matters has been Studdard's apparent lack of musical identity: Was he a
modern R&B guy or was he (as many believe) really a Gospel man in
hiding? So the announcement a few months ago that Studdard was working
with legendary hitmakers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis excited music folks
who thought that maybe, finally, experienced producers would coax the
kind of R&B album that Studdard's fans have long been expecting.
Well, the big surprise is that Studdard's new release, Love Is, generally works, but not for the reasons expected. The overall theme of Love Is is unusual,
even schizophrenic: half covers of classic pop and soul tunes produced
by Jam and Lewis and half new material contributed by younger hitmakers
like Stargate (Ne-Yo, Rihanna, etc.) and Scyence. Surprisingly, it is
the latter that makes the album shine. The Stargate team provides its
usual uber-infectious cuts, including the first single, "Together," and
the excellent uptempo "How You Make Me Feel." Just as good is the
Scyence-produced "Don't Make Em Like U No More," and the album hits its
high point on "Just Because," a mildly bluesy cut on which Studdard
shows more personality than on the other songs combined. Credit
producer John Jackson for drawing from Studdard the kind of performance
that fans have expected for years and only sporadically received
(mostly on his lone Gospel album, I Need An Angel).CONTINUE READING...