“Marching Band,” for instance, takes its lyrical conceit much further than you expect, while the food-fixated “Poetic Sex” risks grossing out listeners with even the strongest stomachs. On “The Buffet,” Kelly is equally unfiltered in his presentation of elaborate sexual metaphors that few of his inheritors, even those without his reputation, would dare step to. Its recklessness travels in a clear direction. Yet the music carries a convincing bad-guy energy that’s all the more potent for its sweet, often luscious textures. They’re not meant to persuade you that he’s a good person, or even a misunderstood one, which can be hard to reconcile with the half-hearted charm offensive he’s been conducting elsewhere (as on the album’s cover, which depicts him in a protective embrace with Royalty). In a distinct break with modern pop-star practice, these songs don’t make you want to hang out with Brown. In the bullying “Wrist,” it’s anyone who thinks he can’t afford anything he wants in “Zero,” it’s an ex whom he gleefully informs how many nights he’s spent thinking about her since they split up. There’s also “Back to Sleep,” a coarser number in which Brown puts his needs ahead of an exhausted lover’s.īut much of “Royalty,” which shares a name with the singer’s 1-year-old daughter, finds Brown in a pose that’s more familiar: responding to those who’ve underestimated him or done him wrong. “You need someone who understands you have a delicate palate,” he says in the spoken word piece that opens his album, “Let me cater to you while indulging in my own bad eating habits.”īrown does a bit of heavy breathing himself on “Royalty,” most memorably in “Make Love,” a humid, rather pretty slow jam with unexpected echoes of Prince and D’Angelo. Now he’s unapologetically returned to the kind of material that today can’t help but call to mind his past. Starting in 2010, though, following his acquittal on child-pornography charges, Kelly largely set aside the bedroom talk for two comparatively chaste records rooted in soul music of the 1960s and ’70s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |