Album of the week
No one has ever been able to seize the throne from Aretha Franklin, but if there is an opening for Princess of Soul, Angie Stone is readying her résumé. Stone, whose 1999 debut, Black Diamond, spawned the hit "No More Rain (In This Cloud)," continues to dazzle. The first single, "Brotha," is a funk-driven homage to black men. "Mad Issues" fuses vintage soul melodies with contemporary urban lyrics. And whether you're in love or ever hope to be, "Bottles & Cans" will hit home: "I'd rather be pickin' up bottles and cans/ I'd rather be homeless in the streets with no food to eat/I'd rather be facing 20 to life if I can't be your wife."
Like Aretha, Stone got her start in a church choir; those roots show in the gospel-tinted "Time of the Month." Stone has said she even wants her own church. Here's hoping she can divvy up pulpit and studio time to keep making music that engages the hips and the heart.
Bottom Line: A well-polished Stone
Enrique Iglesias (Interscope)
Milli Vanilli he's not, but Enrique Iglesias had to stoop to going on Howard Stern's radio show last year to prove he could sing live. Such indignities sometimes happen when your dad is Julio Iglesias and some people think you haven't exactly had to work your bonbon off to get where you are. To be fair, Iglesias, 26, was huge in the Spanish-speaking world well before his 1999 English-language debut earned him a seat on the Latin-pop bandwagon next to Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez. But he was never as dynamic a singer as Anthony nor as charismatic as Martin, and, well, J.Lo is J.Lo.
Iglesias's sophomore disc, Escape, doesn't do much to disprove his naysayers. Nothing here is even irritatingly catchy like his breakthrough hit "Bailamos." Such up-tempo Latin-lite numbers as the title tune, "Love to See You Cry" and "I Will Survive" (no relation to the disco chestnut) are as bland as white bread. The whimpering ballad "Hero" only magnifies his trembly vocals. Three tracks are repeated in both English and Spanish, but they don't work in either language.
Bottom Line: Escape from Enrique
Diane Schuur and Maynard Ferguson
(Concord Jazz)
Jazz singer Schuur and Ferguson, the trumpet-flÜgelhorn warhorse, are a perfect match. This is not good news. Their styles are similarly cold: flashy but almost devoid of feeling. At 70, Ferguson is still the master technician he always was, but he remains a stranger to subtlety, never insinuating when he can blare instead. Schuur still has the vocal range and flexibility of Ella Fitzgerald, but none of her heart.
Too often this album plays like a slam-dunk contest, where style is everything but understatement sits on the bench. The material isn't the problem—"Lush Life" and "Deep Purple" are among the 12 standards—but the backup band doesn't provide enough contrast to arrangements that indulge Schuur and Ferguson's tendency to go over the top and then scramble to climb higher.
Bottom Line: Two celebrated jazz performers bring out the worst in each other
Pat Green (Republic/Universal)
If you don't live in a state that has lots of longhorns and rattlesnakes, this is the best country singer you've never heard of. Green, out of Waco, Texas, is another subtly sardonic, wry Southwesterner along the lines of Waylon Jennings: He is thoughtful without making an issue out of it.
Then again, you might have heard of Green's "Thread Bare Gypsy Soul," the energetically rueful tune he wrote solo and sings with fellow Texan Willie Nelson on this album. Memorable, too, are "Wrong Side of Town," an introspective duet with the ingratiatingly scratchy-voiced Trish Murphy; "We've All Got Our Reasons"; and the country dance tune "Take Me Out to a Dancehall." This lone star will soon be too big for Texas.
Bottom Line: Ten-gallon hats off
As Lenny Kravitz stood in his downtown-Manhattan hotel on Sept. 11 watching the Twin Towers fall nearby, his first thoughts were of his daughter Zoë. "She wasn't with me, thank God," says Kravitz, who shares a Miami apartment with Zoë, 12, the only child from his six-year marriage to actress Lisa Bonet. The scale of the disaster, he adds, "didn't hit me right away."
It has now. Since the attack, "certain things just aren't as important," says Kravitz, 37. Music and fatherhood, though, remain priorities. Kravitz wrote most of his sixth disc, Lenny, in "a shack" he owns in the Bahamas. "Zoë comes with me," he says. "She has issues with it"—there's no TV—"but she finds things to do, like go to the beach or climb trees." Or jam with her dad. "Guitar, bass, drums, she wants to do it all," says Kravitz. "But I'm not pushing it."
He hopes to do some nudging on the issue of police methods. Kravitz wrote the biting "Bank Robber Man," a song about his brief wrongful detainment last November in Florida. "Obviously I didn't do it. But I fit the description of a guy who robbed a bank," says Kravitz, who was leaving his gym when he was stopped. "It was a very strange situation, being handcuffed." Kravitz was released shortly after. "The racial-profiling thing is unfortunate, and it's going to get worse. When Timothy McVeigh blew up Oklahoma City, did they start stopping every white guy? It's a shame."
- Contributors:
- Ericka Sóuter,
- Chuck Arnold,
- Ralph Novak,
- Sona Charaipotra.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
