Oh 'blue-eyed soul', is such a tricky field to navigate. Only so often does its singers manage to at once establish respectable credibility and a fanbase that appreciates the music. Enter Teena Marie, Dusty Springfield, Hall & Oates and finally, Robin Thicke.
Without getting into a long winded sociological and historical lesson, Blue Eyed Soul is the Equivalent of Black Rock....and both are anomalies in America and semantically speaking, both terms do nothing in terms of marketing and getting music out. Point blank: Music is music, enough with the coded language.
So enough hubababbaub what about Robin Thicke's latest album?
Surprisingly and not so surprisingly it's damn good. Thicke, who has been gradually building his fanbase with a steady and careful hand, has enjoyed welcoming arms from the hip hop and R&B communities. He's a mainstay now, much in the way that Teena Marie is a mainstay. His last album "The Evolution of Robin Thicke" skyrocketed with the single "Lost Without U" probably a definite shout out to wife, Paula Patton.
On his latest disc however, Thicke trades in soft coos for downright "bad as I wanna be" behavior and the result is a jilting experiment in R&B/Soul music. If Justin Timberlake thought he was bringing sexyback, well, Thicke is taking out past the dancefloor and into the bedroom.
Thicke brings an all star roster to the "Sex Therapy Experience" like Jay-Z, Little Wayne's latest sign-up Nikki Minaj and Estelle. Often the tracks are dance floor triumphs, but on the sly side, and what Thicke was probably planning was the sexiness that the album oozes. Generally, I avoid "baby-making" albums because who wants that sentiment while trying to get to school or work? But in this case, Thicke's "good guy with a bad streak" is so appealing, that it might bring out the sexy in all of us, and that's not such a bad thing.
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