A Very Brief Review: Eric Benét’s Lost in Time

Grade: B+

Thoughts after First Listen:

“He cries sometimes… but I think he might actually be over Halle.”

Commentary:

I was pleasantly surprised after listening to this album.  Though Benet doesn’t push it, he stays in his lane–this is definitely a pleasant listening experience.  You can pretty much listen cover to cover and really appreciate not only Benet’s rich vocals, but also the music and the lyrical content.

If you like real Rhythm & Blues, you can’t dislike this album.  Benet demonstrates his mastery of the R&B ballad and the duet.  The music is very much grown folks music, but the kind of music that everyone can appreciate.  A very good piece of work, definitely my favorite album from Benet since A Day in the Life.   So if you need an alternative to Christmas music this season, this album should do the trick.

3 Songs on Repeat:

  • Paid – Thank you Benet for bringing Eddie Levert out of retirement!  Benet lets Levert do the heavy lifting in the chorus, while doing what he does best in the ad libs. The two balance their contrasting vocals over this brilliant O’Jays groove giving us a funky blues song with a timeless grit. “M-O-N-E-Y never seem to multiply for me.”  I feel that.
  • Good Life — Ledisi lends her beautiful voice to this track about enjoying life and I enjoy every second of their complementary vocals.
  • Sometimes I Cry – Benet draws you in with his dexterous vocal ability giving a deep down, soul song–the kind that Maxwell gives us on “Pretty Wings”.  Benet brings all those tears in him and lays them down wonderfully on this track.

Why the B +

Eric Benet is no rookie and he knows what he’s good at and he does it over and over again on this album–part of the reason why I can’t give it an A.  I appreciate staying in your lane, but to get an A for me you have to make a whole new lane.

The Verdict

Not much to say about this album other than it’s damn good.  Go get it.  Don’t worry about getting the deluxe version.  The extra 3 songs, are just that… Extra.  Very unnecessary.  So, do something good for the holidays. Help this brother pay for his therapy bills. That sex addiction stuff ain’t no joke… or is it?

Sesame Street… I Think You Love My Hair

I hadn’t seen this until a friend of mine shared it with me this morning. I got a little teary just thinking about how great an impact this could have on little girls. I would have loved to see this as a tot. I hated my hair for a very long time, and I still battle sometimes when looking in the mirror and then at the television.

At any rate, check out this amazing article from Ivy Onyeador, a senior in Yale Col­lege and staff writer for Yale’s feminist magazine Broad Recognition. I couldn’t say it any better if I tried.  She says,

Over the past year, pop­u­lar media has rolled out a slew of arti­cles and news spe­cials attack­ing black women, in par­tic­u­lar trum­pet­ing sta­tis­tics about low mar­riage rates. Arti­cle after arti­cle with titles like “Mar­riage eludes high-achieving black women”, “Sin­gle black women being urged to date out­side race”, “Why can‘t a suc­cess­ful black woman find a man?” and sim­ply “Blacks strug­gle with 72 per­cent unwed moth­ers rate” attempted to explain the “unmar­riage­able” black woman’s rela­tion­ship strug­gles. Expla­na­tions included the gen­der dis­par­ity in higher edu­ca­tion between black men and women, with far fewer black men grad­u­at­ing from insti­tutes of higher edu­ca­tion; “uppity” atti­tudes as a result this gap, sup­pos­edly result­ing in an unwill­ing­ness to cater to black men; a reluc­tance to date out­side their race and so on. The media assault went as far as to claim that half of all black women have her­pes! It was later dis­cov­ered that the sta­tis­tic actu­ally referred to the per­cent­age of black women in their sam­ple that had been exposed to the her­pes virus. By this point how­ever, the dam­age had been done, panic, shame and con­fu­sion erupted, and it’s unclear whether the clar­i­fy­ing piece received  as much atten­tion as the orig­i­nal statistic

 This is excerpted from At the “Whipping” Block: Popular Media and the Black Woman.