perfidy

There are some things I will never get. Scientology. Necco wafers. Feet as a food, be they pig or chicken. The Da Vinci Code. The enduring appeal of Jessica Simpson's music (the appeal of her butt I get).

One thing that constantly eludes my understanding is the continued success of modern R&B. Well, I understand why it's popular; it's good to have sex to, but I just don't get it. I try, oh God, I try. I frigging love funk, crunk, and hip-hop from Brooklyn, Compton, Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago, Miami, Jamaica and France. I adore Chacka Khan, Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Mary J. Blige, and Beyonce. But a lot of the time, when the temp slows down, I get lost.

R&B has become an impoverished genre over the last twenty years. Although there are some signs of life, since the mid-80s it has been dominated by singers who oversing every line, make every word a payoff and every song a three-minute orgasm rather than laying back and establishing a groove, a melody that will support all the million melismatic notes that singers carelessly spatter all over the modern R&B landscape.

R&B duets are notable mainly for being an opportunity for two singers to circle each other, egging each other on past any sense of melody with moans, runs, and ad libs over an interchangably generic music bed (can't forget the windchimes!). Used to be, this was a hallmark of the gospel style, but years of overuse by thousands of talented but tasteless songbirds have blunted what impact it once had. The key insight is in a quote from blogcritics founder Eric Olsen, who wrote about Mariah Carey: "the essence of Mariah's problem and why she is doomed to suck is that she sings to serve her own ego, not the song: great singers respect the song above their own glorification." Of course, the best is still the best: Luther Vandross was and will remain the king of bedroom R&B. However, he practically invented the style, a distinct advantage over subsequent practitioners who seem bent on sucking all the life out of it.

What brings all this to mind is the recent release of a new Gerald Levert duets compilation, Voices. Gerald Levert is the son of O'Jays founder Eddie Levert and one of the longtime big players on the modern R&B scene. Voices collects duets from throughout his career, featuring guests like Kelly Price, Faith Evans, Vanessa Williams, Missy Elliott, Teena Marie, and Eddie Levert, Sr., as well as three new songs. Not being very familiar with Gerald Levert, I was optimistic that there would be something here I could get into.

Gerald Levert is an amazing singer, both technically gifted and emotive, with a voice that hits the spot perfectly when he remembers to exercise restraint. The trouble comes when he forgets. On the one non-duet selection on Voices, "I Like It," Levert sings the song halfway to straight, and the result is halfway to great. But in general he too succumbs to the showy, sugary tendencies of modern R&B. One reason, surely, is because without the oversinging, there would be nothing left of the songs. Without good material, all the crying in the world is just for show. I'm sure Gerald Levert and his guests would beg to differ, but the sad fact is that if you took the ego out of most of the performances here, the underlying songs are so trite and lightweight that they would just melt away. Whether it's with Faith Evans, Keith Sweat, Coko, and Missy Elliott on "All the Times" or with his father on "Wind Beneath My Wings," the sappy production and one-note (so to speak) vocal performances sometimes edge very close to self-parody, wasting a great deal of talent in the process.

The backing tracks are halfway to parody too: always with a snare drum burdened with miles of reverb, the synth piano, the canned strings, and the omnipresent tingly windchimes to announce every chorus. Sometimes there is a dash of hip hop, but in general there is little to dilute the sappy lyrics and cascades of unnecessary notes.

A few of the songs are okay enough taken individually, but when collected in one place they all smear together into a long numbing sugar coma. By the sixth song in, I'm checking to see if the disc has started over again, and by the tenth I never want to hear another windchime as long as I live. By the time we get to the cover of the omnipresent and overdone "I Believe I Can Fly," I'm running to dig out my Al Green records to see if I can still remember a time when they made good music to make love to your old lady by.

I know there's an audience out there for Gerald Levert's music, just like I know there's an audience for Dragonball Z, Tommy Hilfiger, and those street basketball videos they push on basic cable. Any members of that audience who happen past this review will undoubtedly try to persuade me with poor spelling and non sequiturs that I just don't get the genius. I'll save you the trouble, kids. I try to get it, given my tastes I probably should get it, but I don't get it and I don't care. Voices puts me to sleep, and on the only occasions I'd ever have cause to put this in, I, *ahem* really don't want to be sleeping. If Gerald Levert ever makes an album without windchimes, I'll check it out. But until that time, I'll have to content myself with worn out corny old R&B like "Sexual Healing" and "Here And Now."