June 23, 2003 @ 9:00 pm

Tank - One Man (Blackground)

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Don’t hate Tank because he’s got the face of an S-Curl model and the body of Vin Diesel.

Don’t hate Tank because he’s got the face of an S-Curl model and the body of Vin Diesel. Beneath the beefcake, he’s an accomplished songwriter/producer whose tunes have been recorded by Aaliyah and Dave Hollister. Tank’s sophomore album, One Man, however, is only a ser-viceable contribution to the burgeoning genre of Ruffneck Soul. Too many tunes—like “Cake and Ice Cream,” a long-winded, love-triangle ditty—suffer from a pedestrian mix of strings, melodramatic chord progressions, and low-intensity hip hop beats. The LP does receive a jolt of adrenaline on “No One But Me,” on which producer Rodney Jerkins pulls out all the synth stops; the cacophonous result is the most deliriously funky track on the album. If his baritone remains indistinguishable, Tank’s most valuable asset is still a self-effacing humility that borders on mas-ochism. It helped him score his first hit single, 2001’s “Maybe I Deserve,” and returns here. On the infectious title track, Tank confesses to his lady, “I’m only one man doing what I can.” True, but what a man.

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