April 07, 2004 @ 3:27 pm

Carl Thomas - Let's Talk About It (Bad Boy)

by: Aliya S. King

It’s hard to be a modern-day soul singer.

It’s hard to be a modern-day soul singer. If you stay true to your roots, steeped deep in Marvin and Stevie, it’s easy to be dismissed as fusty and corny. But if you try to go hip hop—and you’re not young or cool enough to pull it off—you end up looking like Prince putting Eve on a record in an attempt to stay relevant. And if you’ve ever had a hit single with an infectious hook so popular that Jay-Z immortalized it in his own hit song (“and I wish I never met her at all”), how do you follow up? If you’re Carl Thomas, you don’t try overly hard to replicate the success of your runaway single. In the three years since his debut album, Emotional, was certified platinum, Thomas has laid relatively low, lending vocals to his fellow Bad Boys and dropping the occasional duet, including the stellar “Player Not the Game,” from Lil’ Mo’s Based on a True Story . Thomas returns with Let’s Talk About It, an album based on the oldschool fundamentals of love—courtship, seduction, lovemaking, and commitment. In his universe, men ask women out on proper dates before seeing the insides of their bedrooms, and wedding rings are exchanged before bathrooms are shared. While Let’s Talk About It lacks a go-to chart-topper, it’s a consistent album, one that plays up Thomas’s manner: suave and debonair. The album’s opener, credited as “Let’s Talk About It—Intro,” is the requisite interlude, where Thomas does more cooing and slick-talking than actual singing. The track is meant to introduce Thomas’s winking style. Never taking himself too seriously, Thomas seems to play up his status as a modern-day Alexander O’Neal; on each song, you can almost see him stick out a pointer finger, flirtatiously cluck his tongue, and wink. Thomas is actually at his best when he leans heavily on his doo-wop sensibilities and penchant for ’80s-era sampling. The intro is reminiscent of Eugene Wild’s 1984 “Gotta Get You Home Tonight,” and the inspirational “She Is” uses the bass line from Surface’s 1987 hit “Happy,” spinning it into a delicate musing on the perfect mate. One of the album’s highlights, “Baby Maker,” is an unabashedly retro track. Thomas pleads over an intricate melody while sublime background vocalists make the harmonious song feel like it could have been recorded for the soundtrack to The Five Heartbeats. And he hits it out of the park with gems like “A Promise,” a theatrical, over-the-top wedding song with a gospel feel and killer female backing. Thomas only misses when he attempts to help handle his own production. His commanding voice demands live instrumentation, not the dinky programming and artificial hand-claps on “Anything,” the tiresome repetition on “Let Me Know,” or the drummer-boy percussion on “Dreamer.” The all-star production team, including P. Diddy, Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie, Stevie J, and Mario Winans, tackles the remaining tracks with aplomb, especially Just Blaze, who mixes intense percussion with a powerful choral crescendo on “My First Love.” Eschewing the modern taste for booty music and hip hop–drenched choruses, Thomas skillfully channels bits and pieces of all of his Chicago brethren, from Donny Hathaway and the Chi-Lites to Curtis Mayfield and the Five Stairsteps. Using grown-up love as a backdrop, Thomas firmly establishes himself with Let’s Talk About It. He successfully honors his upbringing, paying honest tribute to the musicians who have put the Windy City on the musical map.

Article tags: Carl, Thomas, Let's, Talk, Bad, Boy