Ever since Ray Charles wailed the sanctified booty call of "I Got a Woman," gospel has been a volatile part of black pop. An R&B bump-and-grind man like R. Kelly can try his hand at gospel moves – even sneaking the line "leaning on the everlasting arms" into the theme for a Bugs Bunny movie – while minister Kirk Franklin works the other side of the street, taking his spiritual jones into funky territory. Franklin made noise last year on the God's Property smash "Stomp," bellowing preacherly invocations while a choir sang hooks from an old disco hit or two. His fourth album, The Nu Nation Project, is the big payback: After decades of soul singers and rappers borrowing church
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flava, Franklin calls in the IOUs for his hip-hop gospel.
Nu Nation gets pop juice from R. Kelly, Mary J. Blige and Bono, all of whom guest on the ballad "Lean on Me." But Franklin is the real star here, sampling P-Funk, rewriting Bill Withers' "Lovely Day" and just getting his praise on. He revisits the hip-hop boom of "Stomp" in "Revolution" and "Praise Joint"; meanwhile, "Something About the Name Jesus" offers more trad, down-home harmonizing. Franklin raps, sings, produces and generally moguls around. (He even has a new book, Church Boy, somewhat quizzically billed as his "only authorized autobiography.") Nu Nation gets an amen for trashing musical boundaries, and it sure has a catchier beat than Marilyn Manson.
R. Kelly puts a lot of church into his music – even in salacious ballads like "Half on a Baby" – and that's just part of his always-wearing-shades allure. The mystery man spends his excellent double album, R., proving that he can do it all: He rhymes with Jay-Z and Foxy Brown; he croons with Celine Dion; he goofs on tango and opera; he speaks fluent pillow talk in every pop dialect. R. gets the party started with "Home Alone," which features rapper Keith Murray, Sugarhill sound effects and Off the Wall-style disco guitar as Kelly voices his intention to "freak you to the floor." But he also scores in smooch ballads like "Get Up on a Room," whispering, "Baby ... we're both just sittin' here ... we need to get somewhere ... private" until you're ready to toss him the keys. He also tries his hand at yodeling, for reasons known only to the man called R. himself.
Once upon a time, Kelly's productions for other singers, such as Aaliyah and Changing Faces, were inevitably livelier than his own records, but success seems to have fired up his brilliance – you take the R. Kelly who sings the drippy ballads and the R. Kelly who rides his pony through the funk jams and you've got two of the most lethal musicians on the planet. His overly Mase-style rapping aside, Kelly covers every base: beats, melodies, vocals, production, enigmatic-bald-guy cool, lyrics. Yes, lyrics – Kelly faces up to the bleak conscience of a do-wrong man in confessions that put Elvis Costel
The rap on R. Kelly's first two albums was that the Chicago singer/songwriter and producer was a soulman with no real soul, just another hot 'n' horny would-be Lothario using his silky-smooth grooves to lure the honeys to his water bed. But those who'd seen his emotionally wrought live shows knew there was more to the picture. "There's R. Kelly, and then there's Robert," Kelly says. "R. Kelly is a thing on TV, but nobody knows Robert and what he's been through."
Coming on the heels of "You Are Not Alone," the hit he crafted for Michael Jackson, Kelly's third Jive effort indicates that he has the range of an R&B great. It's also the album on which R. and Robert merge, offering a look at the man behind the libido.
Humping and bouncing are still the central obsessions, to borrow the title of one track, but another dimension has been added. Like so many R&B singers, Kelly started out in the church, and a gospel sermon opens the album. After thanking the Lord for his success ("Even the Statue of Liberty wants to bump and grind," he sings in a preacher's cadence), Kelly admonishes critics who questioned his depth as well as gossipmongers who speculated about his relationship with his teenage protégé, Aaliyah ("Before you go tryin' to pass judgment on me/Pass judgment on yourself"). He soon gets down to taking his laid-back beats, gently pulsing bass and soaring vocals to the streets, but he continues to balance the sacred and the profane in gorgeous tracks such as "Religious Love" and "Heaven If You Hear Me."
Kelly could use some more sophisticated metaphors to match his maturing musical talents ("You remind me of my Jeep: I wanna ride it," he sings in "You Remind Me of Something"), but he has grown out of his unthinking misogyny to the point where he makes a plea in "As I Look Into My Life" to "brothers in the ghetto" to "love and respect that woman and bring her happiness." Make love not war is an old message, but Kelly delivers it with sincerity. By spreading it in the hood in these violent times, he believes he's doing God's work, and who's to say he's wrong? Predecessors like Marvin Gaye and Prince have shown that great sex is spiritual, and Kelly's make-out music ranks with the best. (RS 726)
JIM DEROGATIS
