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Today's bling-tastic R&B usually avoids social commentary. But somehow the Willingboro, New Jersey, coed trio City High have managed to infiltrate urban radio with the heart-wrenching "What Would You Do," a woman's pained justification of her red-light life that manages to uplift without providing a happy ending. Like their breakthrough single, City High's debut album hinges on thick, stomp-worthy funk, luxurious soul grooves and plaintive harmonies about messy modern love: getting caught cheating by your girlfriend's best friend ("Three Way"),... Read More impregnating a friend's sister ("Sista"), seducing a foxy boy only to discover he's underage ("15 Will Get You 20"). On "The Only One I Trust," a woman is pressured by the feds - "One phone call from me and your son's going to a foster home" - to facilitate a raid on her drug-dealing boyfriend. At song's end, she dies with her man in a hail of bullets while her son sleeps. In City High's songs, as in life, wounds don't always heal. JON CARAMANICA
(RS 875 - August 16, 2001)
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