Sun Music Reviews from SoulTracks

Mary J. Blige - Stronger With Each Tear

Anger issues, a stolen childhood and unhealthy addictions to drugs, alcohol and the wrong men. It sounds like the makings of a reality show, but it's actually chapters from the Book of Mary....Mary J. Blige that is. The poised and polished performer of today is a far cry from the cagey sister that burst on to the scene with her 1992 debut, What's The 411?. Compared to Aretha Franklin in one breath, yet criticized in the next for her self-destructive ways, her ability to "keep it real" still earned her millions of fans and industry accolades, although many felt her hard-won personal happiness diluted the strength of her catalog.

Stronger Than Each Tear, her ninth studio CD, has a little something for both camps: some songs about working through the pain and others about transcending it on the way up the wedding aisle, out with the girls or onto the dance floor. More...

Alicia Keys - The Element of Freedom

Alicia Keys, I keep on falling out of love with you. Sometimes I love you ("Teenage Love Affair"). Sometimes you make me blue ("Unbreakable"). Sometimes I feel good ("You Don't Know My Name"). At times I feel used (Almost all of the sharply sung As I Am). Loving Liking you darling, makes me so confused. That confusion doesn't end with this underwhelming album, The Element of Freedom, boasting the immensely likable powerhouse single, "Empire State of Mind."

How can such a good songwriter, such a phenomenal arranger, and delightful stage presence, so consistently under-sing, sing out of tune, or sing through her nose eight years after her debut? I know they have vocal coaches in New Yorrrrrrrrrrrrrk. Certainly one is needed on the restrained to a fault, 80s pop calamity that is The Element of Freedom. More....

Mwalim - The Liberation Sessions

One thing is clear from listening to Mwalim's work as the keyboard player for the Bass Mint Bros and his work on the collaborative effort The Liberation Sessions: Mwalim (pronounced M-waaleem) really likes to make concept albums. The Bass Mint Bros' Sketches of a Neighborhood was basically a musical description of the ecology of an urban neighborhood.

On The Liberation Sessions, Mwalim creates the fictional radio station WBAR (Black Ass Radio) in which the DJ's play records from a playlist that the DJ created. The criteria the DJs used to created this playlist appears to be whether the tunes were quality and interesting tracks that represented the breadth and depth of forms that influenced black music (imagine that). This might explain why Mwalim ends up being just one of several guests on his own record. More...

Vanessa Bell Armstrong - TheExperience

Definitely one of the stronger interpreters in the world of modern contemporary gospel, Vanessa Bell Armstrong almost needs no introduction. While working with Thomas Whitfield in the 1980s, Armstrong had one of the most unbreakable and unrestrained runs of success with albums like Peace Be Still and Chosen . And with her Aretha-styled runs, her Anita Baker jazzy swoops and her deliciously raspy Broadway-ish vocal theatrics, Armstrong entered into an impressive, lucrative contract with Jive Records in 1987 - thrusting her even more so into the mainstream with crossover hits like "You Bring Out the Best In Me" and "Pressing On."

But two decades later, much of today's generation have no clue where Ann Nesby, Kim Burrell and Nikki Ross got their vocal inspirations from. The Experience, Vanessa's second full-length live recording to date, is a labor of love for album producer and gospel giant Donald Lawrence. More...

Ryan Leslie - Transitions

Warm, effervescent, full of color and verve----for those who've experienced it before, nothing enraptures the senses like a summer fling. It may not always produce love, marriage or babies, but one obviously left a deep impression on musician and producer Ryan Leslie, whose sophomore CD, Transitions, is dedicated to a recent seasonal paramour (or so the credits would like you to believe, wink wink). More...