“Sucka for You” awkwardly emulates the sort of funk-pop anthem now associated with Cee Lo Green.
Hamiton, range in tone and texture from earthy Southern soul to lissome 1990s-style R&B, with beats that nod toward hip-hop. Hamilton, working an earthy falsetto, lays out a rich premise from the start: “Here we are, in the storm of our lives/ Both posing as strangers who never fell in love.”īehind the album’s thematic consistency is a sort of stealth eclecticism. “Back to Love” might seem to suggest a prodigal’s return to form, but it really refers to its title track, in which Mr. Hamilton is 40, married with a family he’s also unfettered by any track record of lecherous club hits. And it would be disingenuous to ignore the role that stability, in both the musical and personal sense, plays in his work. So you’ll find him singing here in an imploringly mellow style, his tone conveying the deep-amber viscosity of something you’d pour over your pancakes. As an R&B singer upholding a distinctly grown-up masculine ideal - chivalry and constancy, strength and humility - he’s in the business of meeting expectations. JON CARAMANICAĪnthony Hamilton has a voice equally fit for soothing or supplication, and he finds time for both on his steadily engaging, rarely surprising new album, “Back to Love.” Which is just what you want from him, and just what he wants to give you. And “I Get Lifted” was produced by the Los Angeles veteran Warren G, who, like his hosts, remembers how weed rap used to sound - inhaling doesn’t damage every memory. “Talent Show” and “6:30,” with their 1970s soundtrack soul, recall old Camp Lo songs. It makes for pleasant-sounding, unmemorable listening, driven primarily by the production, which is largely slow and bubbly. But while Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa aren’t the most dexterous rappers, they’ve learned - the elder more than the youngster - how to get by on emphasis and slickness. Neither rapper has much new to say, or new ways of saying it, like, say, Currensy, who’s made a career out of retelling the same inhale-exhale story with different fascinating details. One song is “You Can Put It in a Zag, I’mma Put It in a Blunt” another is “French Inhale,” for the mouth-to-nose technique. Getting high is the main topic here, natch.
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