John Legend "Get Lifted" [2004]

This album should be called "When Supper Club Hacks Attack." On this, John Legend's debut "concept" album -- and what a concept: celebrating partying and fucking, only to throw it all away remorsefully in the name of true love (welcome to married life, bud) -- the piano-playing crooner embodies the musical equivalent of one of those terrible Tyler Perry movies, where everything is overt sentimentality and subtle as a punch in the nose. Trying to throw off the scent of his corny jazz-covers background, Legend employs patches of studio recording "technique": lazily conceived 808 machine beats, cheap fake string sections and thrown-together backup singers, with the end result falling far short of not only The Apollo but 30 Rockefeller Center, as well. After listening to "Get Lifted" I now understand John Legend's moniker not to be the impossibly egocentric gesture I originally thought it was; he's actually trying to compare himself to Larry Bird (as in: "the funkiness of…"). Even here, however, the guy comes up short -- he's off the front rim song after grossly precious song.