To be brutal, a man called Elgin Lumpkin was never going to make it as a sophisticated love God. A quick change of name, however, and Ginuwine was born: a smouldering, silk-tongued Lothario for the cyber-R&B generation.
It's a curious fact that the relentlessly excellent and futuristic run of records from America's R&B's scene in the last few years has included so few men amidst the likes of Destiny's Child, TLC, Aaliyah, Mya, Kelis et al. Ginuwine, now onto his third album, is the exception to the rule, chiefly thanks to his fertile association with Missy 'Misdemeanor' Elliott (they signed their first record deals at the same time in the early '90s) and her genius producer Tim 'Timbaland' Mosley.
But, though Ginuwine turns up on 'Take Away', the showstopping ballad on Missy's awesome forthcoming 'Miss E…So Addictive' LP, she's sadly absent from his own opus. For much of 'The Life', the occasional clicking, syncopated beats can't disguise the fact that Ginuwine is an unreconstructed smoocher, harking back to '80s soulmen like Alexander O'Neal who valued vocal gymnastics and satin sheet-cliches over good songs and radical ideas. Lines like, "Come right in and take off your skirt/ Sit right down and let 'G' go to work," from 'Role Play', are amusing enough. But when Diane Warren, evil queen of AOR hack songwriting, turns up to provide the awful, glutinous 'Superhuman', you can't help thinking it's a sob too far.
There are a few good things here: 'Why Not Me' is a tremendously over-the-top opener; '2 Way' a cleverly baroque confection of pager ring tones and strings produced by Lucy Pearl's Raphael Saadiq. Top honours, predictably, go to 'That's How I Get Down', where Timbaland returns to the controls and brings along America's hottest new rapper, Ludacris, to drag Ginuwine out of the boudoir and back to the street. Really, though, the edge of old hits like 'What's So Different' has evaporated. A long cold shower before young Lumpkin's let back in a studio, please.
