Short of a marketing angle for flogging Angie Stone to a wider audience, Arista could do worse than pitch her as Alicia Keys' mother. For the British masses who've been turned onto nu-soul by the inescapable Keys, the discovery of her seniors - like the 37-year-old South Carolinan Stone - is the logical next step.
Stone, of course, has been around a bit, even though 'Mahogany Soul' is only her second solo album. Best known for her various connections with D'Angelo (as co-writer, backing singer, one-time love interest and mother of his child), her homilies on the general uselessness of men are plainly rooted in experiences that Keys, for all her emoting, as yet knows little of. Track Three is called, succinctly, 'Pissed Off'.
Nevertheless, Angie Stone's far too smooth an operator to really lose her rag. 'Mahogany Soul' is the very model of the modern soul album: myriad '70s references, cultured nods to gospel and jazz, discreet and precise post-hip-hop beats. And as such, it works just fine. There are tidy collaborations with Lucy Pearl/D'Angelo sideman Raphael Saadiq (on the outstanding 'Brotha'), ex Tribe Called Quest producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad and, ironically, the 'New D'Angelo', Musiq Soulchild. Curtis Mayfield gets covered, while The O'Jays and The Supremes are sampled. There's an odd synchronicity with the new Mary J Blige album, too, in that both feature samples of Al Green's 'Simply Beautiful' and tunes explicitly about PMT.
Stone never oversings or messes about, and the whole album has that charmed air of effortlessness found on the best nu-soul ventures. But after 70 minutes, the sheer unrelenting sophistication can be rather exhausting. 'Brotha' and the brooding '20 Dollars' apart, 'Mahogany Soul' lacks the showstoppers, the powerhouse hits like 'Fallin'' or Jill Scott's 'Gettin' In The Way' that provide relief from all those langourous slow jams. A class act, for sure, but some of that 'Pissed Off' punch needs to infect the music a little more often.
