Lloyd's voice makes me a little uncomfortable. It's not just that it's feminine, in a late-period Michael Jackson ballad sort of way. It's that it's felty, like a cat's tonguesmooth but almost icky.
It's hard not to respect an R&B singer with such a bizarre voice, though, especially one who is learning to use it so well. Since breaking ties with Irv Gotti's long irrelevant record division The Inc. in 2008, Lloyd has increasingly aligned himself with Lil Wayne's rising Young Money collective, cooing the bubblegum hook on their hit “Bedrock,” and featuring Wayne and much of the Young Money roster on his latest EP, Like Me: The Young Goldie EP.
"Bedrock" was Young Money at its most pandering, but Lloyd's EP, released for free online in late last month (and available for download here) is a minor revelation. Here Lloyd refines his delivery, softening his voice like Al Green, while also playing up its uneasy slitheriness. And while many contemporary R&B singers showboat, filling each moment of each song as if the listener will tune out if they stop singing, Lloyd isn't afraid to hang back in the shadows. When he does sing it's with focus and purpose.
The beats here serve him wellthey're taut and moody, sweetened with strings and spiced with snaps of Southern rap. The guest spots are more of a mixed bag. Young Money C-lister Mack Maine drops a verse that very well might have been cut from “Bedrock,” but the newly ubiquitous Nicki Minaj makes up for it with one of the flashiest verses of her brief career, rapping in triple time on “Take It Off.”
The best moments are reserved for Lloyd, though. Even a characteristically candid verse from professional scene-stealer Bun B fails to upstage Lloyd on the velvety opener “Like Me,” and the EP's best tracks are those without guests. The heated “Think of Me” proves Lloyd's capable of Ne-Yo-styled dramatics, and "Pro In The Game" casts the singer as a night-stalking loner, but even on that track he never feigns machismo or compromises his soft-spoken mystique.
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