In the early ’70s Marvin Gaye released a pair of the R&B’s most revolutionary albums ever: 1971’s socially charged What’s Going On and 1973’s sexually liberated Let’s Get It On. There’s a reason they weren’t combined into a double album.
Perhaps the most devout of Gaye’s many devotees, contemporary crooner Raheem DeVaughn set to make a classic theme album in the spirit of Marvin Gaye with his latest release, The Love & War MasterPeace, but unable to decide which of Gaye’s early ’70s classics to honor, he chose both, intermingling What’s Going On’s calls to action with the kind of sex jams Let’s Get It On pioneered, utterly oblivious to how ridiculous his civic lessons sound against songs about combining bodies.
DeVaughn is a dazzling singer, and in its liveliest%uFFFD moments, particularly the exhilarating, Ne-Yo penned single “I Don’t Care,” MasterPeace transcends the typical boundaries between contemporary R&B and classicist neo-soul. Too often, though, the album falls victim to the worst tendencies of each genre: contemporary R&B’s stale double entendres and neo-soul’s righteousness platitudes. On the shameless, R. Kelly-by-numbers “Microphone,” DeVaughn sings in a succession of excruciating woman-as-studio-equipment metaphors, then a couple tracks later he hands the microphone over to Dr. Cornel West, for one of several spoken interludes from the civil rights scholar. On the next track, he rallies neo-soul brethren Jill Scott, Bilal, Anthony Hamilton, Chrisette Michele, Dwele and a slew of others for “Nobody Wins a War,” a toothless, snoozy 7-and-a-half minute anti-war lecture that's maddeningly vague. Love & War is less masterpiece than compromise, too didactic for the bedroom and too trite for the classroom. %uFFFD
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