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JAHEIM. "The Making of a Man." (Atlantic)
Jaheim's voice resounds throughout his recordings. Rich, full and round, it's an R&B instrument made to embrace anyone who listens.
In both tone and timbre, we've heard something like this before. Namely, the silvery strains of Luther Vandross. To his credit, Jaheim has never tried to deny the connection, least of all on this, his fourth CD, "The Making of a Man." It features a re-do of a song Vandross helped make known: Bobby Womack's "If You Think You're Lonely Now." Then again, Jaheim took the trouble to truncate the song's name (to "Lonely"), add a few new lyrics and make its music more terse.
The result emphasizes the places Jaheim differs from Vandross. For one thing, he's got more bite to his phrasing. For two others, he has more youth to his tone and sex appeal to his character. Jaheim's firmer approach to adult R&B leans toward a younger audience than Vandross ever went for. But the cool part is Jaheim never panders to modern tastes in much beyond his packaging.
The singer slipped the word "Ghetto" into the title of his first three albums, the better to seem hip to the thug-happy generation. While those titles did reflect Jaheim's actual background - complete with the requisite arrests and unmentionable indulgences - little of that toughness, or defensiveness, shows in his vocals.
Over the course of his first three CDs, Jaheim managed to entice both older audiences and younger ones with his wonderful tone. His first two CDs went platinum. The last, 2006's "Ghetto Classics," opened at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 Album chart.
Sales for that disk didn't pan out over time, however. Which explains why Jaheim switched from his first company (Warner) to a new one (Atlantic).
On his first CD for the label, Jaheim seems as open and pure in his vocals as ever, while retaining an unwavering masculinity. He includes the song called "Life of a Thug," in which he says "You name it/I've done it," but he doesn't present the disclosure as a boast. It just sounds like he's coming clean.
As always, old soul sounds segue into newer ones. Jaheim rewrites songs by Gamble and Huff and Atlantic Starr, without undue piggybacking. The disk's opening cut, "Voice of R&B," has a lush horn that would make Bacharach proud. "She Ain't You" has a vocal arrangement that would impress the Stylistics.
For a commercial lure, he teams with R. Kelly on "Hush" (with its expected randy subject matter), though Jaheim rarely stoops to the Chicago singer's rote tune-making. He writes melodies well, but sings even better. More than anything, the way Jaheim follows a note down around a melody, elaborating its tune without ever overwhelming it, shows why he's the most valuable male R&B's got.