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 Love & LifeSales Rank:482List Price: $18.98 Lowest New Price: $9.16 Lowest Used Price: $7.39 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Total Reviews: 47 Customer Reviews:Rating: 4 "I'm Lovin' It!" To those people who are still holding a grudge; get over it. Affairs of the heart are a part of life. Yes, he cheated on Halle, but that has nothing to do with his music. The man makes good music and this cd is a reflection of that. This is one of those cds that you can play all the way through. Songs like "The Hunger", "You're the Only One" and "Chocolate Legs" and "Sing to Me" take me back to his second cd "A Day in the Life of". If you love good R&B music, then you'll love this cd. Rating: 4 Fine 'Grammy'-nominated Album - 4 stars Eric Benèt is one of R&B's underrated musicians. As talented as a number of today's more popular artists, Benèt comes from a time in R&B/Urban music in which 'adult-contemporary' leanings were all the rave. But since his 1999 huge breakout album A DAY IN THE LIFE with gargantuan duet "Spend My Life With You" featuring the even more solid, yet underrated Tamia, Benèt fame has only fleeted. In a time where hip-hop rules and adult contemporary R&B/adult R&B seems to be nearly deceased, Benèt is considered 'old-school'. Despite the fact that commercial odds may be against him, let's not write him off just yet - LOVE & LIFE, an exceptional album did debut in the top 15 of the Billboard 200 Albums Chart, much stronger than his previous solid HURRICANE could have ever hoped to have debuted. And of course, several Grammy nominations can not be written off in the least. The album opens with the fine "Love Patience & Time" which starts off with some sick vocal harmonies that I have not heard since - well the 1990s. It is a brilliant way to start off both the album and the track itself, which is intact with piano, organ, horns, and guitars. Sure, "Love Patience & Time" does have an old-school feel, but it works in Benèt's favor. "The Hunger", the second track off from LOVE & LIFE makes more of a distinct effort to be more than just an adult-contemporary R&B track. This track still possesses that old school feel, but it is contemporary enough that a younger audience would relate to it, even if it is still nowhere near hip-hop. For me, "The Hunger" is my favorite from LOVE & LIFE. "You're The Only One", the Grammy-nominated Male R&B Vocal performance from LOVE & LIFE is exceptional, lifting a soul sample as its basis. Benèt sounds top-notch and the songwriting is both sound and vintage in quality. Fully intact with soulful strings, 70s sounding soul guitar, and brilliant refrain vocal harmonies, "You're The Only One" is the third straight valedictory performance from LOVE & LIFE. "Don't Let Go" makes more concessions to modern R&B, but manages to do so by borrowing from both 2000s R&B and the early-mid 1990s New-Jack sound that was just beginning to make concessions to hip-hop. All the gibberish aside, "Don't Let Go" is soulful, contemporary, and urban. "Everlove" featuring Terry Dexter hopes to recapture the magic of 1999's "Spend My Life With You", though it does not quite reach that lofty ambitious aspiration. It does however solidify yet another enjoyable performance that is nearly as consistent as anything else that has played out on LOVE & LIFE. "Chocolate Legs" is a masterpiece and another personal favorite of mine. It is sensual-minded in form without being outright explicit. Again, "Chocolate Legs" owes many debts to old-school R&B, though it has enough modern flair to be "hip". Benèt scores a vocal-homerun with "Chocolate Legs" with his supple tenor vocals sounding better than ever. "Weekend Girl" is like a trip back to the golden days of 1990s R&B intact with piano and a sick, soulful bass line providing the foundation. "Iminluvwichoo" featuring Linda Kirally is solid, but it does not allure me near as much as the other tracks I have heard up until this point. "Spanish Fly" and "Still I Believe" make up for the slack left by "Iminluvwichoo". "Sing To Me" is solid, though average, while closer "One More Tomorrow" seals the deal for LOVE & LIFE to be an overall sound R&B album. Clearly, LOVE & LIFE is truly one of 2008's best R&B albums. I highly recommend LOVE & LIFE, particularly if you have a soft spot in your heart for 'old-school', 'adult-styled' R&B. 4 stars. Rating: 5 Erics BAD!! Eric is one sexy dude, he has a great voice. This cd is my 1st Eric Benet cd. Now I want to check out all his other cds. Rating: 5 Really nice R&B CD I purchased this CD a few weeks ago and it has been in constant rotation on my iPod. My favorite is "Chocolate Legs", but I love the entire CD. A great choice for folks that love real R&B. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am loving it. Rating: 4 Eric's back! Eric Benét makes a welcome return to the soulful r&b style of his first two albums, following his last one - of which, in my opinion, the less is said, the better. Benét co-wrote and co-produced the majority of the songs with Demonté Posey & George Nash, Jr, the only exception being the (in my opinion) rather silly "Chocolate Legs", which was produced by Keith Crouch. I was originally prepared to rate this a five star CD but it lost one star primarily due to its lyrics, which I find slightly dodgy in places. For instance, in "Don't Let Go", the line where Benét sings "You see the problem goin' round too often these days/ people throwin' in the towel once they pass the honeymoon phase" made me burst out laughing. I was like, we're supposed to believe what you're singing, Eric. In contrast, the line in the Latin-influenced "Spanish Fly" where he sings "Lemmie feel you cause I need to/ lay you on the table lemmie lick you/ from your navel to your flower/ for hours" though equally hysterical, at least sounds a lot more believable coming from this particular singer. But perhaps I'm being too harsh. I'm guessing that if you've forgotten all the media stories that were going round about Eric Benét a couple of years ago (or never read or heard them in the first place), these are songs that can quite easily be enjoyed on their merits. Truth is, it's a great set of songs, very reminiscent of the good old 90s - and, in the case of "Iminluvwichoo", the duet with Linda Kiraly, even the brilliant 80s. My personal favourites on here include "Love Patience & Time", which features trumpet by Roy Hargrove, "The Hunger", "You're The Only One", "Sing To Me" and the brilliant album closer, the ballad "One More Tomorrow". Oh, one more thing: I would have loved to know who played the saxophone solo towards the end of the delightfully breezy "Weekend Girl" but he (or she) wasn't credited. Either that or I'm missing something. I find it a bit wobbly in places but where I like it, I really like it. Overall, I think it's a very good album. Four stars. |