The Return

After the righteous blast of gospel that was I Need an Angel, Ruben Studdard’s oh-so-secular disc, The Return, can be a little disconcerting: he of the velvet voice and teddybear looks wants to get you loose (see "Get U Loose"), but more importantly, he wants to get you used to the fact that, cuddly nickname or no, he's--lookout, ladies!--a playa. "Let me start by saying I'm not tryin' to get in your jeans," sings the man most of the world recognizes as a nice religious boy on the appealingly crackly "Let Me Make You Feel Beautiful." By the next track, though, he gets to the point: "Your body my body gonna be friends." And so it goes with the rest of the disc: diamonds shine off of his cuffs on "What Tha Business Is," a bouncy but burly club track; "To Da Crib" traffics in pure seduction ("I'm tellin' you, you won't forget it girl, even though you thought he rocked your world") and tosses in the N word for effect; and "Blow Ya Mind" extends a straightforward invitation--"take your clothes off/it'll feel right." It's not that Studdard, whose voice is in as fine a form as it was in 2003 when he won "American Idol," comes off as lecherous here--there have been far dirtier R&B discs--but he does give his sweet Southern persona a run for its money. Still, check him out: with Luther gone, there may be no smoother R&B torchbearer. --Tammy La Gorce

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