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Montell Jordan
03/05/2002 7:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy
On his fifth album, Montell Jordan has at last decided to stop chasing the ghost of his breakthrough hit, 1995's "This Is How We Do It." He all but abandons the club-banging imitations of that smash (he does allow himself one, the angry, tuneless "Montell's Anthem"--but that beef-heavy message to haters sounds more like therapy than a single), focusing instead on understated ballads that suit his crooning. The slowed-down grooves yield a few generic bedroom moaners, of course, but on the album's centerpiece--a trio of acoustic laments highlighted by the excellent "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda"--Jordan seems right at home in Babyface territory, creating classic-sounding songs for a new generation, and doing his finest work yet. It may lack the big-'fro-and-bell-bottoms pizzazz offered by the current darlings of revivalist R&B, but in the soul department, Mr. Jordan doesn't pull up short.
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