A word of warning: tune out after track 10. The thing about modern R&B is that, for all its sophistication, it still aspires to the old showbiz ethos of something for everybody, so we get a seque of glutinous MOR ballads - not even "slow jams" - of the type that so often snarls up albums in this genre and which made Destiny's Child's Survivor into a lumbering overlong beast (though in retrospect there were other things wrong with that record: Beyonce taking too much personal control, the conservatism of the production when compared to The Writing's On The Wall, the ultimate tameness of most of the lyrics ... even "Happy Face", which I adored at the time, now seems like an excessively upbeat throwaway). The pointlessly tacked-on cover of "Another Day In Paradise" off last year's much-ridiculed Phil Collins tribute album isn't even the fab Stargate mix which gratifyingly got the most airplay in the UK, but the dull early 90s-style original. Basically, counting the intro, this should have been a brilliant 10-track album, because everything before the MOR onslaught is ace.
It's almost as though the album's so aware of how extraordinary "What About Us?" is that it wisely doesn't throw it away at the beginning, but almost seems to be building up to it, conscious of its greatness, tantalisingly breaking into it briefly during the intro sequence as if to say "Yes, it's awesome, but this is a whole album and this whole thing is gonna work". "Full Moon" itself is here only in its original edit - the superior single version lifting from Freeez's "I.O.U." is so good that you can forget how fine the original is, perfectly poised and as pleasingly elegant as its title. Then comes the luscious synth-squelch of "I Thought", vocal edits and interplay irresistibly processed, Rodney Jerkins' craft at its most immaculate and Brandy's duel personae of modern soul singer and entirely created palimpsest defined. Ballads "When You Touch Me" and "Like This" pretty much render description obsolete, so perfectly are they conceived - the outro to "Like This" reaches a fine peak of elation-through-repetition.
But it's with the astonishing "All In Me" - hurtling from a rolling piano intro worthy of DB Boulevard to a dynamic burst of 2-step garage to a climax of pure vocal wonderment, that you realise just how much R&B has going for it right now. If there is another genre of music at the moment that can so consistently produce songs like this - every musical influence imaginable, running the gamut of human emotions on the way to a deep emotional happiness - I want to know about it. The Keith Crouch / Kamillion-produced "Apart" is a rare excursion away from Jerkins, and is an excellent balancing return to relatively trad R&B before the driven, utterly computerised "Can We", a fine trial run for what follows, Brandy still recognisably herself, holding on to individuality amid the automation, even as the production intensifies towards the end of the song, gradually dehumanising her, and then the whole thing slows down, almost as though she's being wound down. Now she's barely even a person anymore! Now she's a palimpsest, and therefore I can love her. Now it's "What About Us?" itself, its paranoia and desperation more obvious than ever (anyone notice that car bumping up and down without enough space to stand still in the video? That is what this song is about: it isn't that it can't keep still or stop worrying, it's that there isn't enough space for it to do so).
(WHY DOES SHE GET A CO-WRITING CREDIT I DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE THAT SHE EXISTS I ONLY STARTED LOVING HER BECAUSE JERKINS DEHUMANISED HER BEYOND RECOGNITION I CAN'T LOVE PEOPLE I CAN ONLY LOVE PALIMPSESTS THAT IS MY FAULT)
I'll think something different tomorrow, but I now think "What About Us?" reaches its peak as Jerkins' dislocated "shout-out" list comes in and the whole thing gets ever more strange, to imagine that such a signifier of celebratory all-in-together hip-hop is tacked on, almost mockingly, to something with such dread. It is the bleakest and most dehumanised Top 5 hit since "Are 'Friends' Electric?", and the finest. "Anybody" is the perfect comedown - impeccably machinic but, of course, a trad-soul song compared to its predecessor. It's basically the flipside to Aaliyah's "More Than A Woman", with a much less radio-friendly chorus and secretive uncertainty where the posthumous Number 1 had wonderful relaxed charm (incidentally that's the saddest thing about the song: the overwhelming sense of "so much life is ahead of me"). The vocal harmonies at the end of "Anybody" do more with an overlay of one woman's voice than most producers could do with ten voices. As ever there are so many details that stand out - the opening seconds recalling the intro of, improbably, Milli Vanilli's surprisingly good "Blame It On The Rain", the violin flowing off its own for a few seconds near the end, the production overlay as the whole thing reaches such a glorious climax, the way it actually seems to wind down at the end as though someone's switched (Brandy's?) electricity off, wondering whether I can hear seagulls outside my window or whether I'm actually hearing sounds in the song ...
(I predict "Anybody" to be the third single, incidentally.)
And then comes the horrible lurve-centric intro to "Nothing" and it all goes decidedly pear-shaped. But ignore that. Brandy has had her religiosity and decidedly self-absorbed, mildly egotistical self written out of the story, and has been shaped into something quite intriguing. The next album to be conceived entirely as the next step from "What About Us?", maybe? It'd either be the conclusive ultimate masterpiece of modern R&B, or the Tarkus of our time, the album that pushed a previously fascinating genre into lumbering absurdity and discredited it undeservedly in the process. Even if it's the latter, I still want to hear it. I don't want to love people. I need more palimpsests to love.
Robin Carmody, 11th July 2002