Spring Break
Through faults and foibles, 'Leslie' endearing
Katherine Smith
Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: Focus
Though this self-titled album is his first full-length release, Ryan Leslie is no stranger to the studio.
For the past few years he has been the driving force behind the career of protégé Cassie, writing hits like "Me & U"and lending his deft production hand to the majority of her unfortunately slept-on self-titled debut.
At times, his record can seem more a continuation of those ideas than a true debut of his own.
Of course, it hardly matters when the consistently solid songs offer as much replay value as these do.
The feel of this album is almost uniformly one of control: its production is clean and neatly arranged in space, its songs packed with strong hooks and its pacing smooth and thoughtfully considered.
Leslie displays a rather wide range of vocal styles, from the Pharrell-like falsetto of "Addiction" (which features Cassie) to the smoother R. Kelly-isms of "How It Was Supposed to Be."
His lyrics, too, seem to put up a deliberate front. On "Diamond Girl," Leslie spends the better part of the song explaining to his girl why she's "the one" only to counter with "I could be with any fly girl instead of you" in the song's final verse.
This would be much more problematic, of course, if we actually believed Leslie's hardman charade. We never really get the feeling that he means it, whether it's due to the innocent melody or, more likely, the fact that he spends the rest of his time trying to be such a gentleman. Thus, those clumsy and ostensibly misogynist words are made to carry about as much weight as his "cash grind" he alludes to on "You're Fly."
Leslie, remember, had a perfect SAT score and graduated Harvard at age 19, so try as he might, he's never going to pull off a thug persona. These contradictions serve to obfuscate our feelings toward Leslie, and the resultant cognitive dissonance is critical to appreciating the work on merits other than its hummable hooks.
What gives the album its admirable character, then, is the way Leslie continually endears himself to us in spite of his apparent missteps.
For the past few years he has been the driving force behind the career of protégé Cassie, writing hits like "Me & U"and lending his deft production hand to the majority of her unfortunately slept-on self-titled debut.
At times, his record can seem more a continuation of those ideas than a true debut of his own.
Of course, it hardly matters when the consistently solid songs offer as much replay value as these do.
The feel of this album is almost uniformly one of control: its production is clean and neatly arranged in space, its songs packed with strong hooks and its pacing smooth and thoughtfully considered.
Leslie displays a rather wide range of vocal styles, from the Pharrell-like falsetto of "Addiction" (which features Cassie) to the smoother R. Kelly-isms of "How It Was Supposed to Be."
His lyrics, too, seem to put up a deliberate front. On "Diamond Girl," Leslie spends the better part of the song explaining to his girl why she's "the one" only to counter with "I could be with any fly girl instead of you" in the song's final verse.
This would be much more problematic, of course, if we actually believed Leslie's hardman charade. We never really get the feeling that he means it, whether it's due to the innocent melody or, more likely, the fact that he spends the rest of his time trying to be such a gentleman. Thus, those clumsy and ostensibly misogynist words are made to carry about as much weight as his "cash grind" he alludes to on "You're Fly."
Leslie, remember, had a perfect SAT score and graduated Harvard at age 19, so try as he might, he's never going to pull off a thug persona. These contradictions serve to obfuscate our feelings toward Leslie, and the resultant cognitive dissonance is critical to appreciating the work on merits other than its hummable hooks.
What gives the album its admirable character, then, is the way Leslie continually endears himself to us in spite of his apparent missteps.
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