A perfectionist when he wants to be, a traditionalist steeped in 40 years of R&B craftsmanship, a commercially canny pop star with a knack for right-place-right-time collaborations, R. Kelly can knock out exquisitely slick, universally appealing hits in his sleep. But there's also no denying that Kelly's a real-deal eccentric, in his art as in his life. If Kelly's seemed to court a geek-show level of appreciation lately, it's sad but understandable. Because embracing those eccentricities, cranking up the outlandishness-- often at the expense of everything else-- has resulted in some really bad records over the past few years.
For some Kelly fans, his excesses of personality are the crux of his appeal. For others, they're something you have to listen past (or suffer through) to enjoy the more everyday pleasures like, oh, killer hooks, effortless funk, some of the best singing in R&B. Love Letter is different in almost every way than the Kelly we've gotten to know over the last decade, good news for those who prefer solid soul records to train wrecks.
All of the forehead-slapping elements of Kelly's more recent work-- the sex metaphors, the seemingly free-associated multi-character narratives, the ego-tripping over the idea that everyone is inherently fascinated with the workings of R. Kelly's weird-ass brain regardless of the quality of the tunes-- have been dialed back considerably. No one will be backhandedly praising Love Letter for its camp. The music itself, a gorgeously rendered tribute to a certain swathe of R&B history, is praiseworthy enough, as is Kelly's frequently ignored voice.
Not to say that Kelly could ever keep from indulging himself a little. By the third track he's already comparing the object of his affection (positively) not only to Avatar but Coming to America. Dumb-assed double-entendres and "okay, really?" moments are still strewn throughout Love Letter. But their infrequency makes them feel charmingly silly again, and nowhere does Kelly drop a groaner on the level of "sexasaurus."
Perhaps realizing he was alienating his grown-folks base, and how silly he'd sound hopping on one of will.i.am's jumped-up ringtones, Kelly claims here that he wants to "bring the love songs back to the radio." And, for Kelly, growing up also means looking back. Once he moved away from the lung-bursting swingbeat come-ons that made his name, his albums have been sometimes ungainly (and often over-long) agglomerations of styles. On Love Letter he sticks tightly to the stuff that shaped the now 43-year-old singer/songwriter/producer as an adolescent and early twentysomething.
I think people have been mislead by the cover art, and Kelly's own pre-release hype, because Love Letter is no way a strict recreation of 60s soul. The time frame that's referenced here is much broader, taking in the classic Motown era ("Radio Message") but also drawing as much from the smoother-than-smooth pop-soul of the 70s ("Just Like That") and the pre-new jack swing of the 80s ("Number One Hit"). A few outright and faithful homages to the Marvin/Smokey era aside, Kelly smears these period references-- tremulous Hi Records guitars, popping SOS Band bass, the percussion of Michael Jackson's disco years-- into unexpected combinations. The songs don't feel like 2010, but they're harder to pin to any one decade than Kelly's press might have you believing. While it's easier to excite people who might be indifferent (or antagonistic) to Kelly's music by invoking the Four Tops rather than LaVert, Love Letter is much more gliding, quiet-storm retro than "American Bandstand" retro.
There are some inexplicably cheap production choices that are obviously intentional, moments when Kelly's bad taste still gets the better of him. The synthesized faux-opulence of "When a Woman Loves" grates hard, especially given Kelly's Apollo-leveling vocal, the grittiest performance on Love Letter. But from the pillow-soft "Just Like That" to the sparely deployed orchestral ornament that swells between the warm empty spaces of "Music Must Be a Lady", Love Letter is mostly poised, polished, and lush beyond belief. And despite being the preeminent R&B thug, there's zilch in the way of hip-hop hardness. That goes double for Kelly's singing, which is a marvel throughout. His vocals are at their best when he's more insinuating than showy, when he remembers the sly, bouncy, conversational come-on works best. On Love Letter, he's as often whispering in your ear as filling the room.
Even with that amount of craft and care involved, it might be easy to hear Love Letter as a slight project, a work of loving, comfortable pastiche rather than someone pushing himself. It certainly lacks the batshit breadth of his less successful recent work. But given the often ignoble results, maybe R. Kelly has pushed himself enough over the last 10 years. Perhaps this back-to-basics move will remind him of where his true talents lie, that his "easy" stuff, the slow jams and the steppers, will endure longer than the half-deranged performance art of "Trapped in the Closet" or "Real Talk". And even if it's a sugary, one-off trifle, it's a compulsively listenable one all the same.
