Babyface minds his manners
For Kenneth ''Babyface" Edmonds, ''Grown & Sexy," the title of his ninth album, seems obvious to the point of redundancy -- he's always made adult R&B for the candles-and-white-zinfandel set. Yet there's also a hint of defiance there. Now 46, Babyface seems to be declaring that there's nothing wrong with acting your age, and that sexiness is not the sole province of the young and undressed.
''You know we've been waiting much too long for this, girl, it's time to get it on, old-school style, keep it grown, keep it sexy," Babyface coos in the spoken-word intro to ''Tonight It's Goin' Down," the album's opening track. Naturally, the operative term here is ''old-school style." The art and joy of romance -- not just sex -- has always propelled Babyface's music, and he remains closer in spirit to the late, great Luther Vandross (though he's never had an equally incomparable voice) than to, say, the Ying Yang Twins.
Of course, this approach can also come off a little too mannered -- we may be grown folks, but we still like to have a frisky good time. Occasionally, ''Grown & Sexy" concentrates too much on the former, and not enough on the latter. Even when Babyface sings, ''Take off your clothes, and come to me, I want to make your body feel like ecstasy" on ''Can't Stop Now," he delivers the lyric with such crisp restraint, one imagines the couple taking the time to neatly hang up their clothes on scented hangers instead of tossing them with libidinous abandon.
Then again, that kind of proper tastefulness has sustained Babyface's Grammy-winning career for nearly two decades as a singer, songwriter, and producer for such artists as Whitney Houston (''I'm Your Baby Tonight"), Madonna (''Take a Bow"), and Boys II Men (''End of the Road," ''I'll Make Love to You"). In any event, if Babyface tried to peddle R. Kelly-style sex songs, it would be as artificial as that odd moment when shiny, happy rapper MC Hammer traded his genie pants for sagging jeans and tried to get all hard and thuggish.
Still, with its plump bass beats and tweaked background vocals, a song like ''Goin' Outta Business" wouldn't sound out of place on a Kelly album. In the four years since his last album, ''Face2Face," Babyface has paid attention to younger singers, especially Usher. At the same time, he sort of dismisses the abs-obsessed singer on ''Goin' Outta Business" when he tells a soon-to-be-ex-lover, ''You can take your Usher CD, I'm-a take my Luther with me," then tells her to take her ''ghetto chain" but to leave the diamond ring. That cosmic battle between class and crass underlines the entire album.
Naturally, there's never any doubt on which side of the divide Babyface steadfastly resides. On the smooth ''God Must Love U" he extols the wonders of his love, and even when he's commenting on a woman's derriere in ''She's International," it's almost quaint, never objectifying. And he can sing the Stevie Wonder-esque ''She," a father's love song to his child, without an ounce of hokum.
As always, Babyface's production is reliable and solid, and he also wrote or co-wrote every song. Still, it would be interesting to see him finally mix things up in terms of tempo and mood. One can be both polite and a little naughty -- something most grown folks would welcome and appreciate. 