Joe released his brand new album 'Joe Thomas, New Man' this week which features production from Bryan Michael Cox, Stereotypes, Polow Da Don and Rodney 'Darkchild' Jerkins just to name a few. As well as the 11 main tracks that the album is made up of, it also features 5 song snippets from his forthcoming album, 'Signature'; set for a February 10th 2009 release. The album will feature an array of brand new ballads all written, produced and arranged by Joe himself.The album starts off very strong with the midtempo R&B groove 'E.R. (Emergency Room)' which pleases with it's pulsating bassline. Using his slick soothing vocals and countless medical metaphors, Joe acts as the male patient wanting his female doctor to medically resuscitate him with her love and attention. By far, this is definetely one of the standout tracks on the album. Joe then sees himself working his sensually-smooth vocal delivery on the Bryan Michael Cox-produced 'By Any Means'. The track comprises of stop-start trance-style synths and is lyrically filled with regret in light of losing his girl. The song is quite the charmer, and it's definetely different for B. Cox but sees Joe at his edgiest yet.
'Why Just Be Friends' is definetely an adage of old-school R&B in which Joe chills it down some and nurtures his warm falsetto along the chorus. As for 'We Need To Roll', it's pretty laidback with it's dark sensual mood, but I was not understanding why Mario was taken off the track since he did just as good a job of it, if not better. In songs like 'I Won't Let Him Hurt You', a Middle Eastern backdrop infiltrates the track in which Joe vocally sells himself, clearly conveying sadness and regret that his new love was treated badly in a previous relationship. As a result, he vows to do much better. I was definetely loving this one because I'm a sucker for R&B beats mixed in with the Arabic influences.
The Polow Da Don-produced 'Man in Your Life' sees the producer doing what he does best - recycling beats. For this beat, he samples Nas's 'Hero' (another track he produced) which is typical of Polow, but decent all the same. The album track title 'New Man' distinguishes itself from Joe's trademark R&B sound. The Stereotypes-produced uptempo shines with upbeat commercial savviness and is no doubtedly, the most single-worthiest song on the album. The midtempo groove 'Chameleon' entices with its pretty piano melody and deserves an honourable mention. Lyrics-wise, it's very relatable in terms of somebody showing their true colours.
The rest of the CD is pretty much filled with your dreamy-sweet sugary ballads that didn't really impact on me. Joe self-proclaims the new man in him on this record but in all honestly, I didn't hear anything that new. I pretty much take it the new man is in representation of releasing the album on the new label (now with Kedar Ent and not Jive); and not necessarily because he's a 'new man' in R&B evolvement. The five snippets of songs that will appear on his 2009 release sound rather promising but rather than release two albums in such a short time it would have made sense to use the strongest cuts on both albums to ensue the album was much more memorable in content. 'Joe Thomas, New Man' is a nice album in some parts but not really all that consistent and certainly not on par with the R&B gems that were prevalent on 'My Name is Joe' or 'All That I Am' for the most part.
Rating: 3/5
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