As a fan of Gerald Levert I may not be the best person to judge his records since he hardly can do any wrong for me. Ok, he did it on his new album with the quite horrible opener and first single Too Much Room featuring a horrendous Mystikal on rap. So just skip the first song and you get the usual Gerald Levert magic that puts the Blues back into R&B (here meant in the more classic sense).
Certainly songs like Since You Ain't Around or Wilding Me Out won't convince any unconverted but that's their miss. Of course Gerald isn't re-inventing the wheel and hasn't changed his sound very much throughout his career but on the other hand you can say he has just perfected his own sound.
I'm not so sure that the more 70ies like cover of The G-Spot will do it's duty with a sex sells message and I really don't understand why Gerald shouldn't grace the cover of his album but then it's all about the music, so back to the real thing.
Like on previous albums Gerald produced, wrote and arranged everything on his own except for Your Smile which is a cover version of an Ashford & Simpson tune.
There's even a Marvin Gaye influenced song with The Top Of My Head a contribution by the ubiquitous Roy Ayers (is there really an album out there that doesn't feature him right now?) on Oh What A Night.
One of the advantages of being with a major label is certainly the fact that you have a larger budget for recording, e.g. you could use a string section like on Gerald did on almost every track on G-Spot to add some more depth to the music.
One of my favourite songs on offer is Backbone, a story telling classic soul song with a nice organ...and I have never heard the line '...my little boy's birthday is coming / and he want that playstation too') sung with more conviction before, ok I haven't heard it ever before :-)
Other good songs include All That Matters (that samples The Family Reunion by The O'Jays, a group Gerald's dad, Eddie Levert Sr., sings in.), Funny or the sparse Closure that's mostly Gerald with strings, guitar and some drums.
Altogether The G-Spot isn't a surprise to those who know Gerald's music, it's nevertheless very good and pleasant or in other words 'a must have' for all Gerald fans out there.