Embrya
Blacksummers'night
Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
Now
MTV Unplugged

..with that said, none of his albums are sub par. Just a matter of preference.

I noticed a lot of folks really liking Embrya. I figured I'd give my two cents on the albums.

With Urban Hang Suite, it has that old school R&B sensibility, with lush guitars, and chicken scratch guitars, traveling bass lines, and silky keys. Every song is memorable, catchy, sexy, and the whole album tells a great story of one night with a girl, and the process from opening the door to saying goodnight at the end of the sexin'.

Unplugged is really an extension of UHS for me, and not just because it has only UHS songs on it, sans the two cover songs. It's a true Unplugged where the songs have been reinterpreted and "remixed" in a live setting. You know from the first two notes that you're in for something special. And just as a personal side note: It's a great album to make love with on in the background. Tah-rust me.

Then you get to Embrya. There's a great "thickness" to that record. It has a thick under belly to it, a richness. It's very textured. The opening song it over 7 minutes long! It's much more sexy and lush, reminding one of a thick, down comforter and mattress pad in the middle of winter. Warm, and comfy....but still at least getting a blowjob under the covers. haha

NOW is a bit of a mix of Embrya and UHS. It's more straight-forward in its R&B approach, but yet it's that dried up, clap trap of nonsense that we hear on the radio a lot (ie: Chris Brown, Ne-Yo, Joe, Rihanna, Leesha Keeha Ieysha or whothefuckever). NOW seems to be Max just saying "Take this for a while, I'm outta here." Maybe that was not his intention, but it sort of felt that way. He even closed the album with a semi-instrumental track that is quite reminiscent of "Urban Hang Suite Theme" opener on UHS. Kind of book ended the first 3 studio albums.

Then we wait and wait for eight years, and although pushed back a year, we finally get BLACKsummer'snight, and still have blackSUMMER'S night, and blacksummer'sNIGHT to come in the next two years. I'm quite anxious to hear this trilogy and how each differ, and how people end up liking whatever CD, and whatever mix of songs suits them. Max has talked about the SUMMER'S disk being more upbeat and happy opposed to the darker edge that BLACK has. BLACK almost ends too soon for me, but I don't mind that it seems shorter. In the grander scheme of the three disks as a trilogy, it'll probably be just right.

sosgemini said:

+1
Same list for me... Not really a fan of that "Blacksummersnight" album... I want it him to go back to those guyz from Sade... They had that "janet/jimmy jam/terry Lewis" connection or say, "ginuwine/timbaland"...

sosgemini said: