Word: boyz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hollywood too is feeling the rap beat. After Lauryn Hill passed on a role in The Cider-House Rules (an adaptation of the John Irving book), filmmakers cast hip-hop soul singer Erykah Badu. Ice Cube, who has appeared in such movies as Boyz N the Hood and Fridays, will soon star with George Clooney in the Gulf War thriller Three Kings. Queen Latifah, featured in the recent film Living Out Loud, is now set to be the host of a TV talk show. And the former Fresh Prince, Will Smith, has become one of the most in-demand actors...
...Pearlman says, "You have to be able to sing first or it doesn't matter how good-looking you are." The two groups share some of the same songwriters and producers, and both acts owe their most immediate debt to the somewhat more sophisticated R.-and-B. harmonizing of Boyz II Men. The hits are catchy, even compelling, but it's hard, once a girl has grown breasts, to make it through a whole album's worth; then again, to be fair, the same was true of the Jackson Five, the greatest bubble-gum group in history...
...group N.W.A., Ice Cube can lay claim to being a true O.G., an Original Gangsta. But he has always been too smart, too observant, to fall into the trap of being just a thug-life-living gangsta rapper. He's an actor: he co-starred in Boyz N the Hood, and he's set to start in the action movie Three Kings with George Clooney. And he's a social critic, attacking, in his lyrics, the penal system, politicians and sometimes America in general...
Take the rebel romanticism of Jodeci and the pleading sincerity of Boyz II Men, and add a dash of the martial-arts mythologizing of the Wu-Tang Clan. Let simmer, and you'd have something approximating the R.-and-B. vocal quartet Dru Hill. Dru Hill's vocal recipe doesn't always work--the group sometimes settles for flashy sentiment instead of striving for true emotion. Still, numbers like the thoughtful remake of The Love We Had (Stays on My Mind) and the delicately felt ballad Angel make this CD really cook...
...Love" about love in all forms, but for every one of these slick arrangements, there is a lame and unmemorable tune waiting to follow it. "4 Moms" is an enjoyable instrumental respite, but the album hits bottom in "Give Me" when Ali Shaheed inexplicably spins in samples from Boyz...