J. Holiday | Round 2
The street love flow still coming from emerging Urban R&B artist J. Holiday stays consistent for “Round 2” – handcrafted & prepared for the mellowed out crowd & younger (& possibly older) generation lovers at heart. The beats are still bangin’, the groove lines still sticks to your earlobes & the flavor is still representative of his ‘Back Of The Lac’ debut album. The question, as always, is this: Was it better than the 1st? As far as I am concerned, this 25 year old has something undeniably interesting: He has a sound & its attractive. Yep, I’m diggin’ it.
Besides the harden character persona often illustrated on his CD covers, his inner spirit draws portraits of love songs, passionate serenades & sultry balladeering, only reflective of what young J. Holiday carefully orchestrates on “Round 2”. Allow me to break it on down players & playettes….
Track Listing:
~ Intro
~ It’s Yours
~ Fall
~ Don’t Go
~ Wrong Lover
~ Run Into My Arms
~ Sing 2 U
~ Lights Go Out
~ Make That Sound
~ Forever Ain’t Enough
~ Fly
~ Homeless
~ I Tried
The ‘Intro’ is like many other opening sequences on various R&B CD’s, but “It’s Yours” comes breaking into the scene with Jasper from StreetLove Music handling the drum programming…heavy drum beats for the subwoofer, along with a tasty, simple melody & lyrics to flow with it; It doesn’t let up in “Fall” – an endearing sentimental thought of falling in love without knowing that it will come so expectantly (it happens when you least expect it), especially when it wasn’t planned to be; And the song sequencing gets high props when “Don’t Go” (look below) gently bumps its way into a mellow groove, much saturated on the disc like the rest of the love anthemed cuts.
The connection between J. & Rick Ross on “Wrong Lover” borrowed an interpolation of a Dexter Wansel classic in ‘Hurry Up This Way Again’ & kept the hypnotized soul rhythms tranquil & fresh.; The same goes for “Run Into My Arms”, & “Sing 2 U”; “Lights Go Out” – a much slower tempo, Keith Sweat feelin’, sugar coated romantic gem changes the pace a little.
J. Holiday calmed down, changed out of the love zone dept for a short minute & opened up the listening arena to the spirit of reality in the track “Homeless”. Especially in relation to this current economic crisis, as he dealt a composition out of his deck of cards in speaking on the growing problem of homelessness in America. Check the lyrics.
The album was a great second attempt by Mr. Holiday. It’s clear that J. plans & wants to be heard as a consistent vocalist & “Round 2” helped him out with a 2nd round TKO. Let’s see down the road what the next chapter for J. will be. For now, this one is a winner by all means.
Right on Man…
T
The Urban Music Scene
Listen to song samples from the “Round 2” album on our R&B – Soul Page, exclusively from amazon, by clicking here!!