Aretha Franklin

The queen of soul is still the Queen. But that doesn't mean the material on Aretha Franklin's
latest album is deserving of her crown. Last time around, on 1998's A Rose Is Still a Rose,
Lauryn Hill, Puff Daddy and other hot hitmakers plied fresh beats and old-school samples to
aim Aretha's R&B at young ears. Here, Mary J. Blige appears on and co-writes two of the
hipper tracks, "Holdin' On" and "No Matter What," but both come up short in the... More >

No, not that "Ain't No Way," or that "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" either. New ones, shorter on tune hence longer on voice--a musical correlative of the way she blurs the erotic-domestic details of the relationships the songs are about. Instead, her singing embodies relatedness itself: the experience of human proximity, of emotion expressed subject-to-object. (Grade: B+)