The O'Jays

Now that the Staples are unabashed sex merchants, the O'Jays are pop's foremost message
mongerers. But the O'Jays don't write or produce their albums, so their records are
vehicles for the occasionally cloudy religious and social visions of producers Kenny
Gamble and Leon Huff. In his liner notes, Gamble defines The Problem as a "lack of truth and
communication among man and woman." He says, "The word with music can ... c... More >

The message in the message is inoffensive enough to let the message in the music come through; my favorite lines (not that I don't have unfavorites): "Heaven is just a condition/Hell is a condition too." But the music never peaks; the songs are too medium, if you know what I mean, their pleasures bound up in performance subtleties that ought to be hooked, at least once, onto something obvious. (Grade: B-)