Babyface: Grown & Sexy : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Thanks in part to a pair of neptunes-assisted club tracks, 2001's Face2Face was Babyface's funkiest album ever, but it still failed to reverse the multiplatinum R&B master's declining sales. As its title announces, Grown and Sexy makes no attempt to attract hip-hop kids; instead it aims to reunite the forty-six-year-old smoothie with his ripened female fan base. The producer and songwriter for everyone from Whitney Houston to Eric Clapton, Babyface writes what women want to hear, although, like many one-man hit factories, he sometimes gets a little obvious about it: On "God Must Love U," he reasons that it "must be wonderful to wake up to yourself." Dragged down by radio-courting melodies and ready-made rhymes, this album's first half is particularly calculated. His musically subdued but lyrically furious "Goin' Outta Business" ranks with his best, but, like much of his solo material, could have been far more feisty in the hands of a Mary J. Blige.