J. Holiday: Back Of My Lac : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

When it's on, the debut from D.C. native J. Holiday offers some sweet, passive pleasures. For a handful of hot cuts, Holiday turns out brash, hook-centric R&B that complements silky singing with some fine beats: The bumping "Ghetto" underpins Holiday's insistent sermon on underclass misery with Santana guitar, congas and lite funk, and "Thug Commandments" is an ultrawarm thing with an ace chorus and D'Angelo-worthy falsettos. Then there's the single "Bed" (as in, "I'm-a put you to"), a sex jam so gleefully horny, and hooky, that it ends up charming. So it's too bad that Back of My Lac sinks into slow, sexy tedium: Bland love odes like "Be With Me" sound like they came from the same assembly-line mill that turned out T-Pain's lesser cuts, which is pretty lesser. By Track Twelve, Holiday's praising a hottie who's got "the body of a call girl." How's that for running short on good ideas?