Sergio Mendes: Timeless : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Having played on the last two Black Eyed Peas albums, Sergio Mendes here teams up with the Peas' Will.i.am for a playful but commercially serious bid to recapture the pop market he conquered in the mid-Sixties. And for the first few tracks, Timeless sounds more like a new Peas platter than a Mendes joint, even as it revisits the Brazilian music legend's hits via guest appearances by Erykah Badu, Q-Tip, Stevie Wonder and Jill Scott. It's Will.i.am's own raps that at first overwhelm Mendes' famously light bossa novas and airy sambas. But as the album relaxes halfway through with lush, newly written ballads featuring John Legend ("Please Baby Don't") and India.Arie ("Timeless"), the collaborations click. With deep rhymes written from a soldier's perspective and a pleading chorus sung by Justin Timberlake (who also wrote the track), "Loose Ends" clinches the disc as more than a savvy marketing scheme. When Timeless succeeds, it's beautiful, boundary-breaking music.