The Isley Brothers: Body Kiss : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

R. Kelly masterminds the classic soul group's comeback; it's not a good thing charged with writing and producing all but one song on the Isley Brothers' new Body Kiss, embattled soulman R. Kelly phoned it in, giving the Isleys some of his cutting-room-floor material and throwing in some dashes of Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and, yes, even early Isley Brothers for taste. Kelly's strength, predictably, is in crafting drama (he makes a few vocal appearances, too, disturbingly billed as "the Pied Piper"). On the operatic "Busted," Ronald Isley dukes it out line for line with his cheating woman, ultimately giving her the heave-ho: "Trying to slick a can of oil/Who you think you fooling?" And on "Showdown Vol. 1," he again sounds fierce as he chases down the other man. Everywhere else, the predictable and trite sexual bravado and ostentatiousness that Kelly has made his stock in trade sound absurd coming from a voice as elegant and gifted as Isley's.