Moby became an international star by running decades' worth of music through his laptop studio, but Hotel may be his most personal and streamlined album yet. With the auteur eschewing samples and composing tunes first, songs like "Where You End" and "Dream About Me" (sung with sweet-voiced buddy Laura Dawn, who appears throughout) transmit singer-songwriter warmth and clarity through textures that effuse autumnal beauty despite their relative sparseness. Hotel is also surprisingly nostalgic: A handful of tracks are tributes to the New Wave Moby grew up on, including the dance-pop "Lift Me Up" and a codeine-tempoed cover of New Order's "Temptation." The slower stuff vagues out, and the bonus disc of ambient instrumentals ought to come with a controlled substance, but elegant relationship songs such as the torchy "Forever" suggest this talented softy has found a sensible way to come down from a multi-platinum high.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"