Ridin' Solo

iTunes Review

Keith Sweat was the smoothest lothario of the '90s R&B scene. In the intervening years all of pop music has become more openly libidinous, and in 2010, it seems there is again a place for Sweat in the pop music landscape. He basically invented the league in which The-Dream, T-Pain and Trey Songz now play, so it’s fitting that he reintegrates the production techniques of his junior competition. “Test Drive” and “Ridin Solo” show the influence of Terius Nash and Tricky Stewart, and both songs are so light and swift that the 49-year-old Sweat comes off looking like a much younger man. Meanwhile “Famous” and “It’s All About You” borrow from T-Pain’s bag of vocal effects, but both songs hearken back to Roger Troutman and a much earlier era of vocally modified sex jams. Like his contemporary R. Kelly, Sweat always finds new ways to talk about the oldest pastime. He’s not always subtle, but even more than Kelly, Sweat has a way of telling it like it is, as on “Hood Sex”: “Ain’t nothing like a hood girl, she be rockin’ my world / Urban kinda street girl, better than them suburban girl.”