Emotional: Extensions Of A Modern-Day Soul Man

There was a time R&B quenched its creative thirst from the fountains of industry big budgets. It was the climate in which Carl Thomas released his debut Emotional album twenty years today. Like a tin of Bond's Beluga caviar, Emotional was musically exquisite from start to finish. Best consumed in its entirety. More Veuve Cliquot than opulent Cristal. Cool and refined, CT's whiskey-soaked vocals went down easy like a snifter of cognac.While others sold sex, Thomas sold seduction.

Emotional burned like sage, calling on ancestral Black music's best moments. A well-placed Issac Hayes sample ("Wherever You Are") gave the record a sexy plushness. There was the muted moody blues of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and Anita Baker's Rapture. Song lyrics recall the best of Luther Vandross' pensive narratives delivered in 3D: "Last night I think I feel in love with you/it was from a window/watching you around my way/ I was too shy to even call to you/so I wrote some words that made it easier to say."
 
Hey Now lingers in the air like incense. Thomas beckons his lover with the patience of Teddy P's Come Go With Me ("Baby,I was thinking that we could spend a little time/heaven must be missing an angel tonight/but I hope you don't mind"). Supa Star's drums offer a subtle nod to Footsteps In The Dark  and ends up becoming the best record the Isley Brothers never made.

At a time when traditional songwriting, bridges and melodies were absent from contemporary R&B compositions, Thomas brought them all back and even resurrected Smokey's poetic storytelling from Motown's yesteryear ("You must have been there all the while/while I played the field like an anxious child") in the process. Come To Me and the soulful Cold Cold World featured the spoken heartfelt monologues that made Blue Magic and Blue Note ballads so fly. Acoustic guitar sound Emotional (featuring a sample of Sting's Fragile) and Summer Rain frame Thomas' voice to perfection.

One word describes CT's singing: effortless. One minute he soars like Whispers' front man Scotty Scott and Peabo Bryson before flaunting Ron Isley's falsetto and then nailing Nat King Cole's burnished vocals to perfection. In the early 2000s, R&B singers had abandoned Charlie Wilson's high-powered new-jack melisma for Donny Hathaway's husky soulfulness. Thomas led the way.
         

                                                                        

The album's centerpiece featured a dead-on Hathaway rendition of a compelling tale of requited love served on a platter of heartbreak. The song contained all the elements of a hit: jazzy piano chords at the intro that made it instantly recognizable, vivid storytelling and a killer hook that dared you not to sing along---"I wish I never met her at all." 

Released two months into the new millennium, the 2000s would have its first definitive R&B song. 

I Wish dropped at a time when hip hop had become a creative and commercial force. Male rap fans who didn't connect with R&B the way the female listeners did. R&B male singers were considered "soft." Some acts would follow R. Kelly's lead and adapt "R&B thug personas" to survive. In time, Vibe Magazine would feature a piece (June 2004's "Star Search") on the plight of male R&B singer.

                                                                                   
                                                                          
 A lesser record would have fallen flat in during the era of Mobb Deep's street poetry and DMX's  anthemic masculinity. I Wish would collapse the defense of anti-r&b critics who worshiped at hip hop's altar and win in a big way. The record went #1 and pushed the Emotional album to platinum. LL Cool J, Shyne and Mobb Deep popped up on the song's remix. Jay-Z injected the song's hook into his massive I Just Wanna Love You (Give It To Me) 2000 hit. Ghostface Killah even recruited Thomas for his own psuedo-remake Never Be The Same Again in 2001.

On the short list of the pantheon of classic R&B albums and joining In Effect Mode, Make It Last Forever and What's The 411 as breakout artistic works of art and brand-building vehicles, Emotional radiates a warmth and vulnerability that remains essential listening.