Eric Benét

R&B music has gotten rather trite of late--find an elementary tune that everyone has heard before, add a throaty voice and a clever little ditty of a rap, and sprinkle in explicit sexual references here and there, and you've got a number one hit. Yet Eric Bent, with his second solo album A Day in the Life, is somehow able to manipulate this basic formula and actually come up with something rather new. You've got the sampling going on--a catchy rendition of the nursery-school rhyme "Georgy-Porgy" is repeated again, and again (and again . . .) in the second track of the same name. The soulful voices of several female background singers are present in almost every track, and yes, expect some rather sketchy lyrics like "Oohh oohh, baby please, baby please" (from "Something Real") and Jerry Springer-esque songs like "Loving Your Best Friend" to, er, excite the listeners. But Eric Bent is more Luther Vandross than Puff Daddy, a phenomenon probably due to Bent's first musical sweetheart, gospel music. Eric Benet certainly has not revolutionized R&B music--the elements of the music are the same--yet he has created a type of music that is uniquely his own. And, hey, the possibilities for booty-shaking women in future videos are quite endless.