Black Panties

Musically the album is on-point and lyrically it's prone to Kelly's customary laugh-out-loud clunkiness. Despite all that, though, Kelly has made another really great album.

His 12th album, a return to wafting sex jams after two soulful dance discs, also falls short of the Kelly we love.

The culture police might have hemorrhages listening to these uncensored tracks, but anyone with a sense of humor and an appreciation for smartly crafted mainstream R&B will appreciate the singer-songwriter’s return to his wild ways.

What it lacks in lyrical depth it makes up for by being a catchy, entertaining and completely in the moment snapshot of the current turned up, hybrid of R&B and Rap for clubs and bedrooms.

What we get is a pretty good modern R&B album, but it’s also one that feels just a bit fossilized.

Regardless of the reason, it’s safe to say that Kelly is fighting all sorts of social norms on Black Panties, from sex talk to issues of race and economics. The way he’s going about the issues might be a little bit clunky, to say the least, but it’s admirable that he’s even tackling them.

So-so cuts like "Right Back" and "All the Way," a meandering duet with Kelly Rowland, give the impression that the singer might've padded the album in his determination to get it out in time to capitalize on the renown he's established this year. But then he'll bust out a steamy slow jam as gorgeous--and as generous in spirit--as "Crazy Sex."

Solid, but inconsequential.

Creatively there are signs he's struggling to keep it up. [Feb 2014, p.114]

It’s the polarizing swing, though, between Kelly’s genius and his flagrant misogyny that makes an album like Black Panties enticing and frustrating in equal measure.

Kells' voice remains one of the most flexible and inventive instruments in pop, but, even for him, Panties veers too frustratingly between horny and corny.

Black Panties finds him getting back to his core business with rather less artistic ambition.

Songs like "Cookie," "Crazy Sex" and "Legs Shakin'" start off as promises of highly skilled sexual attentions, but end up as to-do lists.

Occasional resemblances to Drake and the-Dream are as blatant as the Isley Brothers and Michael Jackson exercises of Write Me Back. The similarities are so obvious that it's tough to discern if Kelly is acknowledging his younger followers, aiming to beat them at their game, or both.

The onslaught of bawdy imagery eventually grows tedious, but there's something compelling about witnessing one man's psyche laid so completely bare, a crazed prophet whipped into a frenzy by the ecstasy of his own sin.

Blunt and crass, 2013’s Black Panties is all about selling nostalgia for a bygone age of hard-body sexist black machismo that Barack Obama is, in his own quiet way, helping to deflate.

Kelly is best when he is at his most absurd, comical and over-the-top.... Sometimes, the jokes go too far.

Despite its positives, the album falls far short of the impressive musical peaks of Kelly’s discography.

Despite flashes of melodic and lyrical inventiveness, production-wise Kelly sounds like he’s chasing innovators The-Dream and Mike WiLL Made It, especially on the strip club tracks.

Mostly, these are exquisitely constructed slow jams--especially recent single ‘Cookies’, The-Dream-esque ‘Crazy Sex’ and the cashmere-soft, Kelly Rowland duet ‘All The Way’--but the pace becomes stagnant after a while.