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The album is signature Kelly: fantasy-filled romps, club jams and heartfelt ballads brought to life by the singer's ear for catchy beats and melodies and mood-setting lyrics.
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Forget the salacious material; you come away from Untitled marveling at his craftsmanship. When he’s on his game, no modern R&B artist even approaches the Chicago veteran (here working with various producers).
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He’s coasting here, no doubt about it, but no one can coast like he can
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Call it focus, call it obsession, call it tunnel vision, call it formula: R. Kelly is consistent.
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Last year's remarkably lewd "12 Play: Fourth Quarter" may go down (so to speak) as one of the great unreleased albums in pop history. Fortunately, several of its prime cuts, including the silky-smooth 'Go Low,' surface on Untitled, which contains no shortage of fresh raunch.
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One of his horniest albums yet (!), Kelly's 10th gets ridiculous fast.
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What Untitled lacks, is focus. In the world in which R. Kelly operates, what's required of a great or even pretty good album is either several singles or a feeling of overwhelming personality from the artist. Most of the time, the two things accompany each other.
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At its best, Untitled sounds like a compilation of his previous work--a smooth-voiced crooner reading a sex thesaurus over R&B beats.
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Untitled's titles-- 'Pregnant,' 'Whole Lotta Kisses,' and (yes) 'Bangin' the Headboard'--don't do much to flip the script, or even write a new page.
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Kelly is still intermittently hilarious--if never intentionally so--but too much of Untitled feels generic, which is a curious flaw for a larger-than-life eccentric with the most, though not necessarily the best, personality in mainstream R&B.
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Strings, guitars and keyboards add color in carefully measured doses. The songs never develop much beyond their initial verse and chorus and rarely bother with contrasting bridge sections, but that’s the point: No jarring changes to throw off the mood.
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Throughout most of Untitled, Kelly seems to have taken the worst aspects of "Trapped In The Closet"--it's over-the-head relentless melodies and lyrics--and decided that they'll work in a song until the repetition instead relegates it to wallpaper.
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As with nearly every R. Kelly album, sex is Untitled's raison d'être. But too often here he trips over trends.
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The only thing that prevents Untitled from dissolving in its own moisture is Kelly's consummately unhinged personality.
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His voice is heavenly and the production cool and slinky, but all that really registers is the explicitness of the lyrics.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 13
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Mixed: 2 out of 13
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Negative: 1 out of 13
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Jul 30, 2011
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joannajDec 4, 2009
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DavidStoneDec 3, 2009Classic album look beyond the sex and you will see a true genius at work.