Hip-hop sweetens

Date: November 17, 1998
By Jay Lustig, Staff

From The Newark Star-Ledger
Submitted by: Rachel D.


"My Love is Your Love"
Whitney Houston (Arista)
* * *

It's a little late, but Whitney Houston is finally entering the 1990s.

Yes, her new album, "My Love Is Your Love," to be released today, features the saccharine pop we've come to expect from her. But it also includes tracks from such hip-hop producers as Fugees members Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill (working separately), Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott and Rodney Jerkins, who surround Houston's assertive, gospel-inflected vocals with sharp, distinctive beats. It's on these tracks that the album works best.

While the songs on "My Love" are rarely as dazzling as past vocal showcases ("The Greatest Love of All" or "Saving All My Love For You," for example), they're more successful at portraying Houston as a real person, not a larger-than-life diva.

It's still hard to buy it when she sings a line like "I'm sleeping in Grand Central Station/It's okay if you're sleeping with me" (from the hypnotic title track, co-written and co-produced by Jean), but at least the demythologizing process has begun.

"I wasn't into the syrupy kind of vibe," Houston told Billboard magazine two weeks ago. "I just didn't feel like singing about 'I Will Always Love You.' I'm a working mother, I'm a wife, I'm an artist. There are so many things that go into that, and it's not always like, 'Everything is beautiful in its own way.'"

Though Houston - who grew up in Newark and now lives in Mendham - didn't co-write a single song on the album, "My Love" (the first non-soundtrack material she's released since 1990's "I'm Your Baby Tonight") comes off as her most personal statement. It is not one that is likely to end rumors that her marriage to Bobby Brown has been painfully rocky.

Nearly half the songs are addressed directly to a cheating or estranged mate. One - "Until You Come Back," produced and co-written by Babyface - is "how I feel about my husband. Period," Houston says in press material accompanying the album.

The closing track, the Hill-produced "I Was Made to Love Him" (a remake of Stevie Wonder's 1967 hit "I Was Made To Love Her"), is a spirited, funky stand-by-your-man declaration. The biographical link is made crystal clear right away, when Houston changes the opening line to "I was born in Newark," as well as later on when she refers to herself by her nickname, Nippy. When she sings about making it "all through thick and thin," it's impossible not to think of her and Brown.

Some of the new songs were composed with Houston in mind. Elliott, for instance, says she wrote "In My Business" - in which the singer tells the world to get off her back - after talking with Houston about the way her marriage is treated by the media. She came up with the lovestruck "Oh Yes" after watching Houston and Brown together.

Houston's heartfelt singing on songs like these makes it easy to believe they mean more to her than a paycheck. This makes the inclusion of bloated ballads like "When You Believe" (a duet with Mariah Carey, recorded for the "Prince Of Egypt" movie soundtrack) and "You'll Never Stand Alone" (written by Diane Warren and produced by Babyface) particularly disappointing. Both intend to make big, positive statements about life but are too bland to be uplifting.

Apparently, "the syrupy kind of vibe" isn't so easy to shake. It's a good sign, however, that at least Houston is trying.

Houston will sign copies of "My Love Is Your Love" at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Virgin Megastore, 45th Street and Broadway, New York. Call (212) 921-1020 for information.