Ruben Studdard - Love Is (2009)

Okay, I'm confused.  The knock on Ruben Studdard over the five years since his glorious victory on American Idol has been that he was a powerful singer stuck with the wrong material, the wrong career vision and the wrong producers.  Like AI season two winner Clay Aiken, Studdard's "velvet teddy bear" stage presence has rarely translated to his albums, and he has traveled a road of forgettable, relatively faceless discs that have been, at a minimum, perplexing to those who expected great things from him.  Complicating matters has been Studdard's apparent lack of musical identity: Was he a modern R&B guy or was he (as many believe) really a Gospel man in hiding? So the announcement a few months ago that Studdard was working with legendary hitmakers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis excited music folks who thought that maybe, finally, experienced producers would coax the kind of R&B album that Studdard's fans have long been expecting.  Well, the big surprise is that Studdard's new release, Love Is, generally works, but not for the reasons expected.

The overall theme of Love Is is unusual, even schizophrenic:  half covers of classic pop and soul tunes produced by Jam and Lewis and half new material contributed by younger hitmakers like Stargate (Ne-Yo, Rihanna, etc.) and Scyence.  Surprisingly, it is the latter that makes the album shine.  The Stargate team provides its usual uber-infectious cuts, including the first single, "Together," and the excellent uptempo "How You Make Me Feel." Just as good is the Scyence-produced "Don't Make Em Like U No More," and the album hits its high point on "Just Because," a mildly bluesy cut on which Studdard shows more personality than on the other songs combined. Credit producer John Jackson for drawing from Studdard the kind of performance that fans have expected for years and only sporadically received (mostly on his lone Gospel album, I Need An Angel).

The album sags a bit on some requisite big ballads like "Footprints In the Sand" and "Song For Her," each of which sounds about five years out of date. But the biggest drag is the group of tired retreads brought to the party by Jam and Lewis. Do we really need another cover of the Beatles' "Long and Winding Road," Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times" or, God-forbid, MJ's "I Can't Help It" (which has been handled by at least five R&B artists in the past couple years alone)?  More shocking is that the one inspired cover choice, Extreme's "More Than Words," is a near disaster, with Studdard clearly straining just to get through it.

That brings us to the punch line on Love Is, which is that the album rises and falls with the producers who are running the show, not with Studdard.  The deep, powerful voice we all seem to remember from Idol is generally absent, replaced by the croonings of a competent but fairly nondescript pop/soul singer.  Perhaps the AI setting -- with Studdard surrounded by eleven lesser singers -- created artificial or even unfair expectations, because for the uninitiated listener Love Is is both innocuously enjoyable and generally well-paced; a better than average modern R&B album. But for those who have been there from the beginning, the disc provides some anti-climactic answers to long-standing, sticky questions about Studdard's recording career: With the right material and production (as he has on half the disc), Ruben Studdard is neither hero nor villain -- he is not the transcendant singer that his wildest fans expected but is nonetheless a legitimate vocalist who can deliver radio-worthy, listenable results.  Moderately recommended.

By Chris Rizik