Album Review : The-Dream - Love King
- Written by Joe Bates
“Actually, can we turn it off?”. Six words and one piece of punctuation to break the heart of anyone who insecurely tries to introduce people to new music, and the very thing said to me as I played The-Dream's Love King to a friend. “Oh...okay” was my response, well-below my usual high standard of 'well of course you wouldn't like it, you like (name of perfectly reasonable band picked on out of spite)'. I couldn't hide the fact that her reaction was understandable. After sitting through a song about how a woman upset about their partner's adultery is easily mollified by being bought an expensive bag, the next song about a woman who already had a boyfriend, ‘but I had to pursue her/he ain't ever there, so she let me do her', proved too much. It was, as mentioned, understandable. 
The fact that the latter song, 'F.I.L.A', is the most brilliantly uplifting R'n'B track likely to be released in a long time shows how Terius 'The-Dream' Nash marries the sublime and the questionable at every turn. With frequent collaborator Christopher 'Tricky' Stewart, he's responsible for the some of the more astronomically popular songs of the past few years – 'Umbrella' and 'Single Ladies' are two you might just have heard of. His solo work brings the same incredible production values and delirious melodies that he brings to other artists work, but also adds words that would strike many sexline operators as being too filthy. Perhaps this, and not quite being a sex-symbol himself, have held his solo career back. This is a shame, because Love King, like his previous albums, contains some of the most inventive R'n'B and pop music of the current era, and at its absolute best is the type of album that it is hard to listen to without a gormless grin forming on your face.
'F.I.LA', is the second time this phenomena will occur – with its exuberant horns and ecstatic chorus of 'I just wanna fall in love again', it has a richness that makes its sentimentality ring true. The first time will have been during the title track which opens the album in ludicrously fun fashion with an ultra-specific list of the places Nash has various women – at university, at a clothes shop, in a bank, etc. It's been done before but not with harmonies as strong as this. However, 'Yamaha' stands out as finest song on the album. Owing roughly the same amount to Prince as Prince's own back-catalogue, it nevertheless dazzles, its melody and synth lines floating untethered, with no bass in the mix to bring them back to earth, ending up with more brilliant moments than many albums manage. Such individual tracks shine, but as impressive are the transitions, with each song incorporating elements of the last. It is a very complete album, which is especially impressive given how prolific Nash has been over the last few years.
However, the volume of his output might explain an inconsistency not as apparent in his previous album, Love Vs Money. As uplifting as the music can be on this album, it also has an occasional propensity to bring you crashing back to Earth, and for every fun and audacious lyric that Nash manages, he has a mindless, lazy, or, at worst, objectionable lyric. 'Make-up Bag' is a combination of the two, musically pedestrian and with a lyric that paints women in such shallow tones it borders on the satirical. Many, like the friend mentioned in the introduction, wouldn't see it that way. And just imagine if she'd made it to the execrable 'Panties to the Side', a misjudged attempt at an intense club song, which makes Nash sound like an autotuned rapist. 'Are you one of those girls who means go when they say stop?' Oh dear. Some of the other songs meander rather than horrify, which is an improvement but given the strength of the highlights, few will opt to stick around for the excellent between-song transitions and instead find their fingers hovering towards the skip button.
These highlights, though, are enough to justify calling the album a success. Although some will baulk at the lyrical content, it is often not as objectionable as it is slightly jarring, and on half the tracks it is neither of those things and instead works excellently with the music. When the songs shine, they shine very brightly indeed, and confirm The-Dream as the best songwriter currently working in a genre not as highly valued as it should be. Love Vs Money may be the better introduction, but Love King will still be one of the better albums released this year, in spite of what my friend thinks. What does she know anyway, she likes the Red Hot Chilli Peppers ...