Album Review: Pieces of Me by Ledisi

Turn Me Loose was Ledisi’s most commercially successful release, topping Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and peaking within the Top 20 of the Billboard 200. The 2009 album also earned two Grammy nominations to go with the pair earned by 2007’s Lost & Found. On her fourth Verve Forecast disc, the singer continues to work beside Rex Rideout, Ivan Barias, and Carvin Haggins while adding Salaam Remi, Mike City, and Chuck Harmony -- all of whom are among adult contemporary R&B’s most prominent and successful studio hands -- and a handful of up-and-comers.

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The cover of Ledisi’s latest record, Pieces of Me, cleverly features a head shot of the musician as an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle. The conceit suggests that the singer is a work in progress. While skillfully presented, this theme—the artist as an unfinished person who uses music to explore the creator’s different sides—is very common. What makes Ledisi interesting isn’t how she arranges the pieces of the puzzle per se.

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BARRY MANILOW “15 Minutes” (Stiletto). If something has been bothering Barry Manilow all these years, it’s been tough to tell. Early in his career he was a master of temperate melancholy, giving lip service to romantic pain but never venturing a real tear. For the last decade or so he’s ….

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