Album Review: Q: Soul Bossa Nostra by Quincy Jones

Other than a handful of one-offs, producer, composer, and arranger Quincy Jones has been busy outside of the music world, acting as a film producer and a cultural ambassador. Q: Soul Bossa Nostra is his first proper "new" album in 15 years, though it revisits tracks he either composed, recorded, or produced previously with a host of the current era's most popular artists from the R&B, pop, and hip-hop worlds. Given his rep, the star power here is not surprising, but re-recording classic songs with new singers -- or in some cases adding vocals to a track that never had them at all -- is risky.

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At age 77, Quincy Jones has a deep enough Rolodex to get virtually any vocalist he wants in the studio. He made good use of it by recruiting artists like Usher, Snoop Dogg, and Jamie Foxx for reinterpretations of his catalog on Q: Soul Bossa Nostra. The all-star collaborations form a fitting tribute to Jones? immaculate pop-soul style, with a few exceptions: We didn?t need to hear Amy Winehouse stumble through ”It?s My Party.” B Download These:Jazzy groove Ironside at amazon.comSnoop jam Get the Funk Out of My Face at amazon.com See all of this week’s reviews .

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This guest-strewn project lacks the magic of previous Quincy classics. Martin Longley 2010 The veteran composer and arranger Quincy Jones has straddled an astonishing range of musical developments over five decades. He was there with Dizzy Gillespie in 1956. He was there for the scoring of Sidney Lumet’s classic noir flick The Pawnbroker.

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