A Solid Effort to Fit the Cookie Cutter

Universal James is a solid funk/R&B effort, but only half of it is a true James Brown album.

You see, these were the days when his label, Scotti Bros, was desperately trying to make the godfather fit the latest mold. And for some reason, they thought that pairing him with flash-in-the-pan producers whose 15 minutes had already waned was a good idea.

In fact the lead track only features JB's on about 20% of the cut. His growling of the hook amounts to little more than a sample. The real stars of the cut are a group of rappers called Leaders of the New School (featuring a young Busta Rhymes). Strangely, this track was chosen to be the first single off the album, even though the Godfather only makes what amounts to a guest appearance. Odd.

The rest of the tracks are divinded between those written and produced by Jazzy B from Soul2Soul (remember him?)and those written and produced by JB himself.

The majority of the Jazzy tracks are pretty damn good, the smoothed out funky beats making an interesting contrast to Brown's raspy vocals. "Moments", an update of JB's 1970's spoken word hit "King Heroin", is especially effective.

BUT--and this is a big but--these tracks, no matter how nice, are not true James Brown (the same goes for the other collections he put together for the meddlesome Scotti Bros--excepting "Love Over-Due"). JB is a musician, not just a vocalist (some would argue he hasn't been a vocalist for decades--they're wrong, of course).

Fortunately, there is a fair share of real JB here. "Georgia-Lina" is a fine pop ballad about the Godfather's homeland. And "Everybody's Got a Thang" and "Make It Funky 2000" give us JB cutting the hard funk with his live band. (and as far as Im concerned you can add "Moments" in the JB column as well--after all, he didn't write "King Heroin" himself, either).

All in all a fine CD to buy, if you've already bought the CDs that feature his great work from the 60s and 70s. And maybe even if you haven't.

Embarrassing attempt to sound modern

James adds synths, rappers, drum machines to a bunch of lifeless songs. His voice hardly sounds as good as it did even as recent as the early '80s. The one star is for the ballad "Georgia-lina", which actually has musicians playing their instruments on it.