Kevin Michael

Kevin Michael's self-titled debut album is like the first day of a soul food feast. The ingredients are right and it's made from the heart, but it still needs time for the flavor to fully develop. This all makes sense considering his relatively young age. Thankfully, the funky soul and pop fusion Michael cooks up goes down easy. On the catchy opener, "We All Want the Same Thing," Michael invites all his friends, gangsters and skaters included, to pull up a chair at the table for a taste of things to come. His baby-Prince falsetto is a bit thin at points, but the beat perfectly captures a summer picnic—breezy, bright and just a touch humid. Toward the end, fellow wunderkind Lupe Fiasco shows up with a bite-sized verse to finish things off nicely.

With shiny neo-soul production, the entire album has a similar flavor. It's a strict ratio of two parts old school, to one part high school. This isn't to say that it's juvenile. It's just that Michael is baring a soul still in development. A few years from now, after the world has kicked him around a little more, he'll have a deeper well of emotion to draw from. Songs like "It Don't Make a Difference to Me" and "Ghost" are pretty tasty, but missing the spice needed to kick it up a notch. The slow-cooked numbers seem to fair the best. The steamed funk of "Ha Ha Ha," and earnest longing of "Ain't Got You" both gel under the power of their own heat. Kevin Michael is a good introduction to soul for younger fans, and it should spark their interest to keep growing with Michael, as long as he continues to grow as well.

—Chas Reynolds
10.03.07

With songs that could fit equally on pop radio as they could R&B (though there is little difference between the two by this point), young singer Kevin Michael Seward does his best Michael Jackson-meets-Prince-meets-Justin Timberlake (hardly a stretch) impression on his debut self-titled full-length. The results aren't wholly imaginative or unique, but Kevin Michael has a good enough voice, and a good enough production staff and group of writers behind him, to sound competent, even fun. As part of Downtown Records' -- home of genre-benders Gnarls Barkley -- Kevin Michael is clearly being marketed as the next big pop star, able to win the hearts of fans of all races and ages, and he may very well succeed. If this occurs, however, it will only be because of his ability to sound so much like his predecessors, and not because of anything new he's created. Which means, of course, based on the deserved success of both the Purple One and the King of Pop (and JT, to a lesser extent), there's some pretty fun stuff on Kevin Michael. The leadoff track and first single, "We All Want the Same Thing," which features a decent verse from crossover rapper Lupe Fiasco, is great, catchy and fun, mixing bluesy acoustic guitar with keys and soulful vocals. "All my gangsta friends, and all my skater friends/They all want the same thing," Seward sings, the cadence in his voice making it easy to believe that in fact he is familiar with both groups, that he's singing these lines from direct experience. "Stone Cold Killa," a pretty obvious nod to MJ, is smooth and upbeat, club-remix-ready without sounding forced, and "Ha Ha Ha," the sparse, sexual, R&B cut, comes across as somehow appropriate, unlike some of the other "love" songs, which were clearly created by older, more mature writers. But because Kevin Michael isn't quite able to carve out his own niche, despite his best attempts, the album also gets a bit repetitive and even corny at times, trying so hard to appeal to a diverse audience that it -- and by dint of that the artist -- loses a bit of its individuality. "Vicki Secrets," "Ghost," and "Love Letter" are all generic contemporary R&B tracks, indistinguishable from most of what else is out there, and the good bits can get lost between the production and falsettoed harmonies. Which is too bad, because Seward has talent, a talent that definitely appears on the album, and perhaps enough of it to put him where he and his label want. But until his vision of himself is a little stronger, he won't quite be able to separate himself from the crowd, and won't be able to break out quite as he'd like to. ~ Marisa Brown, All Music Guide