Consumer Guide Album

Shai: . . . If I Ever Fall in Love [Gasoline Alley, 1992]
Why are these putative paragons of sexual vulnerability so much more irritating than the rainbow-hued Color Me Badd, the blandly stylish Boyz II Men, or the utterly forgotten Ready for the World? It's not their indifferent singing and rapping, which are only to be expected. It's that they have no class and no sense of humor; they're too smarmy and too slow; they're big phonies. They epitomize the difference between seduction and betrayal--between shared lie and imposed illusion, rascal and bounder, rogue and complete asshole. There's not a winning wink on the entire album. And only "Waiting for the Day" ("When you can spend the night") offers up a fantasy with any educational potential for the fine females who lap up their shit. B-