Consumer Guide Album

Miguel: All I Want Is You [Jive, 2010]
The Afro-Chicano love man front-loads his Prince-channeling debut album: five hooky tracks--two romantic ones linked by an ambivalent interlude to one about a prostitute and another about a quickie--followed by six pleasant tracks and capped by two hooky novelties, the second of which delights immatoorly in the old "piece"-"peace" homonym. But there's a treasure hidden in the middle. With supplicant's songs rare enough in a genre that makes its nut promising untold pleasures, "Teach Me" is unprecedented, laying out the truth that, as Norman Mailer put it in one of the few useful sex tips in his orgasm-mad canon, "the man as lover is dependent upon the bounty of the woman." Who knows what pleases her? She does, she alone, and Miguel craves to be let in on that shifting and enthralling secret. If only he'd hung a top-drawer melody on the sucker he'd have a "Use Me" or "Sexual Healing" he could sing forever. B+