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"She said `You can't repeat the past,' I said, `You can't? What do
you mean you can't? Of course you can,'" sputters Bob Dylan in one
of the hundreds of wonderful lines strewn through
"Love and Theft"
(Columbia), his best album since (choose one)
Blood on the Tracks / The Basement Tapes / the date
of his blessed birth. The album
proves this thesis with its reclamation of old musical materials,
its rock and roll pace, its heedless wit, and its youthful
conviction that life is out there for the taking. Its concern with
the passage of time comes naturally from someone whose 60th
birthday was preceded a few years before by a near-death
experience, and its tone is epitomized by the knock-knock joke that
climaxes its greatest song. No one thought this was possible,
including Bob Dylan. But it was.
With new r&b popping up faster than teen pap, forgive me for hyping a name brand from the ancient '80s: Babyface, whose Face 2 Face moves him to Arista, now headed by his partner Antonio Reid. Updated beats augment Babyface's famously woman-friendly lyrics on the best male r&b album of 2000--he's even got Snoop Dogg sticking up for babymamas.
Playboy, Sept. 2001
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