Experience The Vibe

Album Reviews

Genre: R&B

Artist: Ryan Leslie

Album: Transition

Year: 2009

At a glance, some things appear as though they don’t quite add up. For instance, seeing a big name band rock a small town venue for cheap, or paying hundreds to see the leafs stink on ice. Somehow the math doesn’t seem to equate. Ryan Leslie is another such example, a near musical conundrum considering the 31 year old producer/singer/songwriter/rapper graduated from Harvard at 19 after landing a perfect score on his SATs. To add to the drama, his self-titled debut was released in 2009, after being an in-house Bad Boy producer, having a completed album shelved, and years of writing and producing for the likes of Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Cassie and New Edition.

At a glance, one might expect his resume to be loftier by this point. But what’s not surprising is the high quality of that first album, including hits “Diamond Girl” and “Addicted”. The math makes even more sense when the all-around talent released his sophomore effort a mere nine months later, supposedly based a summer love fling. That’s summer ’09, just for clarification.

Transition is a concentrated disc, a concept album diagramming the multiple shapes the relationship on record takes. From the start, tone-setting “Never Gonna Break Up” outlines Leslie’s intentions of finding that perfect girl. In a seamless transition, he goes to spotting that fine tenderoni, with the assistance of  The Clipse’s Pusha T, on “Something That I Like” and proceeds to ask her the basic questions leading to a date on the bouncy “Zodiac”. Hook, line, sinker only three songs in.

I ought to mention the album’s entirely produced by Mr. Leslie himself and the veteran trackmaster appropriately keeps the scriptures in lockstep with matching backdrops. Later on in the album, his special blend could not be more obvious with the heart-poundingly catchy “You’re Not My Girl”. The hook here is so infectious it’s actually dangerous beware who you mouth it around. But moreso artistically, it carries the relationship theme. As with most affairs, Leslie hits a rough patch; he dutifully reassesses the situation on “Nothing”.

The album closes with the gut-wrenching assertion “I Choose You”, a brutally honest closing you’d expect for such a touchy subject, yet still so real it makes Transition’s replay value up there with the best of ’09. What’s most impressive about this record is that it’s a complete portrait as an album, yet each individual song could be taken and applied to nearly any relationship, at one time or another. So quite literally whatever you’re in the mood for, Ryan Leslie gives it to you hot on a platter. And consider its release a mere nine months after his debut album? Perhaps the hype was right and the math does add up after all.

By: Alborz Mohtashami