Babyface: Return of the Tender Lover

In the late 1980s and early '90s, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, along with songwriting partners Daryl Simmons and L.A. Reid, developed a form of pop soul that's as geometrically precise as it is weightless. Songs like Toni Braxton’s "Breathe Again", Madonna’s "Take a Bow", and Boyz II Men’s "Water Runs Dry" occur in a seamless universe, all undisturbed surfaces that relentlessly shimmer. In 1995, "Water Runs Dry" itself seemed the most formally perfect incarnation of one of Babyface's primary pop expressions, the vaporous ballad; it’s gently animated by a brushed snare and an acoustic guitar, over which the members of Boyz II Men weave their voices together in fluid braids.

Babyface’s aesthetic is a distant refinement and elaboration of Prince and, beyond that, Curtis Mayfield, both of whom condensed pop and soul into irreducible collage. He’s capable of elastic funk and vast balladry but both are organized by an unusual pop sensitivity. Return of the Tender Lover, his first solo album of originals in 10 years, is part a period of renewed productivity for Babyface. Last year he released an album with Toni Braxton called Love, Marriage & Divorce, which described the length of a relationship through both gliding surfaces and reduced, raw circumstances; this year he contributed minimal blossoms of acoustic guitar to the Ty Dolla $ign single "Solid". But his new album is a kind of retreat—Babyface reduced to plush textures. Though Return of the Tender Lover deliberately references his sophomore album, 1989’s Tender Lover, nothing here is as dry and muscular as "It’s No Crime", or generously expansive as "Whip Appeal". In their place is buoyant, effortless pop soul.

It sometimes feels like a conscious inversion of Love, Marriage & Divorce; where that record was often capable of a fluorescent hostility, Return of the Tender Lover almost exclusively communicates security and support. "We've Got Love" and "Love and Devotion" convey an inflexible confidence, and the songs also seem supportive in their structure, as if engineered for maximum uplift. Babyface’s voice is as smooth as it's ever been, but it’s also always been somewhat granular in design; it sounds like a bloom of smoke.

El DeBarge appears on "Walking on Air", his first duet with Babyface since 1994’s "Where Is My Love"; like Babyface, DeBarge has been minimally present in the music industry over the past ten years, except for a solo album, Second Chance, in 2010, and in brief flourishes on DJ Quik records. His presence here is satisfying both texturally and textually, and "Walking on Air" is as rich and vivid as their previous collaborations. DeBarge’s voice is miraculously preserved, an incandescent peal capable of infinite ascent; in "Walking on Air", it seems to land somewhere in the troposphere. The only other collaboration on the record is with After 7, an R&B group from the '90s that contains two of Babyface’s brothers. On "I Want You", they supply harmonies, adding considerable weight to Babyface’s nimble vocal, and repeating the title until it melts into a kind of plural exhalation.

The collaborations on Return of the Tender Lover and the design of its production feel traditional, in the sense that they don't attempt to update Babyface's sound and instead lean comfortably on a long, established career. This dedication to tradition and honoring of his craft is less a throwback than a micro-adjustment of an enduring formula.