Between Friends

We Say...

Review by Jalylah Burrell

A brawny, multi-octave vocalist whose career was launched by Quincy Jones' anointing, Tamia's talent approximates Jones' elder mentee, the flexible Patti Austin. But where Austin shies from neither the great American songbook nor soul, Tamia is typically unadventurous on her fourth album and first independent release, Between Friends. With the exception of the musical theatrics of piano ballad "Love & I" and acoustic guitar-couched attempt at esteem building, "Me," Tamia comfortably works today's R&B template with an occasional interpretive keenness and constant vocal vim.

Tamia has always sounded a bit like a naïf even as she's belted so unrelentingly. It's that vulnerability embedded in her voice that makes cautious love songs like "Protect My Heart" and its hopeful flip side "Last First Kiss" so crisp. But she's intolerant of juvenile behavior, as "Too Grown for That," pronounces. Breathily bounding over Rodney "Darkchild" Jenkins synth-strings and snares, Tamia vents her dislike with the groping and galling disrespect of prominent pockets of club culture. It's a mature stance uncut with the biting humor of TLC's "No Scrubs" or Destiny Child's "Bug-a-boo," yet it still sounds a bit like something Kelly Rowland would record. Not that she better wrestles supreme diva material; in fact, she mangles Aretha Franklin's "Day Dreaming" in a confused, over-produced arrangement. Clutter works in her favor on "Happy," a performance undergirded by an interpolation of Ahmad Jamal's "Swahililand." And when she exercises her lungs less on the jazz guitar flavored "Sittin' on the Job," she manufactures a gem as durable as her discoverer's career.