(Low Life/Shogun)

Emmanuel may not be familiar to many (in fact I had never heard of him prior to this review), however a look at his bio should more than kill off any doubts on his ability. Having written and produced for most of the UK’s big name “black music” artists, he has finally decided to drop a solo long player, and D’lllusions is a worthy opus.

Names like Jamelia, Estelle, Beverly Knight and The Beta Band occasionally break through into the Australian music scene, but make no mistake they are megastars in the UK. Behind the desk tweaking all the right knobs on their rise has been Emmanuel. Here he has a band of merry men and women, who themselves may not be well known, but they prove to be a supremely talented bunch.

Urban music is a name hated by most with a love of hip-hop and Emmanuel is no exception, preferring to title his “British black music”. The sounds here are far from by the numbers chart cheese. Production wise the sampling is sharp, the drum patterns well thought out and never by the numbers, and the instrumentation added is never left sounding forced. Perhaps the best tribute to his production skill is the varied array of artists it can be tailored to suit, from legends like Braintax and KRS 1 to unheralded smooth vocalists like Belle, Michelle Escofferey and Nate James, the production is always on point.

Vocally again there is a lot to like. For an album that is about 80% sung I found myself nodding my head in approval an alarming amount of times. Like all good UK pop/rnb lyrics, the cheese is missing. Yep just because it’s sung on a hip-hop beat turns out you don’t need to proclaim your love for your boo or talk about your collection of cars and diamonds, the US could learn a lot from the UK. On the rhyming tip KRS sounds fresh, whilst it is Low Life records stalwarts Mystro, Braintax and Rodney P who really steal the show. Mystro’s Heat for mine is track of the album whilst the pairing of Terri Walker’s smooth singing and Rodney P’s Rastafarian rhyming make Flirting infinitely enjoyable.

Occasionally you get a pleasant surprise from an album, for me this is one of those occasions. This is RnB, true school singing over tight beats with a smattering of on point rhymes, hard to go wrong really.