It takes guts, if not outright egomania, to abandon your given surname and adopt a loaded one like Legend, but the former John Stephens must have sensed that loftiness would one day be his calling card: Once Again, the follow-up to the Grammy-gobbling, platinum pile-on that was Get Lifted, surpasses expectations. Not that it bears much relation to its predecessor. Again again trots out a stable of talented, modern-minded producers--Raphael Saadiq, Legend comrade Kanye West, and the unsinkable will.i.am--but it's nowhere near as self-conscious about embracing the old-school as the knowing, R&B edge-skimming Lifted. Don't expect a derivative mash of smudgy, nostalgia-filching sounds, though, because despite its retro leanings, what's in store somehow crackles with currency. Call it neo-retro if you must, but never call it unimaginative: first single "Save Room" coasts, drifts, and floats along a ponderous path spiked by a cool keyboard-y crescendo; second single "Heaven" busts out a big, busy beat over a slow seduction; and a couple of selections--"Each Day Gets Better" and "PDA"--are so bright and twirly they seem custom-made for dizzy love scenes or jaunty, sunny-day skips through the park. Maybe the most unusual track is "Show Me," a rock song that pilfers elements of Hendrix and finds Legend climbing a few octaves to sound, weirdly, like Jeff Buckley, but it works: so slippery is its beat and so affecting are its hope-laced lyrics that, oddness aside, it's among the disc's best. Sandwiched as it is among 14 songs that all sound like future classics, that's saying something. --Tammy La Gorce
Given the sped-up classic soul samples with which Kanye West has made his mark, it comes as no surprise that the producer/rapper would pick a tradition-minded R&B singer as his first big pet project. Legend first made his name on Philly's incense-clouded, '70s-obsessed neo-soul scene, then found his way to New York and became West's right-hand man in the studio. His patron's pop smarts serve Legend well--while many contemporary R&B records rely too heavily on a singer's cadence and skill to carry underdeveloped tunes, Legend and West have composed genuine songs like the perky "Number One," which has a lovestruck West jabbering that he no longer believes that "my heart don't got nothing to do with my penis." (It's way more convincing than Snoop Dogg's pledge of love on the next track, "I Can Change.") And even when the melodies are slight, West slides some nasty bass lines underneath, hinting at just enough of a hip-hop sensibility to keep the album from drifting into retro nostalgia. Yet Legend is no mere producer's plaything. His voice isn't immediately distinctive; he's neither as careworn as Anthony Hamilton nor as creamy as D'Angelo. But his gift for restraint sets him apart: the sex-as-drug metaphor of the title track is hardly fresh, but Legend delivers it smoothly enough to make it work, without pressing the issue. All bedroom come-ons have been used before. This late in the game, it's a matter of how well you use 'em. --Keith Harris
