This is John Legend 1.0, with the voice of an angel and a Kanye-sanctioned ego. Get Lifted thrives on the eternal conflict between gospel and secular, perfected by his predecessors like Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, and James Brown who could all, as singer-songwriter Ed Townsend said of Gaye, “sing the Lord’s Prayer, and it would have sexual overtones.” Legend’s debut achieves that unholy matrimony in stretches but prioritizes mischief over emotional complexity, with hints of the latent heartache often buried under male pride. The album’s cockiness is a necessary evil. Like many of his forebears, Legend had the power to make cheating sound too sexy to resist, and where else do you learn the art of sinning than in church?
Source: Pitchfork
