★★★★★
When considering Lucid - the new album by Lyfe Jennings - the comparisons I make are not to his hip-hop and R&B age group cohorts. Instead, I look to jazz and R&B artists from a previous era such as Charlie Parker or David Ruffin. Why? Like Jennings, these artists had troubled lives that included addiction and run-ins with the law. Yet, the music they created often belied all of the difficulties they faced in their personal lives...
- www.soultracks.com
2013-10-29
★★★★★
Lyfe Jennings has always seemed like an artist from another era. He's a folk singer, a genuine urban griot who makes songs that paint vivid pictures of crime, redemption, love and pain. He's the street corner prophet who has seen it all, done it all, and can make you feel and identify with the full measure of that experience through his music. He's the only one we got...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-17
★★★★★
Lyfe Jennings has always seemed like an artist from another era. He's a folk singer, a genuine urban griot who makes songs that paint vivid pictures of crime, redemption, love and pain. He's the street corner prophet who has seen it all, done it all, and can make you feel and identify with the full measure of that experience through his music. He's the only one we got...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-17
★★★★★
It's not often that the hard-knock life and a ten-year arson bid paves a path to stardom, but it's all part of what makes the singer, songwriter and producer known as Lyfe Jennings...well...Lyfe Jennings...
- www.soultracks.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
With yet more true-life stories being told in soul format, the incredible voice of Lyfe Jennings returns once again to enlighten our ears and touch our hearts. With one of 2004's greatest records under his belt, the ex-con-turned-inspirational-entertainer has created another flawless project that can't be touched within a million mile radius...
- www.gigwise.com
2010-11-23
★★★★★
On 26 Years, 17 Days, Lyfe Jennings lays out the hard life he's had: "Its been 26 years, 17 days/ Been to five different prisons, got two babies on the way," and the track works well because of the juxtaposition of some pretty tough stuff wrapped up in a laid-back, soulful package. Lyfe can definitely emote, but that's about all that really moved me musically on this album - a tough life does not a great album make, if gangster rap has taught us anything...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
First things first?can we all take a pledge to just say no to Auto-Tune? The program that creates T-Pain's signature robo-voice? When it pops up in the third song, "Warriors," it's distracting?not bad, just distracting, as it is when it turns up again a few songs later. When Cher used it on "Believe," it made a certain amount of sense?robo-Cher in the techno soundscape?and when T-Pain used it, the new context was intriguing. Now, I'm over it like the phrase, "thrown under the bus...
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-02
★★★★★
No text for this review; see http://robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Jennings spent ten years behind bars, so it's perhaps little surprise that most of the songs on his debut are eloquent in their depiction of struggle. His scratchy, nimble voice has elements of Curtis Mayfield and D'Angelo, and 268-192 is structured as a song cycle, with spoken interludes between tracks. They cohere the grim narrative, in which he goes from loving a woman and her children ("She Got Kids") to grappling with cuckoldry ("Hypothetically") to the criminal-minded "Stick Up Kid."
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
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