★★★★★
Who might have thought that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s passionate open "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" would have generated a title for an R&B-fueled concept album? While Ruben Studdard was planning his next recording project, a thought dawned on him during a trip to Atlanta as he observed a display of King, Jr...
- reviews.theurbanmusicscene.com
2012-04-12
★★★★★
Okay, I'm confused. The knock on Ruben Studdard over the five years since his glorious victory on American Idol has been that he was a powerful singer stuck with the wrong material, the wrong career vision and the wrong producers...
- www.soultracks.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
Every now and then the Idol franchises discover truly breathtaking singers - like Frenchie Davis (now on Broadway), last week's American Idol finalist Latoya London (a sure-fire star if ever there was one) and last year's AI winner Ruben Studdard. Ruben sounds best singing old school R'n'B (he'd have a Number 1 single if he just covered Kiss and Say Good-bye one more time). As it is, almost every bubblegum hip-hop track here betrays his potential...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
On his fourth album, "American Idol" season-two winner Ruben
Studdard lives up to his "Velvet Teddy Bear" nickname with a
collection of originals and covers devoted to the singular theme of
love. The singer teamed with veteran producers Jimmy Jam and Terry
Lewis, as well as Stargate and John Rich, to capitalize on his
strength as a balladeer, and oddly enough, the strategy works best
on the record's midtempo numbers...
- www.billboard.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
The bear-huggable American Idol champ is in predictably fine voice on his fourth studio set, Love Is, a romance-themed mix of crafty originals and sturdy covers (including ''The Long and Winding Road''). Yet Ruben Studdard also takes some unexpected stylistic chances here, giving Ne-Yo a run for his dance-pop money on the StarGate-produced ''How You Make Me Feel'' and working with country star John Rich on a totally gorgeous rendition of Extreme's ''More Than Words...
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
He'll always be linked with his Idol runner-up, Clay Aiken, but Ruben Studdard is obsessed with another singer: Luther Vandross. On The Return, you can hear Vandross' influence in every creamy falsetto note, delivered amid a storm of wind chimes and the rustle of silk sheets. In an age of coarse R&B; lovermen, Studdard carries the torch for old-fashioned romance, pledging fidelity and bliss in PG-rated ballads like "Make Ya Feel Beautiful...
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
QUOTE.GIFAmerican Idol" winner Ruben Studdard's debut, Soulful, is a painfully predictable mix of traditional R&B; glop and comparatively forced contemporary hip-hop. While the R&B; fodder here might be a bit prosaic, at least it comes more naturally to Studdard than contrived hip-hop tracks like the insufferably repetitive and tuneless "Don't Quit On Me" and "Take The Shot," in which the singer tries his darndest to equate a relationship to basketball: "You got the ball, girl, take a shot...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
Each American Idol cd has been worse than the one before it, which makes the debut album of last season's winner, Ruben Studdard, very poor indeed. This has little to do with Studdard himself,
although, like the other Idols, he's essentially an imitative singer; he hasn't learned how to fill his pretty tenor pipes with convincing emotion, something painfully clear on his ill-advised cover of the Bee Gees' "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
Given the cheesy nature of "American Idol," it was only a matter of time before one of its finalists sang an ode to the show. On hisdebut album, Soulful, second-season winner Ruben Studdard has the dubious honor of being the first. In "No Ruben" (which is not a song about the portly singer's no-corned-beef-allowed diet), he plugs the series, thanks those who voted for him, and warbles about how he went "from the little hood to the whole world/And it's all good...
- ew.com
2009-06-04
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