Playlist (2007)

Like R&B vocalists from Stevie Wonder to Al Green, Kenny ''Babyface'' Edmonds can take bland or treacly material — here, for example, James Taylor's ''Fire and Rain'' — and render it superior to the original with delicate or atypical phrasing plus sheer commitment. Passion, not laid-backness, rules on Playlist, a set of originals and covers. Sometimes Babyface's take is equal to the singer's (Bob Dylan's ''Knockin' on Heaven's Door''). Less successful: the fussy arrangements on cringers like Jim Croce's ''Time in a Bottle.'' B
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