The sly electro-pop kiss-off ''Cooler than Me,'' may have already garnered Mike Posner his 15 minutes. But the 22-year-old Michigan native — whisked from dorm-room mixtape star to major-label signee the summer before his senior year at Duke — asks for approximately twice that allotted time on his (barely) full-length debut, 31 Minutes to Takeoff.
Often labeled as a rapper in early press, the gravel-throated Posner is really more of a baby Timberlake, albeit one with less vocal and musical finesse — Justin with a Sigma Nu sweatshirt and a mild case of laryngitis, if you will. tracks like ''Déjà Vu'' and ''Bow Chicka Wow Wow'' are standard, though entertaining, entries in the new-jack seduction pantheon, all crunked on late-’80s synths and implied pelvis grinds. ''Do U Wanna'' reaches back further, with stax horns and a shuffling, Donny Hathaway-worthy groove. ''Cheated'' is just ugly — does the ''whore'' in question really need to be called out by her full name? — but Posner redeems himself on the shimmery player’s lament ''Gone in September.'' in fact, 31 Minutes’ breezy B-boy anthems may keep the man of the half hour around well past Labor Day. B
Download These:
Do You Wanna a sweet soul throwback at amazon.com
Gone in September a buoyant ballad at amazon.com
