Smokey Robinson

''Don't let the boy overpower the man in you,'' Smokey counseled in an early Miracles song. Now he's lived long enough to know that the converse makes sense too. ''As a kid, I used to watch TV, and I would see Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Harry Belafonte, and they'd be saying 'Oh, we've been doing this for 25 years.' Twenty-five years to me, when I was a young boy, seemed like a lifetime. But, gosh, man, I've been doing this more than 40 years, and it seems like only yesterday that I began. I'm just blessed to be around for this length of time, living a life that I love.''

That life is by no means an idle one. This year, Smokey plans on spending six or seven months on the road, supporting his current album, Intimate. He admits he's disappointed by the chilly reception the CD has gotten at radio. Intimate came out last September and marked Smokey's return to Motown after a brief affiliation with the now-defunct SBK Records. While it snagged a Grammy nod for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance, the disc has yet to make a significant impact. Asked if he thinks Motown is promoting the album aggressively enough, an otherwise totally forthcoming Smokey replies, ''I won't comment on that right now.''

Current Motown president Kedar Massenburg argues that an artist of Smokey's generation ''can't come with the expectation of things being the same as they were yesteryear.... Radio is a different animal today.'' As is Motown. Smokey concedes that things haven't been the same since Gordy sold the label to MCA in the late '80s, and that one of the reasons he left was because it no longer felt like family. ''I don't know the inner workings of it anymore,'' he says, frowning as he reflects on his relationship to the label he helped establish. Even worse, ''for a while, the Motown name lost its favor, its prestige. That hurt me.''

These days, Motown is pushing young hitmakers like 702 and Brian McKnight — talented, competent artists, but almost certainly not enduring ones. Massenberg knows that the label is lucky to have Smokey back for the ''symbolism'' alone because, frankly, there's not a single heir to Smokey in sight.

David Ritz, coauthor of Smokey's 1989 autobiography, Smokey: Inside My Life, as well as the author of the Marvin Gaye bio Divided Soul, recalls riding in a limo with Gaye on the way to a concert some years before Gaye's death. ''The radio was playing really soft, because Marvin didn't like loud music,'' says Ritz. 'Ooo Baby Baby' came on, and I remember Marvin saying 'Okay, let's all be quiet.' Then he turned to the driver and said, 'Turn that up really loud.' As he listened, his eyes closed and he had this little smile on his face. When the song was over, he turned to me and said, very reverentially, 'There is only one Smokey Robinson.'''

Doggone right.