03/10/2009 | Def Jam
CD
$12.99LOVE VS MONEY
LP
$15.99LOVE VS MONEY
One thing that sets Terius Youngdell Nash, a.k.a., The Dream, apart from his peers, other than his noted production abilities, is his gentleness as a songwriter and musician. On his sophomore album, the comparisons to R. Kelly are easy to make (and they arise at least in part due to the song "12 Play," which explicitly addresses the influence and pays tribute). Nevertheless Nash is a different creature, albeit one who can roam the same ballpark.
Love vs. Money isn't the kind of album designed to produce blockbuster singles. Nash has that in him—he's responsible for Rihanna's "Umbrella," which was nothing if not a track designed to stomp the listener into gooey, happy submission. However, in this work, he's smooth while remaining human. His voice has a timbre that comes off as genuine rather than constantly on the prowl and shaped for the purposes of seduction. The first single released, "Rockin' That Shit," seemed underwhelming—a laidback, delicately floaty appreciation of beauty that lacked the kind of hook able to jetpack a tune to the top of the charts, but the more it rotates, especially when placed in context alongside the rest of the record, the more pleasant and well-constructed it appears. Nash seems to lack the gene for posturing, and it comes across in his easy but quiet confidence in all the songs put forward here. "Walkin' on the Moon," for example, which features Kanye West as a guest, follows "Rockin' That Shit." The song is equally poised and light, the equivalent of a cake that uses soda for leavening. "My Love" lets Mariah Carey pair her formidable pipes with Nash's and shows both artists as generous and gifted with nuance. Things get more unhinged as the album progresses, and sometimes the results are overlong or just not as pulled-together as the highlights, but the verdict from the facts is pretty strongly on the side of "love."
—Hillary Brown
04.09.09