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Roseland Ballroom, New York February 6, 2002 By C. Bottomley Liking Craig David requires a leap of faith - maybe it's because of his numerous sexual boasts. On record he spends lots of time extoling his Olympian prowess as booty man; indeed, the title of his excellent debut is Born to Do It. And its breakthrough hit "Fill Me In," a fluttery thing built around a compelling acoustic guitar motif, is about a young couple sneaking nookie time underneath their parents' noses. Toss in the fact that its follow-up, a tune called "Seven Days," breaks down the singer's seduction schedule to meeting a girl on Monday, taking her for drinks on Tuesday, and then spending the remainder of the week rocking nasty, and you're talking borderline obsession. Well, almost. The couple does spend Sunday chillin'. All the sauciness is for the screen however. In person David is a good little boy. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke and videos aside, is never seen in the company of the opposite sex. His favorite movie, he says, isn't Scarface but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All of which makes you suspect that the singer is too much of a committed professional to let the messy business of life get in the way of making hit records. Bridging these two aspects of his persona was David's greatest challenge at this New York show, a challenge he tried to skirt by continually reminding the audience, "You know how we do." The obvious reply was, of course, just how do we do? David did by using every trick in the showman's book bar actually succombing to the emotion of his tunes. He's as gifted an MC as he is a singer, and doesn't mind doing other people's songs, which is why one of the night's highlights was his tongue-twisting take on Pharoahe Monch's "Back the F*ck Up" - expletive deleted, of course. Also, his band proved they could turn on a dime, although they did it too often to ever achieve any sense of balance. "Fill Me In" and new material alike were subjected to numerous tempo-changes that never allowed the its groove to fully sink in. Of course the thudding bass that squeezed the atmosphere out of the hall didn't help matters. David's strengths are as a storyteller and singer who skips around the beat as anxiously as he runs from one end of the stage to the other. But both skills were muffled beneath a sound too big for its environment. The teenybopper audience knew it, too, and regardless of all David's onstage exertion, the throng became more listless with each identical number. Even a pro has to work hard when he takes on the job of being himself and wooing America with the soul man's burden of grit and sweat. For more Craig David visit our artist page. |
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