R&B band Tony! Toni! Toné! was already immensely successful when their fourth album House of Music, hit stores on November 19, 1996. The Tonies kicked off the project with the dance flop bop “Let’s Get Down” and the lush ballad “Thinking of You.”
However, for this week’s Slow Jam Saturday, I wanted to showcase one of my favorite album tracks from the project, “Still A Man.”
Written and produced by group member Raphael Saadiq, “Still A Man” was the nineties personification of the slow drag. Saadiq lets the instrumental ride out for a minute before coming through a passionate vocal. The sincerity in Saadiq’s voice is genuine as he croons:
“Now looking here, I’m still standin’
Since the last time that you walked away, honey
See me and the kids are left here disappointed
We don’t have nothin’ to do
But wonder where you’re headed, baby
Have you ever loved somebody
Who loves you so much it hurts you to hurt them so bad?
Have you ever loved somebody
Who loves you so much it hurts you to hurt them so bad?”
I personally always felt the song is a story about a man who has let his woman down, causing her to exit the relationship. Naturally, the man knows the errors of his ways, and while he’s failing, he’s still a man. Sadly as of 2022, House of Music is the last album by the group. Nevertheless, “Still A Man” is a beautiful ballad that holds up twenty-five years later.
Final Grade: A
“Still A Man” from House Of Music is available on all streaming platforms.
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There was a singer who shall remain nameless set the tone for the nineties slow jams. However as nineties R&B fans know there were tons of singers who provided quality albums and tracks when it came to making a playlist via audiocassette. Lincoln Browder, better known as Link, was one of the singers.
R&B group New Edition was at crossroads in the summer of 1987. The group’s fourth album, Under the Blue Moon, and their only one as a quartet, had only achieved gold sales. Those numbers were very different from the platinum sales of their previous two albums.
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