Album: Bilal

1st Born Second, Interscope

Another member of the Philadelphia R&B collective the Soulquarians (which includes D'Angelo, Common, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and The Roots), Bilal is a young, classically-trained singer-songwriter of formidable talents, whose work recalls any number of soul giants from the last three decades of black music history. His most striking characteristic is his piercing falsetto, which fares equally well on both the Prince-like abstract funk groove of "For You" and, stacked into interlocking gospel testimonies, the Curtis Mayfield-influenced lament for victims of the "big pimpin'" lifestyle, "Fast Lane". Elsewhere, there are echoes of Sly Stone in the way Bilal swoops from baritone growl to falsetto squawk, and Stevie Wonder in his sense of melody and instrumental colour. With gifts like that, you wouldn't have thought he needed the heavyweight assistance of producers like Raphael Saadiq, Jay-Dee and Dr Dre, but such is Bilal's character that he's never overwhelmed by their work, and on "Second Child" especially, he demonstrates a distinctive space-jazz production style of his own. The album's latter stages feature rather too much pointless free-form scatting, but at his best, reminiscing with Mos Def and Common about a "Princess as soldier/Raised in Islamic culture/Sexy as the girl on the Jamaica poster", Bilal reveals himself as one to watch.