Angie Stone - Stone Love

There's nothing on here to match the brazen "Backstabbers"-sampling "Wish I Didn't Miss You" from Stone's previous album, 2001's Mahogany Soul. But the first six tracks or so of Stone Love are as good a soundtrack to summer as you're likely to get this year, with the Joyce Sims-referring "I Wanna Thank Ya" (complete with Snoop Dogg cameo) and the Pearl & Dean-gone-wrong brass stabs of "Love's Ghetto". Thereafter it's an interminable sea of coma-inducing ballads. Memo to all R&B artists and producers: please stop programming albums in this fashion.

Rating: 2 / 10