Although his name isn’t quite as buzz-worthy as many artists’ that have attained his accolades, Grammy-nominated Raheem Devaughn‘s latest album, The Love & War MasterPeace is on a mission to gain Raheem more positive notoriety. The often Rap-featured LP boasts notable features including Ludacris, Wale, and Damian Marley, and goes beyond the basic love-sex-relationship-heartbreak formula that a lot of today’s “music for the ladies” is assumed to have. In fact, this notion is completely thrown out the window from the jump, with an introduction track featuring the outspoken Dr. Cornel West with a monologue over a heavily funk-influenced musical background. He introduces “Radio Rah” to those that may be unfamiliar by saying, “a new epic has begun and my dear brother Raheem Devaughn, the greatest Soul singer of his generation, is leading the way.” Dr. West’s presence acts as a foreshadowing of what is to come on the MasterPeace, as Raheem takes time out to stray away from tunes that will cause a rise in the birth rate to lend his vocals to sociopolitical issues and topics commonly tackled in his D.C. metropolitan area residence.
The intro leads directly into the lead single off the album, “Bulletproof,” which features Ludacris and was released a lengthy amount of time prior to the album. In the span of the one track Raheem and Luda bring up thoughts of spirituality, justice, hope, and more. As Raheem sings lines such as, “read you your rights, and charge you for nothing, now who’s living gangsta, and tell me who’s frontin’?,” Ludacris follows up with “so I open the bottle to swallow my pride and drink the pain away, I take shots and just lay up then fade away, dreamin’ of better days”. The single serves as a very relevant track to almost anyone that would listen to it, and is a notable standout on the project.
Tackling the serious current event issues in the day is something to which Raheem dedicates a large amount of The Love & War MasterPeace. This trend continues in the massive posse cut “Nobody Wins a War”, which not only clocks in around eight minutes long, but also features Jill Scott, Bilal, Anthony Hamilton, Chrisette Michele, Dwele, Chico DeBarge, and five others. Although it conjures up parallels to the All-Star remix of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” “Nobody Wins a War” takes a unique path when slightly more than halfway through the track the singers back off and let a spoken word verse shine. Just when the listener would be inclined to give up and hit the skip button after hearing “nobody wins a war” repeated a few too many times for comfort, a woman comes in spitting an incredible amount of verbally poetic musings. She laments, “oh government, you have lost your feeling for life! It is war that you reap, but the loss is too great, and the pain is too deep. The scars do not heal, your system is thoughtless, and your vision is weak.” The ease in which her words flow together are so compelling that before you know it, the eight minute track has ended and led into the next standout track of the album, which is the final track entitled “Revelations 2010” featuring Damien Marley. Boasting a Isaac Hayes-inspired beat almost identical to “Can I Live” off Reasonable Doubt, the song plays off of this similarity with verses from Rah like, “there are laws and diseases no man is safe from, trigger happy police no man is safe from, racism no man is safe from, can I live? Can I live?” Marley’s voice fits perfectly over the beat and stands as a solid way to end the album.
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One of many aspects that The Love and War MasterPeace excels at is balance. Be it between love songs or songs to make people want to revolt or a balance between Raheem’s verses and featured artists, Raheem seems to know the perfect recipe to keep a variety of listeners satisfied. He throws in a few standard odes to the females such as “Mr. Right,” and “My Wife,” and then lets his kinky comedic side out with the suggestive “B.O.B.” (which listeners will learn stands for “Battery Operated Boyfriend”…no X-rated explanation needed), and metaphorical “Microphone” in which he claims that “like the mic in a stand, I’m in the palm of her hand.” Devaughn also takes time to show love to the Chocolate City with Wale’s feature on “The Greatness”
, even though Wale’s bars are far from his greatest.
With top-notch production backing Devaughn’s soulful and soothing voice in conjunction with varying content matter and strong features, The Love & War MasterPeace will contain a track suited to anybody’s tastes. Because the album tackles so much at once, it’s likely that one person won’t like everything on it, but this is a small price to pay when one considers how many listeners’ interests will be piqued by the topics that Raheem chose to discuss.
