About 20 years ago, H-Town was hot, apparently. At that time, I’d only heard of them, but with the exception of catching a video on MTV once, I never really heard any of their music. I just knew they were causing mayhem in the States.
H-Town paved the way for smooth R&B to get dirty. Signed to the label owned by 2 Live Crew’s member Luke Campbell, they had to. If you don’t know why, Google “2 Live Crew”, but only if you’re 18+ of course ;-)
And so it happened, H-Town introduced explicit lyrics on seductive R&B music to the masses. As it usually happens, one person might open up the door, but others usually excel, so, to me, all the way out in Europe, I always thought it was Jodeci who had done this first, but apparently, I just knew more Jodeci fans back in the day.
Where Jodeci stayed pretty consistent in their song topics and the tone of voice within their lyrics, H-Town tried something different with each album, leaving their audience confused. When lead singer Dino died in a car accident in 2009, the group pretty much came to a standstill.
The remaining members, Shazam and GI, continued as independent artists and have slowly released new music leading up to their album “Child Support”, released at the end of 2015.
Just before the release, they were the subject of an episode of TV One's "Unsung": A series of behind the scenes look of many artist, mainly in R&B, and their careers. Member GI has spoken about this on American radio.
With the album, they return to their roots. While the sound of the music is mainly sweet, the lyrics are back to describing what they like, what they want and how they want it, sexually.
Basically, only one song is a relationship song, which is “May The Best Man Win”. It returns to the classic soul sound, which is so hot at the moment anyway. It’s the one song I actually liked right away.
The track, “Knockin’ Your Heels”, a single released years ago, is also one of the highlights of the album. It refers to their breakthrough song “Knockin’ Da Boots” (a phrase they pretty much invented). It also features the previously mentioned bad boys of R&B, Jodeci.
There are tracks on the album that are just about going towards being tacky or, probably unintentionally, funny, like “Pretty Toes”. What can I say? To each its own…
“Child Support” will go down well with fans, who have waited for this for a long time. The group went back to their roots to tribute Dino, who was the driving force behind the groups initial breakthrough. From that perspective it’s a great thought, but I wonder if it will put H-Town back on the map.
