Soul crooner Brian Mcknight, the younger brother of Take 6's Claude Mcknight, sings in a silky, seductive purr. He has a sweet, elastic tenor and a well-honed harmonic instinct that comes from being an accomplished keyboardist. Unfortunately, he rarely shifts gears, and remains stuck in that breathy, drawn-out crooning style for most of this album, I Remember You, the follow-up to his 1992 self-titled gold debut. It doesn't help matters that his songwriting lacks well-defined melodic or lyric hooks; too often the songs merely drift through pretty but amorphous chord changes. As a result, his performances quickly evaporate from the memory without leaving much impression. Like his biggest hero, Stevie Wonder, Mcknight wrote, arranged, produced, performed, and sang almost everything by himself on this recording, and his arrangements are full of clever Wonderisms--layered synthesizers, electric-piano motifs, and high-tenor embellishments. Mcknight always sings as if he's in the throes of a passionate swoon and never as if he's merely having a normal conversation; thus we never get to hear the transition from one to the other. And just as women are justly suspicious of men who are always in the seduction mode, so are album listeners. --Geoffrey Himes