On his fourth album,
Sex Therapy (released in the U.S. on Dec. 15, 2009),
Blue-Eyed Soul crooner
Robin Thicke lets his inner freak out and gets a little wild. Anything else you've heard by him is tame compared to most of the material on this album. Where before he was known as a true gentleman, this time out he's got a one track mind and is singing about things like stealing other mens' women, the joy of sex in the morning, and trickin' in clubs. Yes, people:
Robin Thicke is singing about trickin' in clubs. Although it's great that Thicke's expanding his horizons,
Sex Therapy isn't completely what the doctor ordered.
Good Medicine
The perfect example of
Robin Thicke's new musical direction on this album is it's title track and first single, "Sex Therapy." On the song, when Thicke sings "It's your body we'll go hard if you want to/As hard as you want to, soft as you want to/Just let me love you lay right here I'll be your fantasy/Give you sex therapy, give you sex therapy," it's immediately evident that for him, love and romance have taken a back seat to passion and lust. In addition to the title track, other songs that reinforce this new approach are "Mrs. Sexy," which is essentially a more sexual remake of a 1990s Rakim tune called "Mahagony;" a frisky Jay-Z-assisted track called "Meiple;" and "It's In the Mornin'," featuring Snoop Dogg.
And Thicke has collaborated with other artists - most notably Lil' Wayne - in the past, but the collabos are at an all-time high for him on Sex Therapy. In addition to the aforementioned Snoop and Jay-Z, other hip-hop and R&B artists making appearances include The Game (on "Diamonds"), Jazmine Sullivan ("Million Dolla Baby"), Estelle ("Rollacoasta") and Kid Cudi ("Elavatas"). The quality of the tracks varies, with Robin's vocals flowing well with some of the artists better than others. The only real failure here is a totally out-of-character track called "Shakin' It for Daddy," on which Robin sings about a booty-shakin' mami. It sounds more like something that Justin Timberlake would have recorded, instead of the usually sophisticated Mr. Thicke. But overall, despite a few missteps, Sex Therapy is good, strong medicine if you're a Robin Thicke fan.
