Tevin Campbell

Love, Q features some of producer/composer/arranger/trumpeter and music legend Quincy Jones' best-known love songs. Spanning a nice swath of time from the '70s through the '90s, the collection focuses on Jones' R&B-oriented material. Included here are such stellar tunes as the steamy Leon Ware/Bruce Fisher number "Body Heat," Patti Austin's lyrical "Love Me By Name," and the Tevin Campbell feature "Everything." While this isn't the definitive Jones compilation, or even as complete a picture as Hip-O's previous Jones package, Ultimate Collection, it is still nice to have all these "quiet storm"-ready tracks in one place.

Music and history are combined in this compact disc that celebrates G.F. Handel’s original “Messiah, an Oratorio for Four-Part Chorus of Mixed Voices, Soprano, Alto Tenor and Bass Soli and Piano.” Mr. Warren combines the black R & B tradition, heavily steeped in gospel and “making a joyful noise” – gospel based religious overtones – and foists them on a European musical masterpiece. He called it Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration.”

Contemporary soul-pop artists, including Patti Austin, Tevin Campbell, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jone, Take 6, Howard Hewett, and Dianne Reeves, take a pop-song approach to Handel's classic Christmas oratorio. Handel's wonderful melodies are updated with synthesizers, drum machines, and slick pop production from Quincy Jones and Take 6's Mervyn Warren.

Live & Remastered is not just a deliciously put together compilation, but a time capsule of the history of house music. In the early days, the men and women at Ministry of Sound hit the record button on their DAT machine each week and captured mind blowing sets from the era’s finest DJs.

Grouped together, as they are on the double-disc From Q with Love, producer/arranger/conductor Quincy Jones' love songs sound an awful lot alike. The high-gloss production, the silky smooth harmonies, the lead singers – who all happen to bear a strong vocal resemblance to Jones' most famous client, Michael Jackson – and even the tunes themselves have a one-note, suite-like sweep to them that can be mind-numbingly tedious after a couple hours. It helps that From Q with Love is loaded with hits from Jones' past 30-plus years (Patti Austin and James Ingram's "Baby, Come to Me" and "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?," Ingram's "One Hundred Ways" and "Just Once," Jackson's "Human Nature," and a handful of tracks from Jones' 1989 golden showpiece Back on the Block.