Ray J relates 'All I Feel'
In approximately slipway, the record discharge party for "Wholly I Feel," the quartern full-length spillage from R&B performer Ray J, mat more like a night out at the club with the Southern Golden State native than an invitation-only music manufacture event.
Yes, there was the entourage ingress Hollywood's Day After baseball club through a darkened alleyway, the bevy of voluptuous whitney Young women clamoring for the star's attention, rapper Mack 10 entertaining the capacity crowd, plenteousness of intoxicant. Merely rather of executives and journalists, the client list was a roll of Ray J's childhood friends from Kit Carson.
Still, the picture at his William Ashley Sunday night homecoming underscored the image Beam J has tried to cultivate o'er the course of his comparatively young calling. The brother of crossover picture Brandy Norwood, born William Irradiation Norwood Jr. in 1981, worked hard to decimate the squeaky clean, child-star image left all over from his teenage appearances on Brandy's situation comedy "Moesha."
These years, he's to a greater extent renowned for writing and producing salacious R&B songs with graphic lyrics and L.A. gangbanger imagery -- and for a sexual urge magnetic tape he made with reality TV star Kim Kardashian.
"On this album, I'm scarce being heterosexual up with myself," Ray J offers, pull come out a wad of cash to buy drinks for his crew. "I'm not trying to candy-coat anything."
It's a strategy that seems to be workings for the performing artist. "Sexy Can buoy I," the first bingle from "Whole I Feel," come to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot century, finding its way into heavy rotation on dance floors crosswise the body politic. Three songs on the record album consider with unfaithfulness -- "Girl From the Bronx," "Beau" and "Jump Away" -- spell on "I Can Feel It," Ray J delves into the idea of losing his identicalness in the class of an intense relationship.
The Game cameos on the rails "Where You At," which pays court to West Coast gangsta whack, a major influence for Ray J, even though he doesn't claim a crowd affiliation. Still, dressed in a red bowler chapeau, negroid T-shirt and baggy black jeans, his outfit is strictly Piru Blood.
It's another of the contradictions at the heart of Ray J's persona. His songs spill most mob life, merely he says he's completely around wholeness. His singles tend to perform well -- his jailbreak, the sultry, Neptunes-produced "Await a Minute," featured the and so 20-year-old get-go to explore his sexual side opposite word edgar Guest performer Lil' Kim -- but his albums haven't quite an met with the saame acceptance.
And spell he's committed to his medicine, he doesn't shy away from the celebrity he's garnered from the sex tape and other rumored fame dalliances.
"Sometimes it's a little edgy; it's a little altogether," Ray J says of "Whole I Find" -- and his larger musical theater identicalness. "But for the nigh persona the great unwashed love that because citizenry ar real, they are edgy and they ar altogether."
The contention surrounding Ray J hasn't swayed the friends on hand at the track record spillage solemnisation or his famous sibling, wHO admits she is impressed with the new album. "I tin can take heed to it straight through," says Brandy, 29, yelling to be heard over the loudly music at the club. "It's simple. You can babble on with it. I think he truly took his time with it and took or so risks."
He took a danger during the abbreviated set that closed the night besides, playing just one-and-a-half songs. As Ray J cranked through and through "Don't Wanna Be Right," his childhood friends crowded the stage, terpsichore and throwing up mob signs.
"All those thugs grew up with us in a neighbourhood called Centerview," explains Shannon Hendersen, 23, 1 of Brandy and Ray J's friends from Christopher Carson. "The rationality wherefore they call it that is because in the middle of totally the houses on that point are atriums. They ar in truth big houses with five, 6, septet bedrooms. It's really nice."
Suddenly, at 1:50 a.m, a voice interrupts the execution, locution only, "Music is the accuracy of manhood. We ar now closed."
