June 29^th Terius “The-Dream” Nash did us all a favor and dropped my frontrunner for R&B Album of the Year, “Love King.”  This album is the 3^rd installment in the “Love” series (“Love/Hate” 12/11/2007, “Love vs Money” 3/10/2009), and I feel like his most sexy and cohesive project thus far.

Who is “The-Dream?”

If you’ve had sex to an R&B/Pop song in the past six years, there is a high potentiality The-Dream wrote it.

Not sure?

Well let’s just hit highlights real quick:  he busted onto the scene when he wrote Britney and Madonna’s “Me Against the Music.”  Along the way, he wrote Mariah’s smash “Touch My Body,” J. Holiday’s “Bed,” and if you can believe it, Mary J. Blige’s “Just Fine.”

Yes, dude has range.

For those of you somehow NOT impressed by those, let me up the ante and explain that he also penned Rihanna’s radio bomb “Umbrella.”

Yep, that too.

By now, you are probably trying to figure out how many houses this man owns…and I have yet to tell you that he wrote Beyonce’s ubiquitous “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”  I think all of us—and our 600 threadcount sheets—owe this man a great deal of gratitude.

Now, if you’re over the age of 12 this one might seem a little less sexy, but I also read that he wrote Justin Beiber’s “Baby.”

To think that this prolific bastard wrote all of those songs for other artists while simultaneously working on three albums of his own—that included such heat as “Shawty is a 10,” “I Luv Your Girl,” “Rockin’ That Sh#t” and “Walking on the Moon (Feat. Kanye West)”—makes me really embarrassed about how little I accomplish on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis.

Whether you are familiar with him or not, when we look back in 20 years and think about how this decade sounded, The-Dream should be remembered as one of a few extremely influential people that shaped the R&B and Pop music of the decade.  Respect due.

So, “Love King”…

I don’t care how well-written your songs are, if the beats aren’t hot I can’t fack witchu.  Plain and simple.  And that’s one of the best things about a Dream album; you never have to worry about beats.  From the kicks to the snares to the synths, everything is dead on.  Dead f-cking on.

On the nerd tip, I need to talk about how well engineered this album is.  The rooms they recorded in, the microphones and preamps they used, the vocal compression, the vocal reverbs and effects, it’s all so perfectly engineered that it makes me hate everything I have ever recorded and/or mixed.

I realize I don’t need to give anyone another reason to buy this album, but I’ll do it anyway:  The-Dream channels Prince (again).  You see, you may not realize it but for one reason or another, we all have an infatuation with Prince.  Somehow, The-Dream has twice attempted and twice succeeded in channeling The Paisley One.  On the first album, it was “Fast Car.”  On this album, it is “Yamaha.”

Now, if I told you straight out that I had written a song metaphorically comparing a woman to a motorcycle-and that I had decided to call it “Yamaha,” you would probably tell me to scrap it.  This is why The-Dream is rich, famous and the father of Christina Milian’s baby, and I am home alone eating ramen noodles while I write this.  Really though, from the Casio-sounding kick and snare drums right down to the song’s tempo and overall arrangement, “Yamaha” sounds like a Prince record.  It’s unreal.  I mean, no one else even attempts this and The-Dream seems to do it with ease.

Maybe my favorite thing about The-Dream’s albums is that they are all beatmixed.  Each song is seamlessly blended into the next one for a complete, cohesive listening experience.  For DJs, this is orgasmic to listen to.  When you sit back and think about this, you say to yourself, “Whoaaaaaaaa,” because you know the artist had to think about each song’s tempo, title and subject matter ahead of time while laying the project out.  For those of you familiar with how recording sessions and recording software work, you realize how much of a nightmare something like this is to pull off.  And so, I want all of the engineers, producers, interns, nerds, and guys behind the guys behind the guy to know that I appreciate what it took to make this record what it is.  It is a perfectly-packaged, coherent set of splendid R&B music.  That’s why, to me, this album (like his other albums) is a piece of art…that sometimes helps you get laid.  Sure, the paintings on your walls might do this too, but they weren’t $11.99, now were they?

Radio Killaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,

-The Todd

Peep the ill video trilogy.  Anyone who nods to Robert Palmer in a music video in 2010 is a good man according to my criteria.

And of course, my favorite joint off the “Love King” album…
The-Dream – Sex Intelligent (Remix)

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…Don’t forget to wash your sheets.