Barry White Icon Is Love CD

"Practice What You Preach" was nominated for a 1995 Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

"Baby's Home" was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, and THE ICON IS LOVE was nominated for the 1996 Grammy for Best R&B Album.

He is love and love is he. You are there to be pleased, he to serve. When he says that you and he apart is like ice cream without the cone, this much is clear: he is the ice cream, you are the cone. When he croons "Baby's Home," you had better believe this: "baby" is he himself.

Barry White pulls this off the same way he always has, not with Madonna-esque moxie, but with Superman sincerity. The man has never uttered an insincere word in his life. In the opener here, he challenges a woman who teased him for too long to quit the games and get on with the love. The only teasing White does for the album's remaining hour is the kind that comes with foreplay, which he's prepared to engage in for way more than an hour. In most of the songs, which average around six minutes, he whispers deep baritone somethings for a verse, then breaks into a laid-back croon over jazzy, funky backing tracks dabbed here and there with strings. Slow and sweet, but always funky.

He draws out "There It Is" the furthest of all, offering a full minute of a single bit of plinking percussion, over which he moans, "don't say anything, don't say one word." He hasn't even taken his clothes off, and you've already melted.

Recorded at Aire LA Studios, Glendale, California; Flyte Tyme Studios, Edina, Minnesota; Rise Labs and Record One, Sherman Oaks, California.

Engineers include: Jack Perry, Barry White, Greg Burton.

Personnel: Barry White (vocals, keyboards); Gerald Albright (saxophone); Chuckii Booker, Jack Perry, Tony Nicholas (keyboards, drums, programming); Libby Turner, Core Cotton, Carrie Harrington, Jimmy Wright (background vocals).

Recording information: Flyte Tyme studios, Edina, MN; Ocean Way Studios; Record One, Sherman Oaks, CA.

Personnel includes: Barry White (vocals, keyboards, drum programming); Terry Lewis, Jimmy Jam (various instruments); Gerald Albright (saxophone); Jack Perry, Tony Nicholas, Chuckii Booker (keyboards, drum programming); Jeff Taylor (drum programming); Crystal Penni, Mike Blackmon, Patrick C. Blackmon, Jimmy Wright, Carrie Harrington, Core Cotton, Libby Turner (background vocals).

Producers include: Barry White, Jack Perry, Gerald Levert, Chuckii Booker, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.

Entertainment Weekly (10/21/94, p.66) - "...emphasizes funkiness over his trademark string-laden spectaculars. And his bottomless baritone guarantees satisfaction..." - Rating: B
Q (12/94, p.151) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...the growler is back, he's on form and, best of all, he's in the bedroom....White has forsaken his disappointing recent diversions into formulaic funk to get back down to business with...soulful, sensual and irresistibly urgent ballads..."