Album: Mann, Mann's World (Mercury)

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By Andy Gill

Friday 22 July 2011

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With his singles "Buzzin'" and "The Mack" built around familiar borrowings from Nu Shooz and Mark Morrison, young R&B blade Mann would appear to have his heart stuck firmly in the more recent past.

But isn't 19 a trifle too young to be fondly recalling the simpler, more innocent time of his youth, as Mann does in tracks like "Reminisce" and "Wanna Go Back" – particularly as his memories concern the 1990s, hardly the most stylish of decades. That's the main problem with Mann's World: from the Harold Faltermeyer Beverly Hills Cop theme of "Get It Girl" to the gold-rope chains celebrated in "Gold Herringbone", it's all too recent to have acquired an attractive veneer of antiquity. Instead, it operates more as a tick-box assemblage of cliches designed to lure in the undiscerning. Quite successfully, it seems.

DOWNLOAD THIS: The Mack; Gold Herringbone

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