The-Dream

One thing that sets Terius Youngdell Nash, a.k.a., The Dream, apart from his peers, other than his noted production abilities, is his gentleness as a songwriter and musician. On his sophomore album, the comparisons to R. Kelly are easy to make (and they arise at least in part due to the song "12 Play," which explicitly addresses the influence and pays tribute). Nevertheless Nash is a different creature, albeit one who can roam the same ballpark.

Love vs. Money isn't the kind of album designed to produce blockbuster singles. Nash has that in him—he's responsible for Rihanna's "Umbrella," which was nothing if not a track designed to stomp the listener into gooey, happy submission. However, in this work, he's smooth while remaining human. His voice has a timbre that comes off as genuine rather than constantly on the prowl and shaped for the purposes of seduction. The first single released, "Rockin' That Shit," seemed underwhelming—a laidback, delicately floaty appreciation of beauty that lacked the kind of hook able to jetpack a tune to the top of the charts, but the more it rotates, especially when placed in context alongside the rest of the record, the more pleasant and well-constructed it appears. Nash seems to lack the gene for posturing, and it comes across in his easy but quiet confidence in all the songs put forward here. "Walkin' on the Moon," for example, which features Kanye West as a guest, follows "Rockin' That Shit." The song is equally poised and light, the equivalent of a cake that uses soda for leavening. "My Love" lets Mariah Carey pair her formidable pipes with Nash's and shows both artists as generous and gifted with nuance. Things get more unhinged as the album progresses, and sometimes the results are overlong or just not as pulled-together as the highlights, but the verdict from the facts is pretty strongly on the side of "love."

—Hillary Brown
04.09.09

Between the December 2007 release of Love/Hate and March 2009 release of Love vs Money, the-Dream's dominance as a songwriter, producer, and solo artist had not faded. When the latter album was released, Mr. Nash's output was all over the radio, just as it was when the former came out. Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" and Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" had been to the top of the Hot 100 amidst a string of smaller successes that included Jamie Foxx's "Just Like Me," merely a Top Ten R&B hit, and Usher's "Trading Places," which was too thematically and structurally off-center to be massive. The number one R&B single at the time, Foxx's "Blame It," was neither written nor produced by Nash, but it quoted him. "Rockin' That Sh**," this album's lead single, had just become his fourth consecutive solo Top Ten R&B single, and a duet with Mariah Carey, "My Love," was well on its way to becoming number five. He was in his own orbit.

Love vs Money, like Love/Hate, was made with producers Christopher "Tricky" Stewart and Carlos "L.O.S. da Mystro" McKinney, and it continues Nash's never-ending song cycle about his life as a chest-puffing softy who will get "all up on you like a white tee on a thug" and "circle the stars and bring you one back." Sonically, there are only slight variations on what he and his collaborators had been serving up for over a couple years, with swishing and panning percussion accents, droning and buzzing synths, syrupy vocal interjections, and unexpected hook deployment from every angle. The song most directly connected to Love/Hate is "Sweat It Out," essentially a slow jam version of "Playin' in Her Hair," sung just as sweetly: "She just got her hair did but you know I can't stop this/I told you once we finish that I would get your shit fixed." The album is heavier on ballads and, with "Fancy" and "Right Side of My Brain," it stretches out, shifting from a melancholy six-minute beat tease (where an awed Dream loses all control to a mate with expensive taste) to an emotionally bruised stomp (a regretful kiss-off). Ultimately, Love vs Money is Love/Hate's equal, stuffed with hooks, ceaselessly absorptive productions, and clever and often funny wordplay -- "Now if they ask you can I sing like Usher, say no/But I can make you sing like Mariah, ooooooooh" being the most amusing of them all, though "I'm all up on you like a monster truck" runs a close second for switching up the R. Kelly woman-as-vehicle metaphor. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide