Tonex – Unspoken

“Holy ghost, please jump my battery/ So I can get this party jumping … When I think of all the STDs that should be up in my body/ When I think of all you’ve done for me/ It really makes me wanna rock your body.”

So here we have what’s likely the first-ever hip-hop come-on to the Lord in heaven. Wow. That schizo, sex-meets-God nugget may be all you need to know about Tonéx, he of the elastic falsetto voice and near-constant playing of the v-card. (“V” is for victim, mind you.) Call him wildly talented – he does it enough himself – or just call him wild. He is.

The eccentric, ebullient self-styled heir to MJ’s throne is equally confident rocking in the club and in a Pentecostal church, by the sound of it. He name-drops the erstwhile King of Pop in song and in PR bio, cops his vocal tics and phrasings to boot, just in case you forgot the main influence worn on his French-cuff sleeve. Tonéx’s newest, Unspoken, could be called a mullet record – biznass up front, party in the back. Its first three songs are sufficiently spastic (Lord, take some downers, boy) before bowing out to a few slow-burning jams. “Blend” is the best of that lot but segues rather choppily into four Bible-thumping, club-bumping tracks to close out. These last four songs lend a stark contrast to the preceding earnestness. It’s like having Saturday night after church on Sunday morning.

Tonéx (pronounced “Toe-nay”) has gone so far as to name a new genre, “Nureau,” for the “multifarious” music he produces. He’ll be the first to let you know he’s amazing, and therein lies the problem: How to balance humility and braggadocio when you’re a gospel artist who likes to jump around? Dude makes Kirk Franklin look sedated – and not so much in a good way. His vocal and sonic arrangements often sound erratic and sometimes hook-less; ironic, given all the hooks he attempts to toss into the mix all at once.

Reads the artist’s MySpace tagline: “It’s nice 2 laugh, but don’t be the joke!” Egad, again with the irony. Here’s the skinny, in so many words: Tonéx’s voice is a thing of wonder, and he milks it like a blue-ribbon bovine. Even so, sometimes his vocals sound pinched and shrill. This is unlike him. See: borderline-flawless vocal on “You” from O2, one of a bevy of examples of his remarkably agile instrument, able to leap tall octaves in a single measure. (He claims on MySpace to be one of a very rare breed of male vocalists with a six-octave range. I’m a believer.)

Unspoken is too often tune-less or just overly layered. This happens when seven different production teams govern the songs. These are quirky God-hop stylings, idiosyncratic song structures, and atypical melodies. Sometimes there’s just too much going on in the songs to recall that they’re even songs, let alone to wade through the murky aural waters to find his sermons in the lyrics. Tonéx seems to go out of his way to be offbeat, something like gospel’s own Prince.

The PR materials note that this is “a transition album” to the mainstream for the singer, propping up his foray into “alternative rock” aka “Face Down.” (It’s the poor man’s version of OutKast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad” or Janet’s “Black Cat.”) For one who wishes everyone realizes how unique he finds himself to be, there’s plagiarism aplenty on this album. For one, “Bring It” provides some not-subtle aping of Amerie’s percussive hit “1 Thing” from a few years back. The laborious title track, hardly enlivened by the singer’s late-breaking vocal histrionics, does little to make prayer sound enjoyable, but it’s “When I Call” (10th of 13 tracks) that tackles that same subject and has Tonéx aping Ne-Yo, notably fashioning the album’s most accessible song in the process.

In truth Tonéx may have peaked with the release of 2002’s O2, a congruent, beat-laden blend of tempos and gospel styles both traditional and modern-urban that yielded a modest hit in “‘Bout A Thang” and some other steady tracks. Here the singer-songwriter-composer-evangelist is best here when he hits the sonic brakes. Unfortunately, “Cool With U” gives off a silky Joe-esque vibe (recall Joe, of short-lived “Stutter” and “I Wanna Know” fame? yeah, no one else does, either).

Back to the PR bio: “Tonéx is different and proud of his individuality. … Originality is key and I want people young and old to feel okay with just being themselves and loving themselves.” Besides slipping in and out of third person, this bit is funny in a sad way coming from one whose lyric on O2 decried the sight of two girls kissing in a video on MTV. Hypocrites unite?

Tonéx grates without end, it seems. Waxes the singer on “Cool With U”: “The time has come for me to take my place in this industry/ And times it’s hard to balance my relationship with you and my celebrity.” This seems a bit pretentious coming from one who’s but garnered a few Stellar Awards (akin to gospel Grammys), made a litany of BET appearances, snagged a lone Grammy nomination, and generally tried to out-weird MJ. Pray tell, what’s more pretentious than a bio that reads, “Some compared [Tonéx’s Stellar Awards performance] to the impact that Michael Jackson had introducing the moonwalk to the world”?

Last time to the PR bio vault: It actually boasts that “Unspoken’s linear [sic] notes are sparse and don’t even contain ‘Thank You’s.’” Might this be due to the artist finding no one to thank but himself? And so this branded R&B stud Tonéx remains most celebrated in his own noggin. Does pride still come before a fall?

Tagged as: gospel, Hip-hop, San Diego

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