Since The Pied Piper has dropped off some degree in consistency over his recent albums, Joe has climbed to the top of my current trusted R&B artists list. He has made great R&B tracks since his 1993 debut 'Everything' and continues to do so. While 'Signature' is a level below his recent albums, 'New Man' and 'Ain't Nothin' Like Me', there is still enough to satisfy. I can't say formulaically it's a huge amount different than his previous work but it tends to be a little more towards adult contemporary and in the soul genre than general contemporary R&B. Best Tracks: Sex Girl, Friends Don't Let Friends, Worst Case Scenario, Wanna Be Your Lover, Miss My Baby, Come Get to This, Love's Greatest Episode

Joe's seventh album and another good one. Taking out the snippets, (songs will apparently be on his next album Signature due next year), there are 11 quality tracks that production wise follow on from his previous album. Bryan-Michael Cox returns to produce about half the tracks and as usually most are great. If you're a Joe fan, you shouldn't be disappointed with this one. Best Tracks: E.R., By Any Means, We Need to Roll, New Man, Start Over Again, Sorry.

I'm in AUS where contemporary R&B isn't as popular as elsewhere, so maybe I'm wrong, but this guy seems criminally underrated. Some of his R&B ballads are the best of the '90s and early '00s. Only R. Kelly beats Joe for me as an R&B King, but there were times throughout their careers where Joe was releasing better albums. This is a far cry from his debut, that is incredibly new jack swing influenced, with this mainly just being R&B ballads with a couple of higher tempo tunes like 'Come Around'. While this album does lose a touch of steam during the final third of the album, as the list below demonstrates, there are a heap of high moments. Best Tracks: All the Things (Your Man Won't Do), Love Scene, Don't Wanna Be a Player, Good Girls, How Soon, All That I Am, No One Else Comes Close, No One Else Comes Close (Unplugged)

"Say cheese, now I got pictures of what a bitch is" My first thoughts weren't too positive on this. I understand it's a posthumous album, but the start is a bit of anti-climax where we hardly hear the man we all came to see. I think that is what led to my initial lukewarm reception. He was the last verse on the lead single as well. I mention in my review of Eazy E's 'Str8 Off Tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton' that I find it a bit odd when the lead artist isn't the first voice on the record. All of the features make me think that DMX wasn't as far into a finished album as he made me think from his talk on Drink Champs. Aside from that, he doesn't spit very naturally on some songs. As DMX aged, he became a bit more mumbly when trying to spit fast. Lyrically he doesn't hit as hard either. The production is consistently decent-good but nothing is near amazing. While there are a lot of co-producers with him, Swizz has never been able to create a whole album of great beats. On to some songs: 'Bath Salts' was a hyped video on YouTube almost half a decade ago, and maybe it was just because Swizz was playing it at a volume of 11/10, but the beat doesn't hit as hard. The DMX verse comes from his 2009 song “Spit That Shit”. I've always liked D's verse but Nas steals the show and has another great verse on the best song, 'Walking in the Rain'. Lil Wayne actually raps a listenable verse on 'Dogs Out'. I haven't been able to say that about Wayne for a while. I think DMX also sounds great over the soulful 'Take Control' production. I was really looking forward to this. DMX helped me fall in love with the genre, and while I find this to be a decent collection of songs, it's fallen a touch below expectations. I'm not religious, but his prayer to close the album gets me more hyped than some of the music. The better songs are the more soulful tracks. It doesn't feature a great hardcore tune like he blessed us with so many times throughout his life. Best Tracks: Bath Salts, Take Control, Walking in the Rain

The fruit does not fall too far from the tree does it? While this may not be the innovative music of MJ, he would be proud of the quality of this. Seeing folk/singer songwriter as genres, I did not expect to like this as much as I do. It very much has elements in the alternative-R&B vein as well that we hear so much these days. As the list below shows, it is a great consistent album featuring some of my favourite songs that I've heard for a while. Best Tracks: collide, repair, undone, cosmic (wait for me), dead sea, let down, scorpio rising, wilted, another spring