Ray Charles: Genius & Friends

This album comes loaded with some bit of controversy. On the one hand, this was pretty much the last project Ray Charles was working on before he passed and on the other hand these recordings were mostly made in 1997 and 1998 and only now turned into duets.

The album itself is not half bad. Some of the song selections are marginal, and most of the guests are minor figures not even vaguely in his league. Furthermore, Ray was 40 years past his prime recording this, but it is still Ray Charles and his voice was great. Definitely not the best performance of his career, but a good way to bid farewell to a long and lustrous singing career. The album can be described as fairly slick mainstream R&B with the favourites being “Compared to What?” and the Stevie Wonder classic “Blame it on the Sun” recorded with George Michael. This is the best composition on the album, and it seemed to inspire rather more emotional investment from Ray than the other tracks.