Stevie Wonder

Though smaller scaled and rougher than Songs in the Key of Life and Journey through the
Secret Life of Plants, Stevie Wonder's Hotter than July is no less macrocosmic in its
outlook. Only less messianic. Again, Wonder presents himself as a mystical star child and
earth father to the family of man as he strains to embrace both Nashville and Kingston in his
florid Afro-American synthesis. The artist's last two magnum opuses revealed jus... More >

Except for the all-embracingly Afro-pan-American "Master Blaster" and maybe the birthday greeting to Dr. King, there's no great Stevie here, but he does know how to have fun doing his job. Great advertisement for the political potential of oral culture, too. Between his free-floating melodicism and his rolling overdrive, his hope and his cynicism, he seems more and more like the best thing the '60s ever happened to. Sure outlasted Jerry Garcia, now didn't he? (Grade: A-)