Eric Benet (opening for Fantasia)
Ovens Auditorium
Nov. 10, 2010
By Cheris Hodges
If you arrived at Ovens Auditorium Wednesday night only to see Fantasia’ s performance, you missed out on a sensual treat from R&B crooner Eric Benet.
Let’ s move on from the fact that he’s Halle Berry’s ex-husband, because he has what a lot of singers today lack — real talent.
Benet took to the stage in a slim fitted suit, black tie and aviator sunglasses — that didn’t stop the women in the audience from losing their minds, especially when he sang the sexy “ Chocolate Legs” from his latest CD, Love and Life.
Benet doesn’ t use cheap gimmicks to engage the crowd, he captivates them with his smooth voice and crisp delivery. It doesn’t hurt that his band is talented and jams like those old school players from back in the day.
Some of Benet’s biggest hits, “Spend My Life With You” and “Georgy Porgy,” which is a remake of 1978 Toto classic, are duets with popular R&B singers, Tamia and Faith Evans. I wondered how Benet would pull these songs off, since neither singer was at the show. He proves to have an ear for talent because his background singer handled the female part of both songs pleasantly.
Although, it would have been nice to see a bit more interaction between her and Benet during the performance of “Spend My Life With You,” since it is a romantic song and he even said people still tell him that it was their wedding song. However, that would be a cheap gimmick and Benet doesn’t need or use them.
Benet’s latest single, “ Sometimes I Cry,” which is blowing up on Urban Adult
Contemporary stations, brought huge reaction from the audience as he showed his range going into his high falsetto before coming down to the tenor range he’s famous for. He makes you think of Prince singing “Darling Nikki” back in the day when he hits those high notes.
His new album, Lost in Time, drops on November 30, if his performance is any indication of the quality of the new album, it’s worth a listen.
This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2010.
