J Holiday, Back of My Lac'

Unlike female R&B singers, who mostly perform as if orchestrating a cult of personality, their male counterparts find it harder to stand out from the pack. But this has started to change - and, along with Ne-Yo and Lloyd, Washington's J Holiday (aka Nahum Grymes) is partly responsible. His debut single, Bed, is a phenomenal piece of work: Rihanna's Umbrella recast as a seduction tool. Beats trickle, stop and finally fall like raindrops on a window, synths and guitar solos burst spectacularly out of the arrangement, and Holiday captures with pinpoint accuracy a kind of transcendent carnality. Bed alone is worth the entry price, but there are delights elsewhere: swooning chorales and strings on Without You, and the soaring layers of Pimp in Me (with its dubious but sweet compliment, "the body of a call girl with a mind of a teacher"). Crucially, Holiday never sounds anonymous, delivering his lines with enough class and sincerity to hold the attention throughout.