Album Review: Lyfe Jennings, I Still Believe

If that’s true, he’ll be doing a great disservice to the R&B world.


Lyfe has quietly and consistently released some of the industry’s best albums during his six-year tenure. His gritty morality tales are second to none. Whether it’s dealing with the pressures of underage sex or expounding on why some men are afraid to date women with kids, his messages always hit close to home – despite if we want to hear them or not.

I Still Believe continues to expand his role as our grimy guardian angel. His latest single, “Statistics” is literally a by-the-numbers tale, using stats to show women that there are very few good men out there. Now these so-called statistics allegedly are based off of a Steve Harvey book, which makes me doubt their validity even more (how do they know the percentage of “cowards” in the world?) but Lyfe’s heart is in the right place so I’ll overlook the fuzzy math.

“Love” serves as a warning to inattentive men – appreciate what you have, because there’s another guy around the corner who will treat your girl right. “Hero” again puts the ladies on a pedestal and Lyfe injects a little hood logic into those tired old superhero metaphors: “Aquaman can’t work a job with two kids/Iceman can’t cook soup when I’m sick…” And “It Coulda Been Worse” is a straight-up gospel song imploring us to appreciate what we have despite our hardship.

But as preachy as Lyfe can be sometimes, he spends just as much time beating himself up. On “If I Knew Then, What I Know Now” and “Learn From This,” Lyfe takes a hard look in the mirror to confront his sins and warns us not to make the same mistakes. The consequences of those mistakes is detailed in the heartbreaking “Done Crying,” which is what happens when a woman is fed up (word to R. Kelly).


Sadly, “Whatever She Wants,” while sounding perfectly fine, is an oddly generic and lightweight ballad for Lyfe. And “Busy” seems to lose its luster every time I listen to it – that Wolfman-like howl in the hook starts to grate on my nerves. The iTunes version of the album also comes with acoustic versions of select tracks – while I love me some acoustic cuts, none of these remixes are superior to the originals.

Best tracks: “Statistics,” “If I Knew Then, What I Know Now,” “Learn From This”