The overall theme of
The World Is Ours,
Amyth's debut album, is lust. The four singers, a gruff-voiced version of
Boyz II Men, are primarily concerned with "sexing" somebody in most of the slow-jam songs, in a variety of ways, both physical and social. In "Tell Me How Ya Like It," they are commenting on "the way I grab it from the back, " while "In the Rain" pleads, "Let's go and make love outside in the rain." When they aren't talking about the specific circumstances of the act, the singers are encountering situational problems. "1, 2, 3," their debut single, concerns a romantic triangle in which a man can't make up his mind between two women. And "Sexin' Your Ex" must be the first song about lusting after your former wife. But it probably isn't the subject matter that earns this album its "parental advisory" sticker. While the group itself sticks to harmonizing and wailing, several of the songs are accompanied by often vituperative raps by guest rappers, such as the obscenity-laden one by Simone Starks in "Sexin' Your Ex" that uses racial and homophobic epithets to bluntly inform the singers that their intentions are doomed to failure. Though raps are a convention of even conventional R&B these days, the tone of the ones here seems extreme in contrast to the sentiments of the song lyrics. Executive producer
LL Cool J, who is debuting his Warner Bros. production deal and his Rock the Bells label with this release, may find the two aspects complementary, and they can be, but sometimes they disrupt the mood. If these lover boys really want to sex their listeners, maybe they should leave their rap friends back in the crib. ~ William Ruhlmann