Tevin Campbell - The Best of Tevin Campbell (1999)

When a record company has a successful artist who has scored enough hits to justify a compilation of them, it waits until the artist is between regular album releases and positions the compilation in a prime buying season such as the fall. Then it tries to persuade the artist to contribute a new track or two so that a single can be released and even longtime fans can be given an incentive to buy the collection. On the other hand, when a record company has an artist whose career as a hitmaker appears to be over, it compiles a hits album and tosses it into the marketplace in a barren season, such as the dead of winter, preparatory to deleting the artist's regular albums from the catalog. Unfortunately, the second situation, not the first, is the case with the youthful R&B singer Tevin Campbell. But note that The Best of Tevin Campbell does not even do its subject justice. There's a reason why it isn't called Greatest Hits, and that's the omission of some of Campbell's most popular recordings. Though his first hit, "Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me)" from the Quincy Jones album Back on the Block, was released on Qwest, it's not here, and neither is "Just Ask Me To" (from the Boyz in the Hood soundtrack), another Qwest release. Strangest of all, "Alone with You," one of Campbell's biggest hits, is also missing. Instead, there are five album-only tracks from the singer's first three albums. As a result, The Best of Tevin Campbell is inadequate as a collection of his most successful recordings, which, in the overall context of the release, is adding insult to injury. © William Ruhlmann