Quincy Jones - From Q, With Love (1999)

Review by Michael Gallucci
Grouped together, as they are on the double-disc From Q with Love, producer/arranger/conductor Quincy Jones' love songs sound an awful lot alike. The high-gloss production, the silky smooth harmonies, the lead singers -- who all happen to bear a strong vocal resemblance to Jones' most famous client, Michael Jackson -- and even the tunes themselves have a one-note, suite-like sweep to them that can be mind-numbingly tedious after a couple hours. It helps that From Q with Love is loaded with hits from Jones' past 30-plus years (Patti Austin and James Ingram's "Baby, Come to Me" and "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?," Ingram's "One Hundred Ways" and "Just Once," Jackson's "Human Nature," and a handful of tracks from Jones' 1989 golden showpiece Back on the Block), but even they can't totally overcome the thick sap that drips through most of these cuts. Most grating of all is the overuse of a cappella sextet Take 6, whose soulless in-studio "perfection" easily qualifies them as one of the most annoying groups on the planet.