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Marcellus The Singer (New EP Review!)
May 1, 2024:
Originally published in Daddy B. Nice's CD Revies.
MARCELLUS THE SINGER: Calling All Crack Babies
Four Stars **** Distinguished effort. Should please old fans and gain new. If you troll YouTube for music videos you've no doubt come across one of the most bizarre pieces of cover art in recent memory: a chains, bracelets and ring-wearing two-year-old in a white cowboy hat and sneakers sitting in a pile of cash with a landline phone to his ear wheeling and dealing like a creepy, calculating Chucky doll. The title is also disturbing. Calling All Crack Babies. And yet the music within this new EP from the gifted young recording artist Marcellus The Singer belies the packaging, being gracious, gentle and uplifting throughout.
Marcellus first gained recognition with the single "Toxic Love" from his well-received debut album Music Therapy. Though consisting of only five tracks, Calling All Crack Babies is even better, representing a huge leap forward in musical maturity, most of it embodied in two melody-rich ballads.
 Pristine songwriting, vocalizing and production are on full display in "You Baby" (#3 February DBN's Top 10), a duet with Cecily Wilborn, who has attracted her own significant fanbase with the southern soul anthem "Southern Man" (Best Collaboration of 2023 with West Love) and more recently her gutsy foray into country with #1 single "Red Cup Blues" (March). When Wilborn enters mid-way through "You Baby" with---
"We fuss and we fight.
We make love all night."
---the song reaches a dazzling apogee.
But the show-stopper of the set is the eight-minute-long ballad "Until We Meet," in which a stately chord progression and a scintillating guitar usher us through the touching stages in the life of a loving couple. Here's the commentary from January:
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Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "BREAKING" Southern Soul Singles For. . .
-------JANUARY 2024-------
1. "Until We Meet Again"-----Marcellus The Singer
This ballad deserves a place on southern soul's top shelf alongside such slow jams as Sir Charles Jones' "Just Another Love Song" (w/ La Keisha) and Big Robb's "Good Loving Will Make You Cry" (w/ Carl Marshall). Nearly eight minutes long, it sails by, never grows repetitive and has every chance of becoming Marcellus's breakthrough and signature song.
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The balance of the EP is adequate, providing respectable background for "You Baby" and "Until We Meet". "You might fuck around and fall in love with a toxic nigger" from "Watch What You Doing" is as aggressive as Marcellus allows himself. "Stress Me Out" charted on the Top 40 Singles.
Incidentally, Marcellus himself is a guest artist on another southern soul song of the moment, Curt The Countryman's "Back Road". Marcellus's fans will enjoy his vocal. He also has a song out with the rapper Boosie BadAzz---both since Calling All Crack Babies. That seems to be a prerogative of the new generation. Ciddy Boi P doing southern soul, hip-hop and country all at the same time. Wilborn shuttling between southern soul and country. Marcellus seamlessly transitioning from southern soul to country. And yet, Marcellus, like these artists, is a true-blue southern soul creative. His "Until We Meet" deserves top-shelf classic next to Wilborn's "Southern Man".
---Daddy B. Nice
Buy Marcellus The Singer's CALLING ALL CRACKBABIES EP at Apple.
Listen to all the tracks from Marcellus The Singer's CALLING ALL CRACKBABIES EP on YouTube.
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Send product to:
SouthernSoulRnB.com
P.O. Box 19574
Boulder, Colorado 80308
Or e-Mail:
daddybnice@southernsoulrnb.com
Hard copies given preference for CD reviews.
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September 1, 2023:New Album Alert!
Listen to Marcellus The Singer singing "Toxic Love" on YouTube.
Buy Marcellus The Singer's debut album MUSIC THERAPY at Apple.
MUSIC THERAPY TRACK LIST1.
Intro
2.
Prelude
3.
Slow Jam
4.
The Letter
5.
Witcha When Ya Right
6.
Ole Ahh Uncle
7.
Trail Ride Shawty (feat. Jeter Jones)
8.
Better With Me
9.
Shot Of Moonshine
10.
Dig One Ditch
11.
Back Door Shawty
12.
Love Me Right
13.
Write My Name
14.
Outro (Pull Out) (feat. Squirt Kelly)
15.
Toxic Love
Daddy B. Nice notes: Louisiana native Marcellus The Singer’s album debut features a full-fledged balladeer with a style more urban than southern soul. Recently, however, his single “Toxic Love” has crossed over into southern soul, and rightfully so. "Toxic Love" is as good as it gets for a southern soul ballad. You know it within the first sixteen bars, and it sounds better now than it did a year ago. The moniker "the singer" is apt. Marcellus kills the vocal, exhibiting both heart and technique.
As for the album as a whole, it's less interesting from a southern soul perspective, tailored for mainstream R&B. But there are exceptions---the puzzling reggae track "Don't Rush" and the winsome zydeco/barbershop-blended "Trailride Shawty".
But the real proof that he could do well in the southern soul genre (and that he's beginning to smell the money and the roses) came earlier this year with the arrival of Marcellus' new single "Shot Of Moonshine"---also from MUSIC THERAPY---which charted in January on Daddy B. Nice's Top Ten Southern Soul Singles. It's a worthy follow-up to "Toxic Love".
Listen to all the tracks from Marcellus The Singer's MUSIC THERAPY album on YouTube.
Buy Marcellus The Singer's debut album MUSIC THERAPY at Apple.
--Daddy B. Nice
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