Kem is as out of place with 2005´s Album II as he was with his debut, 2003´s Kemistry. Via word of mouth and some radio play, he has managed to find his way in with the adult crowd, who helped put Kemistry into the Top 20 of the R&B chart. His kind of R&B is kicked-back with sparse arrangements made elegantly rich with starlit keyboards, subtle guitar flicks, and feminine vocals. Understated but assured, his vocals exhibit a lot of range despite almost always remaining at the volume of a bedroom whisper. So he´s really out place in the early 2000s, not stylistically disparate from what you´d hear late at night on a soul station in the late ´70s or early ´80s. On Album II, there´s no stab taken at finding a younger or different audience. You could slip any of these songs between Heatwave´s "Star of a Story" and George Benson´s "Give Me the Night" without fear of disrupting the tone or mood. Stevie Wonder´s guest harmonica on "You Might Win" keeps the connections to Motown and grown folks´ music, but Rod Temperton ? the songwriter behind the two older songs mentioned above, not to mention heaps of other classics ? would be the ultimate dream collaborator for Kem. The two would suit each other perfectly.