Chocolate Genius: Godmusic

In the three years since New York singer-songwriter Marc Anthony Thompson introduced his Chocolate Genius persona on Black Music, he's collaborated on soundtracks to movies (Urbania) and theatrical productions (Roger Guenveur Smith's one-man show A Huey P. Newton Story), and he's actively re-conceptualized his sound. Black Music was an often-harrowing tour of Thompson's sorrowful moods, bloodily grafting Isaac Hayes' lover-man soul onto stark Mark Eitzel confessionals. The second Chocolate Genius record, Godmusic, is looser and funkier, with instrumentation as mellow as midnight and arrangements so relaxed that they're fogging out. But Thompson's lyrics remain intensely personal, and when he's not stringing together loosely connected non sequiturs cribbed from the id, the eccentric auteur is shockingly forthright about his weakness for vice. Godmusic's spiritual undercurrent is stifled by a close reading of the album's more overtly religious songs, which reveal that they're more about doubt than faith. "The Eyes Of The Lord" has a sensuous, R&B-gospel beat, but the lyrics are about how God's omniscience is terrifying. "Infidel Blues" breaks for spoken-word pleas for forgiveness, but the rest of the song is a fairly graphic paean to cunnilingus (as might be the following song, "Glorious," depending on what Thompson means by the word "carpet"). Godmusic works a consistently pleasant, soulful groove, covered in atmospheric drapes of piano, acoustic guitar, and fuzzy electric guitar. It closes with two consecutive instrumentals, placing the emphasis on the album's casually pretty music, rather than on Chocolate Genius' odd and somewhat disturbing themes. Still, there's an artfulness to the bizarreness, which establishes Godmusic as a distinctive rock record in the vein of Sly & The Family Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On. Chocolate Genius uses seductive sounds to call attention to his interest in carnal pleasure, and to abdicate responsibility for that interest.