::ALBUM REVIEW::

From her crossover success with brother BeBe to her safe worshipful solo GRAMMY-award winning debut Alone in His Presence, CeCe Winans has consistently revealed to fans and critics a special, rare talent that is too great to box into a small corner in record shops. That’s why it didn’t surprise many when Everlasting Love was released; revealing an urban R&B/pop styled project that featured a huge list of big industry names such as Tommy Sims, Tony Rich, Diane Warren, Lauryn Hill, Daryl Simmons and Keith Crouch collaborating with the gospel songstress. And while the extra help pushes the album into a place of great expectations, Winans confirms her amazing strengths and effortlessly raises the bar on urban contemporary gospel up to this point.

The rocking ‘90s R&B vibes of “Well, Alright” pleasantly places Winans on younger material that is well suited for Brandy. With John “Jubu” Smith’s out-front guitar licks and Keith Crouch’s empowering instrumentation, the song became the album’s lead single and even made a dent on the R&B charts; climbing to number 47. The acoustic-driven “I Am” and the relaxed nature of Tony Rich’s “What About You” are also well executed and could have easily been released as radio singles.

No stranger to ballads, Winans plays to her strengths with big vocal deliveries on the slower gospel-meets-urban soul tracks. “Life,” a mellow R. Kelly-tinged midtempo groove, is a heartfelt love song surrounding God’s outpouring of love and protection. And with every note, she expresses her gratitude with the same conviction and batter used on most modern soul records. The most rewarding and crossover-sounding appetizer of them all is found on “Slippin’.” You could easily think from the lancinating set of lyrics that Winans was singing to a lost love interest, but in the eyes of crossover gospel it’s obvious she’s singing from the Most High’s perspective. But using slick vocab, Winans gets effective when she utters the chorus (“If you wanna stay with me/I need honesty/Don’t play with me”). Using a sound from Babyface’s playbook, Cedric & Victor Caldwell develop the soulful “Come On Back Home” and allows Winans to showcase her pipes in a more Sunday morning setting. Closing out the album is an incredible set of pop-orchestrated ballads. Daryl Simmons, known for working with Babyface, Usher and Mariah Carey, produces the Diane Warren-penned “Listen With Your Heart.” With moving strings and an adult contemporary flow, Winans sounds so much like pop/R&B icon Whitney Houston that it’s almost hard to distinguish the two. Lauryn Hill produces and writes “On That Day” which merges the vision of Marvin Gaye’s spiritual shades into a Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There” concept. The song isn’t that memorable, but Hill’s congenial support and her trademark sounds helps ease any possible frustration. “Just Come,” sung once again from God’s point-of-view, finds the talented Daryl Simmons capturing yet another Babyface-sounding event.

Up to this point, CeCe Winans was being branded a worship act - all thanks to Alone In His Presence. While Winans is a worshipper at heart, she knows how to work the crossover market. Everlasting Love is a creative collection that revisits the atmosphere of her BeBe & CeCe days and does a fine job in focusing on one centralized theme from beginning to end. Even on the slower-paced average material, Winans does such a fine job in making it sound great. Using a strong pedigree of professional producers and well-crafted compositions unlike most solo R&B-tinged gospel records in the ‘90s, Everlasting Love remains Winans’ best album to date.