Craig David - The Time Is Now (Deluxe Edition) (2018) [Official Digital Download]

A single phrase “Bo selecta” encapsulates both the peak and the nadir of the British singer Craig David’s career. It was the anthemic refrain of his breakout performance on the Artful Dodger’s 1999 garage classic “Rewind” a song that launched David to instant stardom, followed by his 2000 debut, Born to Do It, released when he was just 19. (A decade later, it remained the fastest-selling debut album by a male solo artist in the UK.) David soon crossed over into the U.S. charts with “Fill Me In” and “7 Days,” showing how UK club music, hip-hop, R&B, and pop could all intermingle. But it was “Bo’ Selecta!” a TV show in which the stand-up comedian Leigh Francis donned an obnoxious rubber mask to play the singer that soon set the singer’s career on a downward spiral.

After a questionable album of Motown covers, Craig David decamped to Miami, where he no doubt heard the blueprint for his hybrid hits revisited by artists like Drake and Justin Bieber. But he was greeted as a survivor by the UK press with 2016’s Following My Intuition, and now he follows up with his seventh album, The Time Is Now. At this point, though he is only 36, David occupies the role of something like an elder statesman, having weathered both a cultural backlash and a collaboration with Sting. But outside of a few tracks where he sounds reinvigorated, he’s not quite sure how to fit in to the present pop landscape.

The Time Is Now finds Craig David fishing for a current trend or three to sink his hooks into, and across 15 tracks, he lands a few. He teams up with producer Jonas Blue (responsible for that tropical house remake of “Fast Car”) for the bantamweight “Heartline,” where his purr melds into the downy backdrop of tropical-house marimbas and defanged ratchet snares. It all might blow away at the slightest gust did the singer not convey just enough emotional heft to keep it grounded.

Tracklist:

01. Magic
02. Heartline
03. Brand New
04. Going On
05. Love Me Like It's Yesterday
06. For the Gram
07. Get Involved feat. JP Cooper
08. I Know You feat. Bastille
09. Live in the Moment feat. Goldlink
10. Love Will Come Around
11. Somebody Like Me feat. AJ Tracey
12. Focus
13. Chase & Status, Craig David - Reload (Bonus Track)
14. Talk to Me (Bonus Track)
15. Talk to Me Pt. II feat. Ella Mai (Bonus Track)



All thanks go to the original releaser