Ginuwine: Ginuwine... The Bachelor (2LP, red vinyl, reissue) [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This red vinyl 2LP set is a limited, EU-pressed reissue of the album that launched both Ginuwine and Timbaland. It went double platinum in the US and gold in Canada.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Red vinyl
• Limited edition
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

In 1996 Timbaland was a young producer from Virginia Beach, and then a song arrived that sounded like a rubber band being plucked inside a spaceship. "Pony" was the opening shot of a partnership that rewired R&B: Ginuwine's smooth, cocky tenor riding Timbaland's stuttering, burping, wonderfully strange beats, cut at Pyramid Sound Studios in Ithaca, New York.

Timbaland is credited with all the music, and you can hear him inventing a new sound in real time. "Tell Me Do U Wanna" glides on a slow-motion bounce, "Holler" and "Hello" keep the swagger up, and "I'll Do Anything / I'm Sorry" shows off the ballad side, all slow-burning harmonies and pleading falsetto. Ginuwine's bold, reworked cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry" became another single, Missy Elliott and Magoo drop by on "G. Thang," and Timbaland himself steps up to the mic on the closing track. Samples nod to The Stylistics, Stevie Wonder and Portishead along the way.

By the sixth single, Timbaland had a career, and Ginuwine had a dance move the rest of us remain far too sensible to attempt in public.

Also at Kops: more Ginuwine on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On 550 Music / Epic / Legacy (cat# 19658820461), a reissue of the 1996 album.