After two top-10 albums, New Jersey crooner Jaheim recently topped the Billboard album chart with his third release, “Ghetto Classics.” Like its million-selling predecessors, “Ghetto Love” (2001) and “Still Ghetto” (2003), the singer’s latest floats in a luxurious mid-tempo bubblebath of ballads. But Jaheim and his producers update the sound of his R&B precursors (smoothies such as Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross) with crisp hip-hop inflections. As a songwriter, Jaheim is notable for the way he empathizes with the opposite sex; it lends gravity to songs such as “Daddy Thing,” in which he plays a scorned stepfather. More examples of such emotional complexity would be welcome, but for now he’s reintroducing the idea of velvet understatement to club players.
