About.com Rating



As far as holiday albums go, A Ginuwine Christmas by R&B singer Ginuwine is all over the map. The album, which was released by Notifi Music on Oct. 11, 2011, has songs ranging from traditional holiday music, to warm love songs, to mildly inappropriate sexual jams. And oddly enough, the best of the 10 tracks isn't even a Christmas tune at all, but a song about kicking a lousy girlfriend to the curb.


The lack of focus would be easier to handle if the songs themselves were tight, but unfortunately Ginuwine's knack for making hits, which was at its height during the mid-to-late 1990s, has pretty much abandoned him in recent years. And this release makes that painfully obvious.

Slim Pickings

Ginuwine may have had good intentions during the recording of A Ginuwine Christmas, but the product itself doesn't result in much holiday cheer. Although Ginuwine's not a bad singer, he's definitely not among R&B's elite, and his vocal shortcomings are on display throughout the album due to the sparse production. One of the reasons G. thrived early in his career was because he was teamed up with super-producer Timbaland, whose studio wizardry made up for the lack of vocal expertise. But this album sounds pretty low-budget; there's very little musical accompaniment, exposing the singer's shortcomings as a vocalist. This flaw could be overcome if the material itself was interesting, but unfortunately, there's not much of interest here.

His modernized version of the classic "Joy to the World" is a heavily-synthesized highlight, and is well-sung enough that it just might remind you why he became a star in the first place. But other than that, pickings are slim when it comes to quality songs.
Part of the problem is that Ginuwine sounds half-hearted on most songs; it's almost like he did the album as a favor to his label or to fulfill a contract obligation. With so many songs devoid of energy or personality, it seems hard to imagine that he would be completely happy with the way the album turned out. And to top it all off, the best, most well-produced and catchiest song on A Ginuwine Christmas is "Switch It Up," which isn't a holiday song at all, but about getting rid of a lover. And when he sings lyrics on the song like "I don't have the patience with what you're saying, I'm sick of playing games," the negative vibe goes totally goes against the grain of the other nine songs, but it at least feels and sounds, well, genuine.
Even if you're a devoted Ginuwine fan, this is one release you can definitely take a pass on. Between the lackluster vocals, poor song arrangements and his attempt to sexy-up a family holiday, A Ginuwine Christmas is a big lump of coal in the ears of music fans.