Even without her in the mix, however, the musical valentines created by former Mantronix rapper Bryce Wilson are so butter-slick and slide down so easily that the album would have been worth the time regardless.

Its main attribute may be that it introduced the world to Amel Larrieux, whose alluring vocal stylings enliven the proceedings considerably, giving them a certain laid-back radiance. But Groove Theory need not live in the shadow of any other record, since it has an abundance of its own virtues. Just a year later, in fact, Aaliyah hit commercial and artistic pay dirt with her second album, One in a Million, which plays precisely as if Timbaland had heard and then used Groove Theory as its sonic blueprint, right down to the cool, prepossessing vocals, which are demure rather than ostentatious, unlike the flashy singers then-dominating the genre.

Not only did it (in retrospect) help to herald the progressive neo-soul movement, but its melding of decidedly hip-hop production techniques - steady drum patterns, plentiful loops and samples (though mixed with live instrumentation), even a modicum of turntable scratching - with the emotional impulses and themes of soul was still a novel approach to making R&B at the time. Groove Theory's debut effort is an exquisite, even innovative album.

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