Kevin Garrett

One Liner: Unmemorable, but perfectly pleasant, R&B and blue-eyed soul over piano

Wikipedia Genre: Contemporary R&B, soul, pop
Home: Pittsburgh, originally, now in Brooklyn

Poster Position: 17

Weekend One Only.

Thoughts:  YES!  Kevin Garnett!  High school phenom basketball player who toiled for years with the Timberwolves before finally breaking out with the Boston...  Wait, what?  A white guy?  No "n"?  Ooooh.  Which is too bad really, I was kind of excited to think about that long, tall string bean of a dude making music and dunking on stage or something.  Wasn't he the guy who used to dunk and scream and look frightening?

Man, old basketball footage is really grainy.  Like, was all of that recorded on a Super 8 pointed at a tube TV?  Anyway, after having just listened to Pink Sweat$ before starting this one, I'm not sure if I actually changed the music or if I am still listening to that other mediocre R&B guy?

The Wikipedia entry for Kevin Garrett brings up a former NFL player of the same name who attended SMU here in Texas and was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the fifth round.  He was also a track star for SMU.  I don't think this is the same guy.  Strike Two!

Nope, I found another Wikipedia entry (although it is somewhat telling that the guy who flamed out in 5 years of the NFL has the more popular Wikipedia presence than this musician).  He was involved in some way on Beyonce's Lemonade, receiving a Grammy nomination after writing, producing, and playing piano on the opening track "Pray You Catch Me."  He has been signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation as well, so he's in with the Carters.

One album, 2019's Hoax.  Two EPs before then, 2015's Mellow Drama and 2017's False Hope.  "Coloring," from that first EP, has his stream count title for now, at 32.3 million streams.

Like most of this music, its all heavy, sustained piano chords, and then some longing singing over the top.  He has a nice voice, don't get me wrong, but the songs just trade in that top notch vocal tone for boring arrangements and generic instrumentation.  It's like Sam Smith, full of those falsettos and lovely things, except without the power that Smith brings to songs.  And listening to all of them, in a row, for four hours, gets extremely tedious.  He needs to mix it up with a Pusha T guest spot or something.

The new album was released back in March of 2019, and the stream counts are pretty slow (which of course makes sense for someone on the 17th row of the poster, but I just was interested to see that he's not lighting it up, despite the backing of Jay Z).  "Faith You Might" has the highest play count right now, at 1.2 million streams.

Again, very pretty.  Whispers and falsetto and sustained pianos, and the humming of angels in the background for gravitas.  He does add in the finger-picking of a guitar, and then some violins come in, so theoretically this is a different song than the prior one, but in function, all of these just bleed together into a perfectly pleasant pile of pretty, non-memorable music.

I'll leave this guy for others to enjoy.