Real Talk

"Just trying to keep it real," Dave Hollister vows in the middle of Real Talk's title track. Though the former Blackstreet member's fourth solo album deals in a fair amount of clich©s--the first few cuts seemingly break all records for use of the word "ghetto" as both noun and adjective--he does seem to be telling his own story. Much of the rest of the material is quiet-storm stuff of varying quality, though "Winning With You" has a, yes, winning chorus hook and "Karma" depicts our man as a two-timer convinced he'll get away with it. Hollister seems most impassioned, however, on the opening "Big Payback," where he goes off on at least one record-industry foe who apparently kept him from getting his own. Perhaps a little inside-baseball, but also an intriguing direction that's more real than those of many recent R&B discs. --Rickey Wright