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Love Letter is R. Kelly’s tenth studio album, released December 14, 2010 on Jive Records. It was written and produced entirely by Kelly. Though he has dabbled in self-empowerment anthems (“I Believe I Can Fly”) and his childhood love of Chicago-style dusties soul (“Step in the Name of Love”), “Love Letter” marks the first time he’s gone nearly an entire album sounding almost chaste. Gone are the sexually graphic slow jams, and in their place is a more vintage-soul feel, with Just Can’t Get Enough recalling Marvin Gaye, while the lyrics mix lovesick apologies with chivalrous dedications, most notably on the the excellent When a Woman Loves.

Packaged like a classic ‘60s album, a handful of songs are clearly designed to evoke the sound of that era; the pleading “Radio Message” as well as the pained “How Do I Tell Her?” and the bouncing “Love Is”, are too well-crafted and convincingly delivered to be heard as mere genre exercises. “Can I bring the love songs back to the radio?” Kelly sings on “Lost in Your Love,” a curious request for the notoriously lascivious singer.