Damita – No Looking Back (tbgb review)

No Looking Back
Damita
Tyscot Records 2008
www.tyscot.com

There’s something about Detroit in that it has parented more genre-bending gospel groups than any other city. The Winans. The Rance Allen Group. The Moss Family.

Now add the Haddons.

The award-winning Damita Haddon drives her Detroit family further into gospel legend territory with her second solo album, No Looking Back.

No looking back, indeed. Debuting at the ninth position on Billboard’s Top Gospel Albums Chart, No Looking Back is undeniably and unapologetically modern. “I’m not afraid to take the gospel to the streets,” Damita sings on “Say Yeah,” with passion in her voice and street-smarts in her swagger. She brings Clara Ward’s philosophy of taking gospel to the “highways and byways” into the 21st Century.

Even the album cover – the statuesque Damita, dressed in fashionable red and black, standing with defiant confidence and dangerously close to a speeding subway train – shouts young, urban and modern. But make no mistake: God and Jesus haven’t been scrubbed from the lyrics for crossover capability. They remain front and center.

All the same, Damita’s album is ripe with songs and sounds relevant to a young generation seeking its own voice, just as the first generation of gospel artists sought theirs seventy-five years ago. Damita explains, “I went a little more youthful on this release because I think that our young people really need this right now. We really need to get their attention. They are faced with so much temptation and if we don’t do something that makes them feel special, that moves and motivates them, somebody else will.”

Damita, wife of gospel artist Deitrick Haddon and kin to Gerald and Tammi Haddon, weds millenial lyrics with her own brand of musical eclecticity in presenting a cornucopia of aural flavors: hypnotic dance tracks (“Plain & Simple,” “No Looking Back”), a reggae-flavored song (“Best Thing”) and even a Latin-style acoustic guitar (on the solo standard “I Won’t Complain”). Haddon family members, including Damita herself, contributed most of the album’s songs.

Lyrically, the title cut (and current radio single) will hit home with many who are doing the same kind of soul searching Damita sings about. On the other hand, the best lyrics on the album are in Gerald, Damita and Tammi Haddon’s composition “Pray.” The song offers a relevant commentary on the world’s condition and an exhortation for Christians to create the change they wish to see.

In a nutshell? Damita’s No Looking Back is this year’s answer to J Moss’ 2007 V2.

Three and a Half of Four Stars