On new Kem album, the romantic heart is still beating — but he’s got fresh inspiration too – Detroit Free Press

Love and romance have been tried-and-true themes for Kem through the years.

But the Detroit R&B star found himself venturing into new territory as he created the music that would become his fifth album, “Love Always Wins,” out Friday, including duets with Toni Braxton and gospel singer Erica Campbell.

The album bears Kem’s familiar hallmarks: sensual, tender, sparkling, poetic. But it’s also at times lyrically biting and musically diverse, tapping vintage styles to give them a modern glow. It even benefits from a pair of sessions held in Motown’s original Detroit studio, now part of the Motown Museum, in the first recording work permitted there in half a century.

“This is a Kem record, and it has that vibe,” he says. “But everything is different.”

The album — his first in six years — is the latest in a Motown Records career that began in 2003 when the label picked up his album “Kemistry.” At that point, the musician born Kim Owens was already a hot commodity in his hometown, having attracted a loyal audience thanks to the self-produced record, financed with his credit card. He’d done big business selling discs out of his car trunk.

More:Kem records at Hitsville in first Motown session there in nearly half a century

That Motown debut made him a national name and a star of the touring circuit, often alongside veteran R&B greats such as the Isley Brothers and Charlie Wilson. 

Kem’s personal saga remains a triumphant tale. His success followed a rocky stretch of addiction and homelessness, an inspirational life turnaround that will be documented in an upcoming memoir with noted music biographer David Ritz.

The 51-year-old singer-songwriter is known for taking his time between projects — he accepts the term “perfectionist” — but the gap since 2014’s “Promise to Love” was his longest yet. The pent-up audience demand became clear in June with the release of the single “Lie to Me,” a summery jam that wound up clocking seven weeks atop Billboard’s Adult R&B Songs chart.

“I’m really happy that after six years, we can come back with a No. 1 record,” he says. “That’s a validation of the music, and a testament to our friends at radio and our fans.”

This time, it wasn’t just his attention to detail that dragged things out. There was plenty else occupying Kem’s life in recent years. He overhauled his business team. His longtime recording spot, Dearborn’s Studio A, went out of business. He bought a home in Georgia.

And most noteworthy, he headed to Hawaii in November to wed his longtime girlfriend, Erica. The couple have a three 3-year-old son and infant daughter.

Those big professional and personal changes had Kem in the right frame of mind to get creatively adventurous — a mission aided by California producer Derek (DOA) Allen, who took the reins to massage the sonic approach of “Love Always Wins.”

“My whole infrastructure for making records was all dismantled, and in a good way,” Kem says. “For this group of songs, for this time we’re living in, for this season of my life, this was the right record. And I could not have planned how to bring these songs together.”

The album is still distinctively Kem, so smooth you could practically pour it into your cognac glass. But it also finds him exploring an assortment of styles — conjuring the spirit of Al Green on the title track, nodding to Earth, Wind & Fire on “Lie to Me,” bringing his best Prince falsetto to “Love.”

“There’s a lot of nostalgia in this album,” he says. “We’re paying homage to a lot of people and a lot of different things.”

The track “Friend Today” is a notable lyrical departure for an artist who has spent his career largely sticking to the love lane. The song has a political edge, towith anxiety about the perils of social media. Kem calls it “the most purposely direct commentary on social issues I’ve ever made.”

The song initially included the line, “They’re sending our babies to war.” Days after he finished the composition, Kem says, “George Floyd happened.” He promptly revised the lyric: “They’re killing our babies, Lord.”

“You can’t not address that and touch on everything that’s going on,” he says of Floyd’s death. “From there, it was asking the question: ‘Are we really friends?’ I have close friends who are white who have called asking, ‘How are you feeling?’ And I have white friends who didn’t call. So it’s like, are you my friend today?”

“Friend Today” is also a musical change-up for Kem. With its acoustic lilt and touch of twang, it has a feel that could very well have been pulled from the songbook of fellow Michigander Bob Seger.

“I love that,” Kem says of the comparison. “In this season of my career, it’s good to be able to express those sentiments, to let people know my musical palette is not limited to R&B.”

There are other topical references sprinkled throughout the album’s songs, most of which were written prior to the pandemic. On “Lonely,” Kem opens with a line he says was aimed at President Donald Trump: “There’s a life waiting for you in your brokenness.”

Music made to uplift

The coronavirus shutdown that began in March turned out to be fruitful for Kem. Unable to tour, he was afforded time with his new wife and two young kids — a long stretch of family bonding he says may have been impossible otherwise.

It also let him focus on finishing the album. He and Allen had completed most of the instrumental beds by the time the pandemic hit, so Kem spent the next three months finessing lyrics and cutting his vocals.

With a new release in hand, Kem would have planned to tour later this year. As things stand with the pandemic, Kem says he doesn’t expect to be on the road until this time next year — “if we’re lucky.”

Still, he considers himself fortunate, and hopes the album can be “part of the soundtrack that helps pull people through these times.”

“There are people who are dealing with a lot. People on the front lines in the hospitals and the grocery stores. People who have lost loved ones in the pandemic. The divisiveness in the country and our politics,” he says. “There’s so much going on. People are really looking for something to give them buoyancy.”

The fan base certainly seems hungry for some uplift. At the record store Street Corner Music in Oak Park, co-owners Chris Flanagan and Mike Rome say “Love Always Wins” is the most highly requested new release of the year.

“Kem is huge for us,” says Flanagan. “The guy hasn’t missed yet on a record.”

They say Kem’s 2003 debut still stands as the best-selling CD in the shop’s 28-year history, and his subsequent albums have been the store’s top sellers in their respective years.

In recent weeks, Rome says, “every day, all day long, it’s been: ‘Do you have the new Kem yet? Do you have the new Kem yet?’”

Though Kem is now living in Georgia, the Detroit runs deep on “Love Always Wins,” including the 2019 string sessions at Hitsville helmed by Motown great Paul Riser, the arranger behind classics such as “My Girl” and “Papa was a Rollin’ Stone.”

The pair of Kem tracks — “With You in My Life” and “Live Out Your Love” — were the first recording sessions held in Motown’s historic Snakepit studio since the early ’70s.

While the Hitsville experience was a memorable life moment, the real milestone came six months later, when Kem and his bride were joined by about 75 guests in Maui for their wedding atop a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

He had discovered the site while in Hawaii for a meeting of Recording Academy trustees.

“I haven’t been to every place on earth. But of all the places I’ve been, there’s no place like it,” he says. “I felt like I could relax. The people are cool. There’s something in the air. It was just a beautiful, beautiful experience.”

With his track record of seductive music, Kem jokes that he worried what he’d have to write about once married. But the new album, he says, is in fact a deeply personal work very much inspired by his wife, including “Lie to Me,” a number co-written by R&B peer Anthony Hamilton, who had emailed him a partly finished song several years ago.

Inspired by early conversations he had with his now-wife, Kem says the finished track is a statement about transparency in a relationship — refusing to hide one’s past and deciding “we’re going to move through this thing together.”

For all of his new musical and thematic moves, the album shows that Kem still has a seemingly bottomless well of inspiration when it comes to the topic of love. And he wants it to have special resonance now, in an era of dark moments.

“If everything else is gone, when all else fails, that still stands. I’m holding onto that for myself, and that’s the energy I want to put out into the world,” he says. “Hold onto that, because ultimately it will pull us through.”

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

Kem

‘Love Always Wins’ 

Motown Records

In stores and on digital platforms Friday. (An exclusive Target version includes the bonus tracks “Father & Son” and “Face the Crowd.”)