Reviewed by Tony Cummings

Yep, the hottest, toughest dance-gospel album yet. Take two multi-platinum producers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and a truly righteous choir with some of the most torridly soulful lead voices you've heard for many a moon. No wonder it's making inroads into the soul music mainstream. We've known for ages black church had the best singers in the world and lead Ann Bennett-Nesby has the kind of octave leaping, soul shrieking voice that gets a congregation happy in two seconds flat. The hot single "Optimistic" is a vintage J&J dance groove with a solid hip-hop undercurrent. In fact the dynamic duo only produced four of the seventeen (yep seventeen) cuts on offer and "The Pressure Part 2" is simply a dance floor killer. Elsewhere there are goods aplenty. There's Sly Stone's "Stand" transformed into gospel swing and "He Holds The Future" with some truly explosive bass playing. The short "Negro spiritual" fragments in between tracks may seem a trifle theatric to some but they add to the drama and sweep of the whole thing. If you've never bought a black gospel before, get this one.

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