Review
Meet Usher’s Mini-Me: R&B wunderkind Mario. He’s still too young to buy a girl a drink, but he aims his soulful weapons of mass seduction at women of all ages. Though the Baltimore-born singer is newly legal (as he tells us on the too-terse club jam “18”), his enticingly even-toned voice — smooth as R. Kelly’s — transcends teen-pop. It’s even manly enough to convey lovelorn intensity (“Here I Go Again”), offer explicit “Directions” to an uncorrupted gal pal (“Trust me, I got skills”), then sweetly stage an “intimate talk” with her (“Like Me Real Hard”). Only his age-appropriate tracks — the singsong club jingle “Girl I Need,” or the irony-free homage to “Nikes fresh out the box” — remind us that Mario is not a boy, but not yet a man.
DOWNLOAD: “Girl I Need,” “Let Me Love You”
DOWNLOAD: “Girl I Need,” “Let Me Love You”
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