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| This Is Regina | 
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| Artist: Regina Belle
Label: Peak Records
Category: Music
List Price: $18.98
Buy New: $3.99
You Save: $14.99 (79%)
Buy New/Used from $3.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  (143 reviews)
Sales Rank: 131904
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 013431850526
EAN: 0013431850526
ASIN: B00005QB7L
Release Date: October 23, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Oooh Boy | | • | Let Me Hold You | | • | From Now On | | • | La Da Di | | • | Gotta Get Over This Love | | • | Don't Wanna Go Home | | • | Someone Who Needs Me | | • | Take My Time | | • | Johnny's Back | | • | You Said | | • | Gotta Go Back | | • | What If |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 138 more reviews...
 A sensuous, lovely piece of work. August 12, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Regina Belle, never belonging to groups or movements and always working against the grain of fashion or "what you have seen on TV", is one of the greatest American artists of our time.
She is the essential link between tradition and modernity in Jazz/Soul music.
She oozes style, she is the epitome of class.
This collection is made by exquisite pieces of work and creates a mosaic, which while respecting its origin, has its own beaty and life.
Lazy Afternoon
Baby Come to Me: The Best of Regina Belle
Phenomenal December 19, 2007
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
This album is amazing. In fact, this is my favorite CD from Regina Belle. The two tracks "From Now On" and "Someone Who Needs Me" are light years beyond five stars in their lyrics, melody and of course Regina's soulful, passionate voice. If you're a fan of Regina Belle's earlier music, you will appreciate the maturity of this album. If you're unfamiliar with Regina Belle, check out this album - you won't be disappointed.
Slip into something cool and sexy.... October 25, 2007
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
After Regina Belle's powerful musical positioning on the very top of the world of Pop/Soul/Jazz around the turn of the early nineties,things changed.
For what reasons (maybe the marketing issues, maybe her recording label's management, maybe her natural reluctance to make a record what she does't like to make, lack of freedom to use her creativity...), it's not our tale to fathom.
What is significant, is that Belle is back with a totally twenty-first century answer to the twentieth century foxes.
"This Is Regina" is a journey into some straight-from-the-heart Soul/Jazz music tinged with a shade of bubbly undercurrents.
GREAT ! A well crafted album with heartfel melodies,fantastic vocals by a Lady in stunning form - we've been waiting for it.
The tracks "Oooh Boy", "From Now On", "Johnny's Back" will mean as much as Regina Belle old-time favourites such as "Baby Come To Me', "Show Me The Way" , "So Many Tears", "A Whole New World", "If I Could", "What Goes Around", "Make It Like It Was'", which were the rage of the day at one point of time..
"Someome Who Needs Me" and "Don't Wanna Go Home" are other noteworthy mentionables. But,above all that,it's Regina's FANTASTIC singing and unique phrasing which make everything shine.
An excellent idea would be an album with all her best jazzy hits REMIXED !
Are you at Concord Records listening ??!!
Baby Come to Me: The Best of Regina Belle
Lazy Afternoon
To Grover, With Love
Love Songs
Ladies' Choice
It's surprisingly soothing. May 13, 2007
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
This beautiful album follows in the traditional Regina Belle formula: lush, sophisticated quiet storm ballads, augmented by Belle's strong, warm, elegant, inviting vocals.
The CD steers clear of anything too adventurous, which is just fine, because Belle's fans have come to love her for her reliability as an old friend who returns every few years with a fresh set of new, yet familiar songs.
The album begins with the pleasantly sexy "Oooh Boy," then leads into a several pretty ballads, notably the sweeping "From Now On," which recalls her American chart-topper "A Whole New World."
Highlights include the funky, smooth, sexy "Don't Wanna Go Home Now," which could be safely classified as adult contemporary club music and recalls Koffee Brown's 2001 hit "After Party."
"Johnny's Back" is an endearing, shuffling little tune about, well, Johnny coming home, and possesses a warm, adult innocence rare in popular music.
The album also features a more modern-sounding tune, "La Da Di," which brings to mind Destiny's Child and features a rap courtesy of MC Lyte.
In short this adequately titled album is pure Regina Belle and will undoubtedly please the sophisticated songstylist's many fans.
Gorgeous ! Soulful ! Different !! March 11, 2007
24 out of 27 found this review helpful
Though Anita Baker first emerged as lead vocalist of Chapter 8 in 1979 and her debut solo recording The Songstress was released in 1983, it was not until 1986 that she was championed as the "brand new flava" with the release of Rapture. Less than a year later Baker became the prototype for a new generation of R&B vocalists-de-churchified vocals with heavy jazz-styled inflections tailor-made for the burgeoning "smooooooove" jazz radio format. If Baker was the template, Regina Belle and Miki Howard were second generation reproductions, who were given the leeway to explore more serious pop fare than the 10 million-sales poster child Whitney Houston or the mechanical-dance divas Janet Jackson and Jody Watley.
In the absence of "real" jazz singers in the pop world -- Carmen Lundy, the late Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, and Cassandra Wilson all released ground-breaking recordings in the late 1980s that were virtually ignored by pop audiences -- Baker, Howard and Belle were the closest thing to "real" jazz vocalists in the mainstream. It was on the strength of Belle's track "So Many Tears" -- a sinewy, whiny bit of a song that stuck out on black radio like DMX on the "Quiet Storm" -- that comparisons would be made to Billie Holiday. At the time of her debut release All by Myself (1987), Belle said of her affinity for Holiday, "I can get sort of the same feel she could . . . It's Kind of hard to explain, but it's an exaggeration of my vocal timbre. That's how I get the presence of Billie."
Armed with the spirit of one of the most significant and distinct vocalists of the 20th century and the support of a legion of cultural luminaries including Nancy Wilson (Belle recorded Wilson's "If I Could" in 1992 Passion) and legendary "Quiet Storm" jock Vaughn Harper, Belle went on the achieve success with songs such "Baby Come to Me" (Stay with Me 1989) and her Grammy Award winning duet with Peabo Bryson Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme) that helped introduce the Disney movie theme (Aladdin) as pop-schlock hit recording (a genre that Elton John and Celine Dion would later perfect). Three years removed from her last major label release, Regina Belle returns with This Is Regina, her first release for Peak Records.
Belle is one of a generation of post-"Urban Contemporary" R&B vocalists who have been lost and forgotten as urban radio has become increasingly dominated by, as Angie Stone puts it on her Mahogany Soul, "beat stealing, melody trying to find" vocalists who look good on video and sound bad -- atrociously so sometimes -- live. During the early 1990s, Belle faired better than others, most notably the late Phyllis Hyman, Miki Howard and even Anita Baker, because she was backed my a major label and had achieved some modicum of crossover success with "Baby Come to Me" and the Aladdin theme. With This Is Regina, Belle stays close to home as much of the project is relegated to "Smooooooove Jazz" fare. The one exception is the track "La Da Di" which features a cameo by MC Lyte.
The lead single and opening track "Oooh Boy", written by Belle and Barry Eastmond, who also produced four of the 12 tracks, is the kind of breezy tune that allows Belle's hyper-elastic vocals to wrap around its lyrics. On the Eastmond-produced "From Now On", Belle is joined by vocalist Glenn Jones. Though he has had some minor success with tracks like 1986's "Show Me" and "We've Only Just Begun" (1987), Jones is one of the most underrated R&B vocalists of the last 20 years. His 1994 recording Here I Go Again is one of the great obscure R&B treasures of the last decade. Co-written by former Essence Magazine editor turned songwriter Gordon Chambers, "From Now On" provides a fertile musical landscape for both Belle and Jones and hopefully signals a re-emergence for Jones. Belle and Eastmond also reach out to equally obscured Will Downing-the poor person's Luther Vandross-to contribute backing vocals on "Someone Who Needs Me". Eastmond also contributes the "Midnight Luv" styled "Take My Time".
The best track from This Is Regina is the soulful "Johnny's Back" which was co-written and produced by Belle's brother Bernard Belle, who has written and produced for the likes of The Winans, Hi-Five and Bobby Brown. The song is a sweet tribute ("he's the soul of me, I'm so glad to see your smile, sit down awhile, I fixed you a pot of neck bones baby, maybe a little corn bread") to her husband, former NBA player John Battle. Other standouts include the touching "Gotta Go Back" which is further evidence of Belle's maturity as a lyricist.
With the demise of the Private Music label, that was responsible for recent releases by Barry White, Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne, Peak Records has aggressively tried to fill that gap with recent projects by Miki Howard Three Wishes and Phil Perry Magic. This is Regina is a quality recording that captures Regina Belle is classic form and hopefully is the sign of more quality efforts from a generation of vocalists who were unceremoniously cast aside for a generation of 20-somethings who are mostly flavor with little substance.
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