Check out Van Hunt

Do you like Prince? You probably like 80s Prince, but today's Prince leaves most people cold. You should check out Van Hunt, whose latest album "On the Jungle Floor" is a better Prince album than the Purple One himself has made since his Reagan era heyday.

Like Prince, Van Hunt can croon sexy slow jams, kick up funky grooves, shred on the guitar and pen sharp pop hooks. "On the Jungle Floor" is Van Hunt's second album, and considering how good it is, I'm shocked at how little press it has gotten. Van Hunt is a neo-soul artist in an Anthony Hamilton/John Legend mold, but his songs still sound modern enough to do well on the radio. I've been playing it a lot the past two days and tracks like "Suspicion," "Being a Girl" and the new wavey "At the End of a Slow Dance" already are burrowed deep in my head. At the same time, Van Hunt is an ambitious, refreshingly irreverent artist whose tastes veer outside the R&B mainstream. I mean, he does a Stooges cover ("No Sense of Crime") for crissakes!

For more info, check out this story from the Chicago Sun-Times.

So sayeth Jim DeRogatis:

The second album by Atlanta guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Van Hunt has been described as "a better Prince album than the last Prince album" (which was pretty good), while other critics cite Lenny Kravitz with more taste and less cheese. To these ears, it's one of the most inventive R&B albums since D'Angelo's "Voodoo" in 2000.

However you view "On the Jungle Floor," it's an extraordinary effort, and a welcome surprise after the artist's 2004 debut, which received plenty of attention at Grammy time, but was oddly marketed like a funky singer-songwriter disc.