Another in the ever-lengthening series of African-American romantic comedies of the late '90s and early '00s, The Brothers provides an excuse for a various-artists compilation of contemporary R&B music. "Featuring all new music," reads a note on the album cover, which also lists all the recording artists, who range from veterans like Maze featuring
Frankie Beverly to more recent acts such as
Somethin' for the People featuring
Fuzzy. An unusually large number of the tracks, five out of 16, are ringers, not actually heard in the film. Curiously, these songs, which include AB's "Happy,"
Dave Hollister's "Forever," and
No Question's "Remember Us," seem to support the film's romantic theme particularly well. But so do many of the ones included, notably
Eric Benét's "Love Don't Love Me," in which the singer confesses, "Fear of commitment is a hard habit to break." This is not entirely a collection of slow jams, however, with the likes of
Snoop Dogg bringing a typically blunt, physical tone to his rap on "Hi 2 U." The producers don't seem to have decided how far to go in terms of the usual vulgarities. "Let It Go" by
Jaheim featuring Castro has an obscenity edited out, but in the next track, "Two of a Kind" by
Eddie Levert, Sr. featuring
Gerald Levert, a variant of the same word gets through. (The album is not stickered for explicit content.)
Marcus Miller wrote the score for the film, but one gets only a taste of it in "The Love Theme," which concludes the album. Though no track really stands out, there would seem to be plenty of possibilities for singles from this collection, if properly promoted, which could make the soundtrack more memorable than the film from which (some of) it comes. ~ William Ruhlmann